Researchers have found an unusual star, nicknamed Mothra, which is exceptionally large, bright, and peculiar. Its characteristics suggest a possible connection to dark matter in the sky.
Strange Kaiju Star 'Mothra' That Seems Bizarrely Bright Points to Dark Matter Clues in the Sky
Mothra's Striking Brightness Reveals Presence of Dark Matter
Mothra's striking brightness, despite being 10.4 billion light-years away, classifies it as one of the rare "kaiju" stars, which are distant monster stars with remarkably high apparent brightness. Science Alert reported that the discovery, led by astrophysicist José Diego, may provide valuable insights into dark matter and its properties.
Another star in this category, named Godzilla, surpasses Mothra in brightness and holds the title of the most luminous known star. Both stars, despite their differences, exhibit intriguing similarities that hint at the presence of massive dark matter clumps between them and us.
The research team led by José Diego, which discovered Mothra and Godzilla, believes that these stars could serve as probes to study dark matter and impose constraints on its properties, potentially leading to a better understanding of this enigmatic substance.
Mothra, officially known as EMO J041608.8-240358, was spotted using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. The space telescope's capabilities, combined with gravitational lensing, enabled us to view individual stars in a distant galaxy-a feat that would typically be challenging due to the vast distances involved.
Both Mothra and Godzilla reside in regions of space influenced by the gravitational lensing effect caused by galaxy clusters. This lensing magnifies their brightness, allowing us to observe them in greater detail than their distances would typically permit.
Mothra Could Be a Dwarf Star
Researchers examined data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to analyze a newly discovered star named Mothra, Science Alert reported. Combining the data, they determined that Mothra is likely a binary star system composed of a cool, dim red star and a hot, bright blue star.
However, the intriguing aspect is the significant magnification of Mothra, beyond what the galaxy cluster alone could account for. The team hypothesizes that an unseen object, possibly a dwarf galaxy predominantly composed of dark matter, is responsible for this additional magnification.
The potential detection of dark matter blobs like Godzilla and Mothra suggests that they might be relatively common in the Universe, and gravitational lensing could aid in their discovery. The existence of such a "millilens" aligns with the expectations of the standard cold dark matter model, but it has implications for other dark matter theories, excluding certain possibilities.
This finding could offer valuable insights into dark matter properties, and future discoveries of similar stars, known as kaiju stars, may further narrow down the characteristics of dark matter.
They published the results of the study, titled "JWST's PEARLS: Mothra, a new kaiju star at z=2.091 extremely magnified by MACS0416, and implications for dark matter models," in the preprint server arXiv.
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