{"id":229979,"date":"2026-01-28T06:05:43","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T12:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/milky-way-is-embedded-in-a-large-scale-sheet-of-dark-matter-which-explains-motions-of-nearby-galaxies"},"modified":"2026-01-28T06:05:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T12:05:43","slug":"milky-way-is-embedded-in-a-large-scale-sheet-of-dark-matter-which-explains-motions-of-nearby-galaxies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/milky-way-is-embedded-in-a-large-scale-sheet-of-dark-matter-which-explains-motions-of-nearby-galaxies","title":{"rendered":"Milky Way is embedded in a \u2018large-scale sheet\u2019 of dark matter, which explains motions of nearby galaxies"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Computer simulations carried out by astronomers from the University of Groningen in collaboration with researchers from Germany, France and Sweden show that most of the (dark) matter beyond the Local Group of galaxies (which includes the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy) must be organized in an extended plane. Above and below this plane are large voids. The observed motions of nearby galaxies and the joint masses of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy can only be properly explained with this \u201cflat\u201d mass distribution. The research, led by Ph.D. graduate Ewoud Wempe and Professor Amina Helmi, is published<\/a> in Nature Astronomy.<\/p>\n

Almost a century ago, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that virtually all galaxies are moving away from the Milky Way. This is important evidence for the expansion of the universe and for the Big Bang. But even in Hubble\u2019s time, it was clear that there were exceptions. For example, our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, is moving toward us at a speed of about 100 kilometers per second.<\/p>\n

In fact, for half a century, astronomers have been wondering why most large nearby galaxies\u2014with the exception of Andromeda\u2014are moving away from us and do not seem to be affected by the mass and gravity of the so-called Local Group (the Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy and dozens of smaller galaxies).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Computer simulations carried out by astronomers from the University of Groningen in collaboration with researchers from Germany, France and Sweden show that most of the (dark) matter beyond the Local Group of galaxies (which includes the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy) must be organized in an extended plane. Above and below this plane are [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-cosmology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}