London . Astronomers at the British University of Cambridge today reported a study claiming to have discovered 9 dwarfs , which orbit the Milky Way .
The discovery of these bodies could be key to advance the understanding of dark matter, the mysterious substance that binds the galaxies in the universe.
This is the first detection of such objects from than a decade ago. Since it was during the 2005 and 2006 dozens of dwarfs of the same type on the inland northern hemisphere were found.
Scientists have detected this time in the southern hemisphere, near the Magellanic Clouds, the new bodies, billions of times fainter and millions of times smaller than the Milky Way .
The nearest galaxies at 9 dwarf is in the region of the constellation Reticulum, to 97,000 million light years from Earth -a halfway to the Clouds of Magellan, while the farthest is beyond 1.2 million light years, the constellation Eridanus.
The researchers used data obtained during the first year of the Dark Energy Observatory (DES), a project of Stargazing in the participating research institutions and universities United States, Brazil, the UK, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.
Three of the discovered objects are dwarfs well “defined”, while the other six could be both dwarfs as globular clusters, objects similar to the first but in that dark matter does not play an essential role properties.
dwarfs are the formations of the smaller of the universe type and may contain only 5,000 stars, compared to the hundreds of billions that houses the Milky Way .
Traditional cosmological models predict the existence of hundreds of dwarfs orbiting the Milky Way , although its small size and low light detection make a complex task.
To composites 99% dark matter and 1% ordinary matter, that which is observable.
Dark matter, which makes up about a quarter of all matter and energy in the universe, only reveals its presence through gravitational effects on other objects.
The satellites Milky Way detected now “represent the last frontier for test our theories about dark matter. We need to find in order to confirm that the image that we have formed over the universe makes sense, “
said Vasily Belokurov, one of the study authors. The detection of new bodies is to Wyn Evans, co-author of the investigation, a “puzzling” result.
“Maybe at some point were satellites orbiting around the Magellanic Clouds and ended up being thrown outside. Or they may be part of a large group of galaxies which, together with the Magellanic Clouds, are falling into our Milky Way “Evans said.
The Observatory Dark Energy is a project that will last five years and photographing the southern sky with unprecedented detail thanks to a 570-megapixel camera, the most powerful manufactured until now, able to detect galaxies at 8,000 million light-years Earth
Source:. EFE
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