SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 16 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The magazine ‘Nature Astronomy’ publishes today Monday, in its collection of publications and reviews dedicated to dwarf galaxies, a new article written by Giuseppina Battaglia, researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) and the University of La Laguna, and Carlo Nipoti, a researcher at the University of Bologna. The study describes the latest results on the search for dark matter in dwarf Local Group galaxies.
Dark matter in dwarf galaxies is the subject of the review article published today by the journal ‘Nature Astronomy’ in its collection of publications and reviews that, since December 2021, has been dedicated to the smallest galaxies, both in mass and in size of our universe. Dwarf galaxies are the most numerous and the first to form, so they are considered key laboratories for testing a large number of open questions in astrophysics, including the existence and properties of dark matter.
For several decades, the study of the dynamics of galaxies has led scientists to formulate the hypothesis that only a very small percentage of their mass is made up of luminous or conventional matter and that the majority is made up of dark matter that does not exist. does not emit or absorb electromagnetic radiation and the nature of which is still unknown. In particular, in dwarf galaxies, the mass of the dark matter can be tens to thousands of times that of the luminous matter.
The article published today analyzes the movements of stars in the dwarf galaxies that inhabit the Local Group, our galactic “neighborhood”, and describes the use of these movements to infer the amount of dark matter in these galaxies and how it is distributed.
“Given their proximity to us, the dwarf galaxies of the Local Group are one of the best systems to search for indirect signs of the presence of dark matter by annihilation or disintegration”, explains Giuseppina Battaglia. “But determining the properties of dark matter halos in dwarf galaxies is not only important for investigating the nature of this mysterious matter, but also for advancing our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution,” she notes.
“Importantly, according to the standard cosmological model, galaxies form bottom-up, that is, small galaxies form first, while large ones are formed by a combination of smaller galaxies merging with each other and the accretion of matter”, highlights Carlo Nipoti. “In other words, dwarf galaxies would be the ‘bricks’ with which other cosmic structures are built,” he concludes.
