• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

50-Year Puzzle Of The Milky Way’s Satellites Has Been Solved

December 20, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

Around the Milky Way, there are many satellite galaxies. The spatial distribution of eleven of the small and faint ones which appear to lie on a thin plane is something that has been noted as not just quirky but very puzzling by astronomers. For decades, data suggested that these were actually all rotating on this vast plane, something that would be extremely unlikely using our current understanding of the universe. Now, new data has solved this 50-year problem.

The “plane of satellites” problem was a big problem for the existence of dark matter, a mysterious substance that makes up about 85 percent of all matter in the universe and is one of the crucial ingredients of the Standard Model of Cosmology. According to the model, galaxies formed gradually from clumps of cold dark matter. 

Advertisement

The issue saw the distribution of small galaxies as orbiting all in a vast thin disk of 3D space with no known explanation for how this distribution came to be. Now, data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia Satellite shows the most precise measurement of the motions of these galaxies and it turns out that it is not a real plane. These galaxies are aligned but they are moving in different directions.

“The plane of satellites was truly mind-boggling,” lead author Dr Till Sawala, of the University of Helsinki, said in a statement. “It is perhaps unsurprising that a puzzle which has endured for almost 50 years required a combination of methods to solve it – and an international team to come together.”

The researchers concluded the appearance of the satellites on a plane is a “quirk” that will dissipate over time much like the shape of constellations in the night sky. Constellations may look a certain way now, but over eons, as they move, their shape will change. The plane is there but it is a transient positioning, not a physical plane of rotation.

Advertisement

“The strange alignment of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies in the sky had perplexed astronomers for decades, so much so that it was deemed to pose a profound challenge to cosmological orthodoxy,” co-author Professor Carlos Frenk, from Durham University, explained. 

“But thanks to the amazing data from the GAIA satellite and the laws of physics, we now know that the plane is just a chance alignment, a matter of being in the right place at the right time, just as the constellations of stars in the sky.”

As he noted, “Come back in a billion years, and the plane will have disintegrated, as will today’s constellations.”

Advertisement

This discovery removes one of the outstanding challenges to the cold dark matter theory of the evolution of the universe. 

The findings are published in Nature Astronomy.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Rugby-Control freak De Klerk braced for Australia challenge
  2. San Francisco raises Tesla ‘self-driving’ safety concerns as public test nears
  3. Ice hockey-Sacked Ukraine league manager said blamed for video of racist incident spreading
  4. World’s Most Common Pesticide Diminishes Bumblebees’ Color Vision

Source Link: 50-Year Puzzle Of The Milky Way’s Satellites Has Been Solved

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version