What's behind mysterious holes in Milky Way? Researcher blames it on dark matter

Milky Way collision
The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51a) and companion galaxy (M51b). This Hubble Space Telescope image represents a merger between two galaxies similar in mass to the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud. NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA

Scientists have confirmed that a mysterious force has inflicted 'bullet-like' holes in parts of Milky Way. A research report presented to the American Physical Society last month revealed that a string of holes has formed in a long stream of stars called GD-1 which suggests that something mysterious and unknown has blasted its way through.

The discovery was made by Ana Bonaca, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian University, and the researcher believes that this cosmic crime might have committed by invisible dark matter, Futurism reports.

In a recent interaction with Live Science, Bonaca revealed that the real culprit of this celestial shooting might have escaped, and scientists are not able to precisely map the impactor.

"We can't map the impactor to any luminous object that we have observed. It's much more massive than a star... Something like a million times the mass of the sun. So there are just no stars of that mass. We can rule that out. And if it were a black hole, it would be a supermassive black hole of the kind we find at the center of our own galaxy," Bonaca told Live Science.

Bonaca believes that the most likely culprit could be a ball of dark matter, as no such supermassive black holes were discovered in the Milky Way as of now.

A few months back, researchers had revealed that an incredibly fast dark matter hurricane is going to slam into the earth as it moves through the Milky Way. Initial analysis suggested that this dark matter hurricane is traveling at a speed of 500 kilometers per second. Experts also revealed that this collision could be one of the most turbulent space events ever witnessed in the Milky Way.

It is still not clear whether this dark matter hurricane has something to do with the holes inflicted in the Milky Way.

Related topics : Milky way
READ MORE