According to our dominant cosmological models, about 85% of the mass in the Universe is represented by Dark Matter.
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Despite ongoing efforts to study the mysterious, invisible mass, not much has been discovered yet. However, astrophysicists have managed to measure its influence on our universe by observing Dark Matter and its effect on the overall design of large-scale cosmic structures.
A team of astronomers has discovered a massive galaxy, NGC 1277, that does not appear to have much or any dark matter. The team is led by members of the Instituto Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC).
This lenticular galaxy in the constellation Perseus is 240 million light-years away and is much more massive than our Milky Way. This is the first time a massive galaxy has been found that shows no signs of Dark Matter, posing a serious challenge to our current cosmological models.
The research was led by Sébastien Comerón, an astronomer at the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), who specializes in extragalactic astronomy.
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Researchers from the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE), the National Council for Science and Technology, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and the Institute of Particle and Cosmos Physics (IPARComy) participated with him. A paper describing their findings was recently published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, also known as the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) model, Dark Matter played an important role in the formation and evolution of the Universe and continues to influence its state.
Theoretically, this invisible mass was supposed to have existed shortly after the Big Bang, with neutral hydrogen gas in rotating disks. The gas compressed into denser clouds, leading to the formation of the first stars and galaxies.
However, the team working on calculating the mass distribution of NGC 1277 only observed the star distribution. Based on this, they concluded that Dark Matter cannot make up more than 5% of the galaxy's mass within the observed radius. However, their observations suggested that there may be no Dark Matter at all.
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The team describes NGC 1277 in their paper as a “relic galaxy,” a very rare class of galaxies that do not interact with neighboring galaxies. They hypothesize that these galaxies are remnants of massive galaxies that formed shortly after the Big Bang.
