Six spiral galaxies lacking dark matter
27 Jul 2024, Scientific Reports, vol.14, 17268
● Abstracts for Elementary School Students
Dark matter helps form galaxies. Some galaxies don’t have dark matter, but that’s rare. Spiral galaxies usually need dark matter to move the way they do. However, some spiral galaxies can move without dark matter. This means dark matter might not be as important for all galaxies as we thought.
● Abstracts for Junior High School Students
Dark matter is thought to be very important for forming galaxies. Sometimes, we find galaxies without dark matter, but these are usually special cases. In spiral galaxies, we often see flat rotation curves, which means dark matter is needed to explain their movement. However, some galaxies with little or no dark matter are not so rare. We found several spiral galaxies where the ratio of total mass to visible mass is about 1.09. This low ratio means that these galaxies can move based on their visible mass alone. This suggests that dark matter might not always be necessary for galaxy formation.
Six spiral galaxies lacking dark matter doi:10.1038/s41598-024-68144-w
