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Space

Largest stream of stars ever found could teach us about dark matter

The newfound Giant Coma Stream of stars stretches nearly 1.7 million light years across the cosmos, and it could have holes blasted through it by clumps of dark matter

By Leah Crane

2 December 2023

The black streak is the newly discovered Giant Coma Stream, which is ten times as long as the Milky Way

The black streak is the newly discovered Giant Coma Stream, which is ten times as long as the Milky Way

William Herschel Telescope/Román et al.

Astronomers have found the biggest stream of stars ever recorded. This tendril of stars is extraordinarily faint, but it and others like it could eventually help us unveil the true nature of dark matter.

The stream of stars, called the Giant Coma Stream, appears to float unmoored from any particular galaxy in the Coma galaxy cluster, about 300 million light years away from Earth. Javier Román at the University…

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