Dark Matter–Dominated Galaxies in the Early Universe
Small galaxies in the early universe might have had centers dominated by dark matter. New research dives into cosmological simulations to explore what these galaxies would look like in theuniverse today and what this might mean for the Milky Way’s dark matter past. Dark Matter History of Small Galaxies Recently, a research team led by Anna de Graaff (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy) used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to examine six small, low-mass galaxies in the early universe. They discovered something surprising: the centers of these galaxies appeared to be dominated by dark matter, a hypothetical form of matter that neither emits nor absorbs light, among other strange qualities. Though dark matter is thought to make up roughly 85% of the matter in our universe, research shows that the cores of massive galaxies in the universe today contain mostly normal matter.To check whether the intriguing new JWST observations match our theoretical understanding of the univer