Starship Asterisk*

[img3="The galaxy Centaurus A, with its distinctive dust lane. Astronomical
observations of its satellite galaxies show properties that challenge
the conventional cosmological model.
Credit: Christian Wolf/SkyMapper Team/Australian National University"]http://www.anu.edu.au/files/styles/anu_ ... ropped.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

Astronomers have examined the distribution and movement of dwarf galaxies in the constellation Centaurus, but their observations do not fit with the standard model of cosmology that assumes the existence of dark matter. ...

Like other large galaxies, our Milky Way is surrounded by smaller galaxies that orbit it as satellites. According to the standard model of cosmology that describes the formation of galaxies, these satellite galaxies should be distributed randomly and should orbit the host galaxy in an unordered way. The standard model assumes that all galaxies consist mainly of invisible dark matter, which has not yet been directly detected.

Observations of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, however, challenge this model: a few years ago, astronomers discovered that satellite galaxies are arranged in disc-shaped planes around the host galaxy and co-rotate within such planes.

Advocates of the standard model interpreted these structures as isolated cases. However, new findings by researchers led by Oliver Müller from the University of Basel’s Department of Physics now suggest that these are not statistical outliers, but are part of a widespread phenomenon. ...

• Science 359(6375):534 (02 Feb 2018) DOI: 10.1126/science.aao1858
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1802.00081 > 31 Jan 2018