Durham Research Predicts 80–100 Undetected Milky Way Satellite Galaxies

Cosmologists at Durham University have predicted that the Milky Way could host between 80 and 100 more satellite galaxies than the roughly 60 currently known. Using a novel technique that combines high-resolution supercomputer simulations with advanced mathematical modeling, the researchers identified these missing galaxies as extremely faint “orphan” satellites stripped almost entirely of their parent dark matter halos by the Milky Way's gravity. These faint galaxies have been overlooked in most simulations but are expected to exist in reality, and their discovery would strongly support the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model, which explains the large-scale structure of the universe and galaxy formation. The research highlights that ordinary matter makes up only 5% of the universe’s content, with 25% as cold dark matter and 70% as dark energy, and suggests that detecting these satellites could provide significant insights into the nature of dark matter. Advances in telescopes and instruments, such as the Rubin Observatory LSST camera, are expected to enable astronomers to observe these faint satellites within the next five years. The findings will be presented at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting at Durham University.