Solution found for cosmology's great pancake mystery?

Scientists from the University of Durham may have solved a decades-old puzzle regarding the distribution of the eleven small satellite galaxies that surround the Milky Way. The Milky Way is not alone. It is surrounded by a retinue of small "dwarf galaxy" companions. Cosmological theory predicts that these galaxies should occupy a large, nearly spherical halo but observations show that the satellite galaxies have a bizarre flattened, pancake-like distribution. The Durham team used sophisticated supercomputer models to simulate the formation of these galaxies and have succeeded in predicting the pancake configuration.