Astronomical Discovery: Giant Galaxy NGC 1277 Lacks Dark Matter
Scientists have recently made an astonishing discovery regarding Galaxy NGC 1277, situated in the Perseus Cluster approximately 240 million light-years away. Led by researcher Sebastien Comeron from IAC and the University of La Laguna (ULL), a group of scientists has uncovered a captivating fact about Galaxy NGC 1277. In contrast to most large galaxies that contain an invisible substance known as dark matter, NGC 1277 appears to be an anomaly as it lacks any trace of it. This is the first instance of a massive galaxy, surpassing the size of our Milky Way, being found without dark matter. Unlike other galaxies of similar magnitude, NGC 1277 seems to be devoid of dark matter, which typically constitutes around 85% of the matter in the universe. This discovery establishes NGC 1277 as the first galaxy of Milky Way proportions to exist without the presence of dark matter, which is typically a crucial component in galaxies consisting of stars, planets, dust, and gas.
Dark matter
Dark matter is like hidden, invisible matter because it doesn’t act like the normal matter we see around us that interacts with light. The only way to know it’s there is through its gravitational effects. Astronomers discovered that some large galaxies were spinning really fast, and if some invisible mass hadn’t held them together, they would have broken up. That’s how they realized that there must be this mysterious dark matter. The scientist concluded that all large galaxies are surrounded by dark matter. This assumption has become an important part of the development of galactic evolution theories.
However, now this discovery of a galaxy without dark matter casts doubt on the validity of all these theories.
NGC 1277 Galaxy – how is it different from other galaxies?
NGC 1277 is a special galaxy that scientists find very interesting. Unlike most other galaxies, it has not had much contact or interaction with other nearby galaxies. They call it a cosmic remnant because it’s like a remnant of massive galaxies that existed long, long ago in the early universe. These remnant galaxies are crucial to astronomers because they help them learn more about how the first galaxies in the universe formed.
The lead scientist behind the discovery of NGC 1277 and a researcher at La Laguna Cameron University said: “This result is inconsistent with currently accepted cosmological models that include dark matter.”
To aid their research, Comeron and other researchers studied the galaxy NGC 1277 using a special tool called an integral field spectrograph. With this tool, they can create a map of how the galaxy moves and find out how much mass it has and how it’s distributed.
