Anomalous Galaxy Discovered,
Its immediate practical scientific implications, plus
Its immediate practical scientific implications, plus
The big news is in astronomy, as reported in most scientific and the major news media throughout the week of March 25, 2018 through April 1, 2018, in the astronomical discovery of a galaxy, galaxy NGC1052-DF2, observed to be devoid of the effects of dark matter, or dark energy-matter, indicating the absence of this phenomenon there so far observed to be present in the other observed galaxies. This is big news for the science of astrophysics because, if the observation of this indicated zero dark-matter galaxy is confirmed to be enduring fact, then galaxy NGC1052-DF2 would be a celestially insitu, or in-the-field, scientific control condition for comparison with normal galaxies, which are surrounded by an inferential halo of dark matter extending for as many as hundreds of thousands of miles or kilometers, or likewise light years, beyond them and exceeding in mass by a ratio of 5 or 6 to 1 the mass of normal, or baryonic-luminous, matter, or such energy-matter mass, of galaxies and the universe (of which the celestial objects, from quanta to solar systems and organisms, as we know them, are made). The effects of inferential dark matter on the baryonic matter of the universe, with baryonic matter being the mass (made of atoms and molecules and their substructural baryon constituents of protons, neutrons and electrons) of the directly or instrumentally observable universe, include: 1)., gravitationally cohering or binding together galaxies, as well as accounting for the greater speed of rotation of galaxies and galaxy clusters with maintenance of their corporeal integrity than would be the case or possible as a matter of gravitational physics in the absence of the necessary considerable mass of dark matter, according to empirically based computational physics, astrophysics and astronomy; 2)., influencing the size of the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, the standard for galaxies on the whole, to human telescopic observation, perhaps until this discovery; 3)., influencing the density distribution of stars, or solar systems, and gas-dust nebulae, etc., within galaxies and of galaxy clusters as well as of galaxies within galaxy clusters; 4)., and observed gravitational lensing, being the bending of background light or such radiowave radiation from a large-mass light source, such as a star or distant galaxy by, normally a baryonic-matter large-mass foreground celestial object, relative to an observer or photo-telescope, but, in the case of dark matter, an invisible such large mass in the foreground (gravitationally lensing or bending the visible light or instrumentally detectable radiowave radiation), being indicative or inferential dark matter, or such exotic invisible matter. Galaxy NGC1052-DF2 has been observed be nearly as large as our galaxy The Milky Way but larger, with, according to one science news article, 1% of the number of stars as has The Milky Way, and, according another science news article, with 200 times fewer stars, or a half of a percent (.5%) of the number of stars, as has The Milky Way.
All of the numerous science news articles I have read on this odd galaxy report that its sparse stars are highly dispersed, or highly diffuse in distance, that it is orbited by star clusters of old stars, whose orbits were not specified to be external or internal to the perimeter of galaxy NGC1052-DF2, that its stars, presumably subsuming star/solar-planetary systems and black holes, account for all of its [computational-physics-determined] assessed mass [as correlated with its rotational speed], and that it, unusually so, is a see-through galaxy. Science news articles on two observational reports of telescopic searches for other low-star-population, low-star-density galaxies most similar to galaxy NGC1052-DF2 said the searches found a small number of such galaxies but none closely resembling the stated features, and more, of galaxy NGC1052-DF2, among which galaxy NGC1052-DF2 was said to stand out as a distinctly different, unique galaxy.
Why the existence of a galaxy devoid of dark matter, or dark energy-matter, is most especially scientifically noteworthy and astonishing, is because the prevailing empirical, inferential model of dark energy, or dark energy-matter, based on observation, infers that dark energy, or dark energy-matter, permeates all of space-time of the observable or knowable extent of the universe, so a patch or sector, or galaxy, of it devoid of either or both of these phenomena would be inconsistent with apparent cosmological nature as well as anomalous to the heretofore historical telescopic observations of the universe of our astrophysics and astronomy sciences. The discovery of this potentially zero dark-matter, or zero energy-matter, galaxy and a comparison study of it, if it is confirmed to be such an anomalous galaxy, with apparent normal galaxies, as hereinabove identified, will allow a resolution and conclusion to the lively debate in astrophysics and astronomy as to whether or not dark energy and matter are illusory, mistaken phenomena, that have an alternative, less mysterious explanation, or are actual. Even more scientifically astonishing would be a scientific finding of fact that both dark energy and matter, as the elusive phenomena of their observed effects and ubiquity, and a galaxy devoid of, or with little, dark matter, or dark energy-matter, coexist.
