Red dots

[Beast]

Recently playing around with galaxies on US2, I have noticed red bodies surrounding galaxies.
As this screenshot shows.



What are these?

[Josh]

My guess is that they're globular clusters, although I could be wrong.

[Chris]

These are dark matter particles used to stabilize the shape of the galaxy.
Eventually visualizing them will be optional and a lot prettier

[Beast]

These are dark matter particles used to stabilize the shape of the galaxy.
Eventually visualizing them will be optional and a lot prettier

Ok cool. Thanks! 

[crashman1390]

These are dark matter particles used to stabilize the shape of the galaxy.
Eventually visualizing them will be optional and a lot prettier

Just asking about your comment, if the dark matter particles is supposed to stabilize the shape of the galaxy, why does the dark matter tear apart the galaxy then?

[Greenleaf]

"stabilize shape" means "make the stars orbit the galaxy center at the observed velocity".
You would expect the stars closest to the center to orbit with a higher angular velocity than those farther out, but this is not exactly what is being observed in reality. The hypothesis is that there is invisible, non colliding, yet gravitating, "dark" matter which skews the mass distribution in such a way that the observed orbit velocities again make sense.


This means that the "dots" can equally well destabilize the simulation, since they are essentially just gravitating bodies... invisible stars.