A Thousand Galaxies Discovered In The Coma Cluster... but it's still not enough
In this article linked below I cover a few different papers. At least 300 galaxies have been recently discovered in the Coma cluster which are about as large as the Milky Way, but a thousand times fainter. Hundreds more smaller galaxies have also been found there, and also in the closer Virgo cluster by another team. Hooray, more galaxies ? Everyone loves galaxies, right ?
Well, sort-of. Galaxies are definitely, objectively awesome. But cosmological models predict far more galaxies than we actually observe. The new discoveries are spectacular in that they uncover a huge population of what were unusually large, faint objects, which probably need a lot of dark matter just to survive being torn apart inside the clusters. On the other hand, the numbers of smaller galaxies being found is just nowhere near enough to save the models.
Could it be that those models are just plain wrong ? Sure. But right now, there are so many difficulties in the details of establishing exactly what the models predict, it's probably premature to throw them out just yet. The only safe conclusion is that for now, we don't really understand what's going on.
... with guest appearances by the Doctor, Godzilla, and Gimli the dwarf...
Placeholder post intended to be replaced with a better summary.
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