Our cosmic neighborhood may be far more crowded than previous estimates have suggested. New research hints the Milky Way could have many more small dwarf galaxy "satellites" around it than expected.
The team, comprised of cosmologists from Durham University, combined supercomputer simulations with mathematical modeling to predict the existence of missing Milky Way "orphan" galaxies. The researchers' novel technique suggests that as many as 100 extra satellite dwarf galaxies could orbit our large, spiral galaxy.
This has ramifications that extend way beyond our own patch of space, however. Should these orbiting orphans be detected, they could bolster support for the standard model of the universe, the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model. The LCDM is our current best explanation for the large-scale evolution and structure of the entire cosmos.
Source: www.space.com
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