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As teams work to bring Hubble back online, new science highlights missing dark matter in galaxy - NASASpaceFlight.com - NASASpaceflight.com

As teams work to bring Hubble back online, new science highlights missing dark matter in galaxy - NASASpaceFlight.com - NASASpaceflight.com

As teams work to bring Hubble back online, new science highlights missing dark matter in galaxy - NASASpaceFlight.com - NASASpaceflight.com
Jun 23, 2021 3 mins, 2 secs

June 16, 2021.

April 12, 2021?

Following an unexpected payload computer halt on June 13, Hubble teams are diligently working to bring the 31-year-old telescope back online.

One team of researchers’ recently published research using Hubble highlights one of the universe’s most mysterious phenomena — dark matter.

Shortly after 20:00 UTC on Sunday, June 13, 2021, Hubble’s main computer stopped receiving a “keep-alive” signal from the telescope’s payload computer.

NASA continues to investigate and work to resolve the problem with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope.

— Hubble (@NASAHubble) June 22, 2021.

Hubble teams in the control center at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland recognized that Hubble was in safe mode and later attempted to restart the telescope the following day.

If the payload computer issue can’t be fixed, the Hubble team is prepared to switch to the STINT and CPM hardware on the backup computer

Astronauts work to service Hubble in the payload bay of Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-125 – via NASA

Mysterious dark matter missing from galaxy

It has been the site of great mystery due to its lack of dark matter — a finding that challenges conventional theories

Current theories suggest that dark matter makes up a considerable amount of a galaxy’s mass

Dark matter in galaxies can be thought of as the scaffolding for their structures

Large amounts of dark matter dominate nearly all galaxies

Additionally, dark matter is thought to account for nearly 85% of the entire universe’s mass, and galaxies are even thought to form from large halos of dark matter throughout the universe

So, you can imagine that when a team of researchers announced in 2018 that they found DF2 to have little to no dark matter inside it, some were quick to become skeptical of the legitimacy of the findings

“We went out on a limb with our initial Hubble observations of this galaxy in 2018

To understand just how much dark matter is in DF2, we have to first measure how far away DF2 is from our solar system

suggested, the amount of total dark matter in the galaxy would be only a few percent

If DF2 were closer to Earth than van Dokkum et al.’s suggestions, the galaxy would need dark matter to compensate for the observed effects of the total mass because DH2 would be much smaller and less faint than it is

Understanding this, the team found that with the number of stars in DF2, there isn’t much room for dark matter to be present in the galaxy

This suggests that there likely are very small amounts of dark matter present inside DF2

don’t explain exactly why DF2 is deficient in dark matter, knowing the galaxy’s distance and having accurate observation data bolsters the team’s initial results from 2018

However, DF2 is not the only galaxy in the universe lacking dark matter that we know of

All galaxies seem to be dominated by it, but Hubble observations of a galaxy lacking dark matter challenge theories of galaxy formation

— Hubble (@NASAHubble) June 17, 2021

According to Danieli et al.’s 2020 study, DF4 lacks dark matter like DF2

However, the way it lost its dark matter is likely a much different process

The research suggests a neighboring galaxy’s gravitational forces pulled the dark matter out of DF4, stripping the galaxy of all its dark matter

So although we know of multiple galaxies lacking in dark matter, scientists say we will need to discover many more dark-matter deficient galaxies to truly uncover the mystery behind these mysterious galaxies

“In our 2018 paper, we suggested that if you have a galaxy without dark matter, and other similar galaxies seem to have it, that means that dark matter is actually real and it exists,” van Dokkum said

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