(Dark energy and matter are invisible to the human senses and humanity’s perceptual and observational technology and whose [fundamental particle and derivative more complex and complex] structures of makeup are undetermined and so are unknown, but they are inferentially known by their definitely or definitively observable effects on especially very large celestial objects and structures of the telescopically observed universe. I have taken the liberty in using the term dark energy-matter herein as a substitute term for dark matter or dark energy because, in view of the energy-and-matter equivalency equation of physicist Albert Einstein of E=MC2, I venture to treat dark matter as an invisible to our species analog of baryonic matter and the latter’s also states of alternately existing in a matter state as a liquid, solid, gas or plasma or converting to chemically undifferentiated pure energy, such as is the familiar case -- to common knowledge among literate humans -- with molecular water, H20, having its liquid, its ice or snow or frost, its steam or fog or mist or vapor, etc., states. Dark energy is the name given to the scientifically undeciphered energy force driving the telescopically observed expansion of space between, and increasingly separating and isolating, galaxies and galaxy clusters from one another as well as the expansion or size of space ((cosmological spatiality)) and our universe itself at increasingly greater speeds, keeping the universe from collapsing in on itself by the force of gravity that aggregates and compresses mass into hierarchies of cosmological structures from baryons to galaxy clusters and everything in-between, even as neighboring galaxies and galaxy clusters combine and consolidate by the force of gravity and their gravitational attraction. Dark energy in behavior largely approximates physicist Albert Einstein's postulate of the cosmological constant, a repulsive counter or opposing force to gravity preserving and propagating our universe, whereof Einstein mistakenly regarded the cosmological constant concept as the greatest blunder of his scientific thought work. Einstein arrived at this construct during a time, before the astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered and was the first person to observe telescopically that our universe and the distance between, for the most part, its galaxies and galaxy clusters was expanding, that the conventional conception in astronomy and physics was that the universe had become [permanently] fixed, existing in a steady state. After confirmation of Hubble's discovery contradicting this erroneous conventional conception, Einstein declared his cosmological constant postulation to be the biggest blunder of his scientific work without knowing, as well as was the case for the astronomers and physicists at the time, for the remainder of his life that the cosmological constant nevertheless applied to the expanding universe, as a dark-matter and dark-energy based cosmological constant, whatever the quantum or cosmological nature of dark matter and dark energy may be. Inevitably, in extrapolating from the telescopically observed actions of dark matter and energy on our universe and its galaxies and galaxy clusters, the galaxies and galaxy clusters are becoming steady-state cosmologically vast enclaves of dynamic, churning, recycling and recyclically transformative galactic mass seemingly forever increasingly separated from one another in a seemingly forever increasingly expanding space-time universe.)
For science fiction writers, if this truly is a one-of-a-kind, one-off, wholly unique galaxy, or one example among a very rare category of galaxy made newly known to our astronomy by its recently highly advanced telescopes, it is grist for a book and movie of an artificial or artificialized galaxy created or purposefully modified by an intellectually super sci-tech species, probably ancient in cosmological terms, but which perhaps is short of being godly in sci-tech intelligence in not having mastered an understanding and the manipulation of dark energy-matter (a tenuous type 3 galactic-scale civilization species, on the Kardashev scale of celestial civilization types, consisting of 5 types, in which successor acolytes of astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev have increased by two additional types of celestial civilization Kardashev’s original conception of three such types.), or, alternatively, which does have such intelligence in having created an artificial galaxy or artificialized a galaxy in which all of its stellar-planetary systems, or solar systems, are inhabited with its species occupying sci-tech engineered heavenly, utopian worlds, environmentally, socially and technologically so, in having indeed mastered a knowledge and the manipulation of dark energy-matter and tweaked or dialed (that is, calibrated) its presence in its artificial or artificialized galaxy perfectly to serve its existential purposes as a species (a firm type 3 or 4 galactic or multigalactic-scale civilization species, on the Kardashev scale of celestial civilization types, consisting of 5 types).
Researchers find a galaxy without dark matter | EarthSky.org
earthsky.org/space/ngc-1052-df2-galaxy-without-dark-matter
Dark Matter News – Science Daily
Mysterious 'ghost' galaxy with no dark matter puzzles ...
Galaxy without any dark matter baffles astronomers | Science ...
www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/28/galaxy...
