A new research has revealed there could be at least 100 other galaxies surrounding the Milky Way though they are invisible
A new research has revealed there could be at least 100 other galaxies surrounding the Milky Way though they are invisible.
The Milky Way is the spiral galaxy that includes the Solar System. From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a faint, milky band of light stretching across the night sky.
“Orphan Galaxies”
The cosmologists at Durham University in England, who used an advanced technique that combines the world’s highest-resolution supercomputer simulations with detailed mathematical modeling, revealed clues pointing to the existence of numerous unseen satellite galaxies closely surrounding our own.
The findings were presented at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in Durham Friday July 18, 2025.
These dwarf galaxies have been dubbed “orphan” galaxies.
“If confirmed, this discovery could reshape our understanding of the Milky Way’s structure and the number of galaxies in its immediate vicinity”, the cosmologists said.
Why these galaxies are invisible?
The 100 other galaxies that the researchers have revealed exist in our vicinity are not visible. The reason for this is, the researchers say, they have remained hidden due to their low brightness and are too faint to be detected by current instruments.
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, according to Space.com.
“We know the Milky Way has some 60 confirmed companion satellite galaxies, but we think there should be dozens more of these faint galaxies orbiting around the Milky Way at close distances,” Isabel Santos-Santos, study team leader and a researcher at Durham University, said in a statement.
“If our predictions are right, it adds more weight to the LCDM theory of the formation and evolution of structure in the universe”, she added.
According to the LCDM theory, galaxies form at the centres of massive clumps of dark matter known as halos. It also proposes that just 5% of the Universe is made up of ordinary matter, 25% is cold dark matter, and 70% is dark energy.
Most galaxies in the universe are low-mass dwarf galaxies that orbit larger ones like the Milky Way, astronomers said.
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