{"id":423706,"date":"2026-01-21T13:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/423706\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T13:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:53:07","slug":"a-failed-starless-galaxy-could-solve-a-dark-matter-mystery-short-wave-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/423706\/","title":{"rendered":"A failed starless galaxy could solve a dark matter mystery : Short Wave : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

\n This image shows the location of Cloud-9, which is 14 million light-years from Earth.<\/p>\n

Science: NASA, ESA, VLA, Gagandeep Anand (STScI), Alejandro Benitez-Llambay (University of Milano-Bicocca); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)\/NASA<\/p>\n

hide caption\n <\/p>\n

toggle caption<\/p>\n

Science: NASA, ESA, VLA, Gagandeep Anand (STScI), Alejandro Benitez-Llambay (University of Milano-Bicocca); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)\/NASA<\/p>\n

Cloud 9 is a failed galaxy. It’s a clump of dark matter, called a dark matter halo, that never formed stars.<\/p>\n

But this failure could be the key to a mystery almost as old as the universe itself: dark matter.<\/p>\n

Scientists don’t know what dark matter is, but Cloud 9 could offer new clues. Three researchers weigh in on this new discovery and why it could be a missing piece to the story on how the universe formed.<\/p>\n

Check out our episode with astrophysicist Jorge Moreno on the mysterious Great Attractor<\/a> and our summer series on space<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Have a scientific question you want us to answer? Email us at shortwave@npr.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org\/shortwave<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify<\/a> and Apple Podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This image shows the location of Cloud-9, which is 14 million light-years from Earth. Science: NASA, ESA, VLA,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[49,48,314,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-423706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-physics","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}