Astronomers Just Solved a Dark Matter Mystery, Saving Our Galaxy Formation Models - ScienceAlert

Revealed last year to have a shockingly low amount of dark matter, the galaxy NGC 1052-DF4 posed a significant challenge to our models of galaxy formation.

According to new research, NGC 1052-DF4 is indeed lacking in dark matter - but only because another nearby galaxy nicked it.

"We found that the gravitational pull from the nearby massive galaxy NGC1035 is removing its stars - and dark matter.".

The problem was that, according to our current models, dark matter is necessary for galaxies to form in the first place.

The velocities of clusters of stars inside the galaxy were still suggesting that there was much less dark matter than there should have been.

Stars only start to be stripped once the dark matter content falls below 10 to 15 percent of the galaxy's total mass.

UDFs tend to have a high proportion of dark matter - around 99 percent of the total mass of the galaxy