Comment by burnerRhodov2

In this context, “dark object” really does mean a localized blob of dark matter, not a black hole or a dim, normal-matter object.

The research team detected it only through its gravitational lensing effect — the way it slightly distorted the light from a more distant galaxy. There’s no emission at any wavelength (optical, infrared, or radio), and its gravitational signature matches a million-solar-mass clump of invisible mass rather than a compact point source like a black hole.

They specifically interpret it as a dark matter subhalo — one of the small, dense lumps that simulations of “cold dark matter” predict should pepper the universe’s larger halos. It’s too massive to be a single star, far too diffuse to be a stellar remnant, and not luminous enough to be a faint galaxy.

So “dark” here isn’t just shorthand for “too dim to see at this distance” — it’s used in the literal physical sense: matter that doesn’t emit or absorb light at all, detectable only via gravity.

Eventually, all the dark matter clumps into rings around galaxies, but since this one is so distant, ~10B light years, so we are seeing that clump as it was that long ago before it difused into it's ring shape we can see in the galaxies around us.