2023-10-04 04:00:13
A mysterious dark matter halo could be the reason our galaxy, the Milky Way, isn’t as flat as it should be. A recent study suggests that this invisible dark matter has distorted the Milky Way, giving it the appearance of a crushed sombrero.
The Milky Way is not flat; it is distorted. A new study suggests that an invisible dark matter halo could explain this deformation.
Credit: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar; Magellanic Clouds: Robert Gendler/ESO
Until recently, scientists believed that the Milky Way was a flat disk dominated by two spiral arms. However, measurements taken since the middle of the 20th century show that the galaxy (A galaxy is, in cosmology, an assembly of stars, gas, dust and…) is inexplicably distorted. This deformation occurs mainly at the borders of our galaxy. Some regions tilt in one direction while others tilt in the opposite direction, giving it a distorted appearance.
Dark matter constitutes 85% of the matter in the Universe (The Universe is the set of everything that exists and the laws that govern it.), but as it does not interact directly with light (Light is all the electromagnetic waves visible to the eye…), it is completely (Completely or completely automatic, or even by Anglicism completion or…) invisible. Nevertheless, its gravitational effects on its environment (The environment is everything that surrounds us. It is all natural elements and…) are observable. Dark matter manifests itself, among other things, by accelerating stars to otherwise inexplicable speeds when they orbit galactic centers.
The galactic halo appears just beyond the spiral arms of the Milky Way. In a 2022 study, astronomers used the European Space Agency’s Gaia Observatory to map the positions and movements of about 2 billion stars in the Milky Way. They discovered that the stars in the galactic halo were strangely unbalanced.
To understand what this could mean for the dark matter halo, the researchers used a computer model to recreate a young galaxy similar to the Milky Way. After simulating the galaxy for 5 billion years, they found that they had created a galaxy very similar to ours.
To do this, it was necessary to introduce an inclination of the dark matter halo into the simulation. The cause of this inclination is not certain, however the researchers’ simulations suggest that it is likely that a gigantic collision, perhaps with another galaxy, could have caused this inclination.
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