MEXICO: Physicists from Carnegie Mellon University, Brown University, and Cambridge University have submitted a finding in the journal Physical Review Letters to suggest the discovery of a dwarf galaxy orbiting our Milky Way – and seeming to emit gamma rays, which the team of scientists find rather unusual. However, if anything, they think the high-energy light might just be indicative of some dark matter within the center of the galaxy.
According to Alex Geringer-Sameth, a postdoctoral research associate in CMU’s Department of Physics and the paper’s lead author, “Something in the direction of this dwarf galaxy is emitting gamma rays. There’s no conventional reason this galaxy should be giving off gamma rays, so it’s potentially a signal for dark matter.”
Reticulum 2, as the name of the galaxy was given, was found some weeks back through the Dark Energy Survey – an experimental survey that maps southern skies with the aim of analyzing the accelerated expansion of our universe. At nearly a distance of 98,000 light-years away from Earth, this dwarf galaxy happens to be the nearest ever seen. The scientists deployed NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Geringer-Sameth and Matthew Walker from Carnegie Mellon as well as Savvas Koushiappas from Brown showed gamma rays from the direction of the galaxy being in excess of what it ought to produce.
“In the search for dark matter, gamma rays from a dwarf galaxy have long been considered a very strong signature,” said Koushiappas, an assistant professor of physics at Brown. “It seems like we may now be detecting such a thing for the first time.”
Although scientists have little knowledge of what constitutes a dark matter or what it really is, they are sure it accounts for about 80% of the matter in our world. They are very certain of this because they understand dark matter exerts some gravitational force on visible matter, accounting for why galaxies and galaxy clusters rotate and fluctuate in the cosmic microwave background.
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