Scientists Elucidate the Origin of the Darkest Galaxies in the Universe

This image from a supercomputer simulation displays as bright clumps the dark matter satellites that can be found around our Milky Way galaxy. The central region corresponds to the luminous matter (gas and stars) of the Milky Way. The panel illustrates one of the potential challenges that the leading cosmological model, ΛCDM, currently faces. This model generically predicts that dark matter halos are "lumpy," filled with hundreds of small, dense, gravitationally bound satellites of dark matter. In contrast, the typical number of luminous satellite galaxies found in the vicinity of the Milky Way is much smaller. This discrepancy is often called "the missing satellites problem." The study, conducted by Stanford researcher Stelios Kazantzidis and collaborators, may help resolve this outstanding issue.