FAST finds two mysterious hydrogen clouds with no visible stars
Astronomers have found two clouds of hydrogen near the Whirlpool galaxy that appear to contain almost no stars.
Astronomers have found two clouds of hydrogen near the Whirlpool galaxy that appear to contain almost no stars.
The short version
- The clouds, discovered with China's FAST radio telescope, each contain roughly 3 million times the mass of the sun in hydrogen but have no detectable optical counterpart.
- Their properties are outlined in a new paper published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal on Aug.
- This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies .
What happened
Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Astronomers have found two clouds of hydrogen near the Whirlpool galaxy that appear to contain almost no stars. According to the standard Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model of the universe, structure forms hierarchically: Small dark-matter halos form first, then merge to build larger halos and galaxies.
Why it matters
But not every dark-matter halo is expected to become a galaxy because several processes can suppress star formation at sufficiently low masses.
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