Astrophysicists have discovered 854 very dark galaxies in the depths of outer space.
The new galaxies seemingly appeared out of nowhere and were found in the well-known Coma Hub, and their discovery is considered far more significant that the 47 dark galaxies that scientists found last year.
Scientists from Stony Brook University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan made the discovery using data from the Subaru Telescope at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii.
The galaxies have been described as very dark due to their lack of celestial bodies.
They appear to be similar in size to our Milky Way Galaxy, but the proportion of stars from our galaxy to these new dark galaxies is roughly 1000 to 1.
Researchers add, “These galaxies are dark because they lost the gas needed to create new stars during or after their largely unknown formation process, billions of years ago.”
Galaxy StarsLead researcher Jin Koda explains, “The findings suggest that these galaxies appear very diffuse and are very likely enveloped by something very massing,” adding, “We believe that something invisible must be protecting the fragile star systems of these galaxies, something with a high mass.”
What Koda is suggesting may be beyond our knowledge of modern astronomy, as it implies a force field of some sort is providing protection for these newly discovered galaxies.
Whatever the object is, it has shielded these dark galaxies from our vision, which is why they are just being discovered now.
The best guess as to the mystery object is dark matter, which makes up roughly 99% of the universe.
However, dark matter remains such a mystery to astrophysicists that suspecting dark matter’s involvement in these new dark galaxies doesn’t shed much light on the new discovery.
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