Possible Error
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by
Jordan.Botta
I don't see any galaxy in this photo. Either it is a glitch, or something interesting is going on.
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by
JeanTate
in response to Jordan.Botta's comment.
Welcome to Galaxy Zoo, Jordan.Botta!
This is an Illustris sim (more about the Illustris project in this recent GZ blog post). There are several, possibly many, "blank Illustris" fields, and so far no member of the Science Team has explained what these are (at least, not that I know of, in a post in a Discussion thread here in GZ Talk). It may be, as you say, a glitch; however, I think the most exciting possibility is that it's a 'dark matter galaxy'. In the best theory of the universe we have (as of now), some clumps of dark matter ('halos' is the technical word; very misleading IMHO) somehow have insufficient ordinary matter (hydrogen, helium) to be able to form stars and galaxies, so they're invisible. Or, perhaps, they once did have stars and gas, but somehow it got removed. Such dark matter galaxies seem quite rare in the local universe - only one or two candidates have been found - but simulations like Illustris may help explain why, or perhaps suggest that there are many more than have been found so far. Just one reason why Illustris is such a cool project! 😄
Hope this helps, and happy hunting! 😃
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