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It’s time for some plane speaking

Nature Astronomy volume 5, pages 1185–1187 (2021)Cite this article

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The Milky Way, Andromeda and Centaurus A host flattened arrangements of satellite dwarf galaxies with correlated kinematics. The rarity of similar structures in cosmological simulations constitutes a major problem for the ΛCDM model, with no obvious solution in sight.

It is common that texts like this start by stating that the Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM, where Λ is the cosmological constant) model of cosmology has been formidably successful. Indeed, it has been the centre of research attention for the majority of cosmologists and the backbone of most cosmological simulations. It is simple in its assumed dark ingredients and their physics, and flexible in being able to account for individual observations of galaxies and their dynamics a posteriori. Yet, there are some nagging problems, disagreements with observations on the scales of galaxies, termed ‘small-scale’ problems in the slightly megalomaniac parlance of astrophysicists. Among these, the so-called planes of satellite galaxies problem is one of the most stubborn.

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Fig. 1: Planes of satellite galaxies are best studied for three nearby systems.
Fig. 2: Measurement uncertainties decrease the degree of measured correlation, with the consequence of artificially inflating the frequency of similarly extreme analogues in simulations.

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Acknowledgements

I thank B. Famaey, G. Lewis, F. Lelli, S. McGaugh and O. Müller for helpful comments. This work was supported by Leibniz-Junior Research Group grant J94/2020 via the Leibniz Competition, and a Klaus Tschira Boost Fund provided by the Klaus Tschira Stiftung and the German Scholars Organization.

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  1. Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), Potsdam, Germany

    Marcel S. Pawlowski

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Pawlowski, M.S. It’s time for some plane speaking. Nat Astron 5, 1185–1187 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01452-7

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