Astronomers are currently observing a very strange and at the same time frightening phenomenon. Across the universe, every now and then something is literally sucking life from galaxies scattered throughout space. And although the main culprit of this crime has not yet been found, researchers from the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), located in Australia, are trying with all their might to solve this mysterious case and restore justice.
After studying more than 11,000 galaxies with the telescopes of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Arecibo Observatory's Legacy Fast ALFA project, the team concluded that a so-called "tidal stripping" process may be associated with this case, which causes the gas of galaxies to leave them. … And everything indicates that this process can occur in space much more often than previously thought. In fact, this is a quick death, because without gas, galaxies are unable to produce new stars. The results of the study by the research team from Australia were published in the Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Notes.
A graphic representation of the tidal stripping process can be viewed below in the video.
So who is the main suspect in this crime? Most likely, according to the researchers, this is none other than dark matter - a mysterious, invisible substance, which, according to modern astronomy, accounts for at least 27 percent of the total mass in the Universe. And now it may still be revealed that dark matter is a real criminal of intergalactic proportions.
“As part of the life cycle of galaxies, dark matter halos of varying sizes can pass through galaxies, ranging in mass from the mass of our Milky Way to halos of a thousand times that mass, commented Toby Brown, head of research and Ph. D. International Center for Radio Astronomy Research.
"Since the galaxy practically passes through these huge halos, the superheated intergalactic plasma located between them begins to suck gas behind it as a result of the tidal stripping process."
Not only do the researchers speculate that tidal stripping is more frequent than previously thought, they also believe that the process could occur within small and large galactic groups, as shown in the video below.
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“Our observations show that a similar process can occur in very compact galactic groups, which contain only a few galaxies that have a much less concentrated supply of dark matter. Most of the galaxies in the Universe are located in such small groups, where the number of galaxies can range from two to one hundred."
In general, this is a fairy tale without a happy ending. In more serious cases, galaxies are generally sucked dry. However, no one said that our Universe is an extremely cheerful place where only positive cosmological events take place.
NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK