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SUN, 18 OCT · 101 ITEMS
"Lone, starless cloud may be a 'dark' galaxy" — Phys.org · Science & Medicine
Astronomers using China's radio telescope have discovered a compact cloud of hydrogen gas with no detectable stars, making it a strong candidate for a '' — a dark-matter-dominated structure that either lacks the gas to form stars or has stars too faint to see. Likely reported in a paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics, this object, designated Cloud N or a twin candidate near galaxy , is only the second such starless gas cloud found, after 'Cloud-9' discovered in 2025.
The claim rests on observational data from the FAST telescope, published in a peer-reviewed paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A). The Phys.org article is a secondary summary of that paper, but the detection of the gas cloud and its properties are direct observational results, so the core claim is solid; the interpretation as a dark galaxy is a well-supported hypothesis.
Genuinely new — the paper appears in the August 2026 issue of A&A, and the Phys.org article was published on October 17, 2026.