{"id":3879,"date":"2026-01-07T12:04:59","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T12:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/07\/nasa-discovers-never-before-seen-cloud-9\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T12:05:02","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T12:05:02","slug":"nasa-discovers-never-before-seen-cloud-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/07\/nasa-discovers-never-before-seen-cloud-9\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA discovers never-before-seen &#039;Cloud 9&#039;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>2026-01-07 12:04:59<\/b><br \/>\n<BR>Scientists have confirmed the existence of &#8220;Cloud-9&#8221;.<BR><br \/>\nUsing the NASA \/ European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope, researchers have identified a completely new type of cosmic object: a starless, gas-rich cloud dominated by dark matter, nicknamed Cloud-9, and it is the first time anything like it has ever been confirmed.<BR><br \/>\nScientists describe Cloud-9 as a relic of the early Universe &#8211; essentially a primordial building block of a galaxy that never formed stars. <BR><br \/>\nIt\u2019s officially known as a Reionization-Limited H I Cloud, or RELHIC, with \u201cH I\u201d referring to neutral hydrogen.<BR><br \/>\n\u201cThis is a tale of a failed galaxy,\u201d explained principal investigator Alejandro Benitez-Llambay.<BR><br \/>\n\u201cIn science, we usually learn more from failures than successes. Seeing no stars is what proves the theory right.\u201d<BR><br \/>\nMost of the Universe\u2019s mass is thought to be dark matter, but it doesn\u2019t emit light, making it notoriously difficult to study. <BR><br \/>\n\u201cThis cloud is a window into the dark Universe,\u201d said Andrew Fox of AURA\/STScI.<BR><br \/>\n\u201cCloud-9 gives us a rare look at a dark-matter-dominated cloud.\u201d<BR><br \/>\nThe object\u2019s core is made of neutral hydrogen and measures about 4,900 light-years across. <BR><br \/>\nThe gas alone weighs around one million times the mass of the Sun &#8211; but calculations suggest the entire structure is dominated by dark matter, tipping the scales at a staggering five billion solar masses.<BR><br \/>\n\u201cGround-based telescopes didn\u2019t go deep enough,\u201d explained lead author Gagandeep Anand.<BR><br \/>\n\u201cBut with Hubble\u2019s Advanced Camera for Surveys, we were able to nail down that there\u2019s nothing there.\u201d<BR><br \/>\nCloud-9 sits on the outskirts of the nearby spiral galaxy Messier 94, and appears to be physically associated with it. High-resolution radio data even hints at slight distortions in the gas, suggesting a subtle gravitational interaction.<BR><br \/>\n\u201cAmong our galactic neighbours, there might be a few abandoned houses out there,\u201d joked researcher Rachael Beaton.<BR><br \/>\nCompared to other hydrogen clouds near the Milky Way &#8211; which are usually massive, messy, and irregular &#8211; Cloud-9 is small, compact, and almost perfectly spherical, making it stand out as something truly unusual.<BR><br \/>\nThe mysterious cloud was first spotted three years ago during a radio survey by China\u2019s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, with follow-up observations from the Green Bank Telescope and the Very Large Array in the US.<BR><br \/>\nBut it wasn\u2019t until Hubble took a look that scientists could say with confidence: this galaxy never formed stars.<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Visit Bang Bizarre (main website) <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><script src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player\/xtbac.js\" data-video=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2026-01-07 12:04:59 Scientists have confirmed the existence of &#8220;Cloud-9&#8221;. Using the NASA \/ European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope, researchers have identified a completely new type of cosmic object: a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bizarre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3881,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3879\/revisions\/3881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}