Astronomers spot dark matter creating eerie clones of a distant galaxy
By Ben Turner about 3 hours ago
The cosmic triplets were formed by the warping of light around a gigantic, unknown mass.
The images can be seen here as two, closely-mirrored galaxies in the center of the picture, and a third image higher up. (Image credit: Joseph DePasquale)
Astronomers have finally explained three perfectly identical galaxies in the deepest recesses of space — the cosmic triplets are actually just one galaxy, but its image has been multiplied by dark matter.
The galactic doppelgangers were discovered by accident in 2013 by the astronomer Timothy Hamilton of Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio. While analyzing data from the Hubble Space Telescope, Hamilton found two identical galaxies, one the mirror-image of the other, sitting right next to each other in space.
Not only did the two images have the same shape, with both having the same star-flecked galactic centers, but they were also streaked with the same dark, parallel lines. The mystery only deepened when Hamilton spotted a third galaxy — not far above them — that was identical to the other two galaxies.
"We were really stumped," Hamilton said in a statement. "My first thought was that maybe they were interacting galaxies with tidally stretched-out arms. It didn't really fit well, but I didn't know what else to think."
More:
https://www.livescience.com/dark-matter-causing-galaxy-clones
