Is dark matter blasting holes in the Milky Way?
- 5 years ago
MILKY WAY — Something strange is blasting holes in the Milky Way, but we're not really sure what.
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researcher Ana Bonaca presented findings at the American Physical Society conference of a series of holes in GD-1, our galaxy's longest stellar stream.
According to Physics, stellar streams like GD-1 are remnants of star clusters or dwarf galaxies that have been ensnared by our galaxy, and stretched out while being drawn into its orbit.
Under normal conditions, the stream is a single line. But a high-resolution map of GD-1 created from Gaia observatory data revealed gaps in the stream, along with a spur — a thorn-like structure that had not been seen before.
Bonaca and her colleagues believe something large plunged through the stream, but couldn't map it to any of the luminous objects they observed.
They suspect the culprit to be a clump of dark matter, but need more evidence to support the theory, or to rule out other possibilities.
The team wants to conduct more mapping work to uncover other areas where the unseen object has come a-knocking, with the eventual goal being to map dark matter clumps all across our galaxy.
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researcher Ana Bonaca presented findings at the American Physical Society conference of a series of holes in GD-1, our galaxy's longest stellar stream.
According to Physics, stellar streams like GD-1 are remnants of star clusters or dwarf galaxies that have been ensnared by our galaxy, and stretched out while being drawn into its orbit.
Under normal conditions, the stream is a single line. But a high-resolution map of GD-1 created from Gaia observatory data revealed gaps in the stream, along with a spur — a thorn-like structure that had not been seen before.
Bonaca and her colleagues believe something large plunged through the stream, but couldn't map it to any of the luminous objects they observed.
They suspect the culprit to be a clump of dark matter, but need more evidence to support the theory, or to rule out other possibilities.
The team wants to conduct more mapping work to uncover other areas where the unseen object has come a-knocking, with the eventual goal being to map dark matter clumps all across our galaxy.