"Not all galaxies sparkle with stars. Galaxies as wide as the Milky Way but bereft of starlight are
scattered throughout our cosmic neighborhood. Unlike Andromeda and other well-known galaxies, these dark beasts have no grand spirals of stars and gas wrapped around a glowing core, nor are they radiant balls of densely packed stars. Instead, researchers find just a wisp of starlight from a tenuous blob.
Wherever they come from, dark galaxies appear to be ubiquitous. Once astronomers reported the first batch in early 2015 — which told them what to look for — they started picking out dark denizens in many nearby clusters of galaxies. “We’ve gone from none to suddenly over a thousand,” Abraham says. “It’s been remarkable.”
In spring 2014, researchers pointed Dragonfly at the well-studied Coma cluster, a conglomeration of
thousands of galaxies. At a distance of about 340 million light-years, Coma is a close, densely packed collection of galaxies and a rich hunting ground for astronomers....They were not expecting to find dozens of galaxies hiding in plain sight. “People have been studying Coma for 80 years,” Abraham says. “How could we find anything new there?” And yet, scattered throughout the cluster appeared 47 dark galaxies, many of them comparable in size to the Milky Way — tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of light-years across
*The environment may be to blame. A cluster like Coma grows over time by drawing in galaxies from the space around it. As galaxies fall into the cluster, they feel a headwind as they plow through the hot ionized gas that permeates the cluster. The headwind can strip gas from an incoming galaxy. But galaxies need gas to form stars, which are created when self-gravity crushes a blob of dust and gas until it turns into a thermonuclear furnace.
*Or maybe there’s something intrinsic to a galaxy that turns it dark. A volley of supernovas or a prolific burst of star formation might drive gas out of the galaxy.
*This haul of ghostly galaxies is puzzling on many fronts. Any galaxy the size of the Milky Way should have no trouble creating lots of stars. But it’s still unclear how heavy the dark galaxies are. *Perhaps these shadowy entities are failed galaxies, as massive as our own but mysteriously prevented from giving birth to a vast stellar family.
*Or despite being as wide as the Milky Way, they could be relative lightweights stretched thin by internal or external forces." Smithsonian
-OR- They were CREATED as is for a REASON you have yet to figure out.....Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars,.. Job 22:12
Wherever they come from, dark galaxies appear to be ubiquitous. Once astronomers reported the first batch in early 2015 — which told them what to look for — they started picking out dark denizens in many nearby clusters of galaxies. “We’ve gone from none to suddenly over a thousand,” Abraham says. “It’s been remarkable.”
In spring 2014, researchers pointed Dragonfly at the well-studied Coma cluster, a conglomeration of
*The environment may be to blame. A cluster like Coma grows over time by drawing in galaxies from the space around it. As galaxies fall into the cluster, they feel a headwind as they plow through the hot ionized gas that permeates the cluster. The headwind can strip gas from an incoming galaxy. But galaxies need gas to form stars, which are created when self-gravity crushes a blob of dust and gas until it turns into a thermonuclear furnace.
*Or maybe there’s something intrinsic to a galaxy that turns it dark. A volley of supernovas or a prolific burst of star formation might drive gas out of the galaxy.
*This haul of ghostly galaxies is puzzling on many fronts. Any galaxy the size of the Milky Way should have no trouble creating lots of stars. But it’s still unclear how heavy the dark galaxies are. *Perhaps these shadowy entities are failed galaxies, as massive as our own but mysteriously prevented from giving birth to a vast stellar family.
*Or despite being as wide as the Milky Way, they could be relative lightweights stretched thin by internal or external forces." Smithsonian
-OR- They were CREATED as is for a REASON you have yet to figure out.....Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars,.. Job 22:12
