Researchers from the University of Western Australia have created a new way to measure dark matter in Milky Way, and it reveals there is only half as much of the mysterious substance as previously thought.

Prajval Kafle, an astrophysicist involved in the study, said that there are still areas of the Universe that remains hidden.

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He explained that earth, stars and dust only make up four percent of the entire universe and about 25 percent of those where dark matter. The rest is dark energy.

For this study, astronomers used a method developed 100 years ago that calculates the weight of the dark matter in Milky Way.

However, they added the fringes of the galaxy that are about 5 billion kilometers from Earth to have a more accurate computation.

Aside from this, the new measurement also used the speed of stars spread throughout the galaxy, which did not have any previous research.

The technique that Kafle used was developed by James Jeans in 1915, decades before dark matter was even discovered.

He explained that the current idea used for galaxy formation and evolution is called the Lambda Cold Dark Matter Theory.

This theory can predict satellite galaxies that can be found in the Milky Way and are visible to the naked eye.

When they used this measurement, they found out that there were only three satellite galaxies in the Universe which are Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud and Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy.

Large Magellanic Clouds is a nearby galaxy of Milky Way and also considered as the fourth largest galaxy in the local group of galaxies that can be found on Milky Way.

Small Magellanic Clouds is one of the most distant objects that can be seen using the naked eye because it is only 200,000 light years from the Milky Way.

Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy is only 70,000 light years away from Earth and is currently travelling in a polar orbit that is 50,000 light years away from the Milky Way core.

Researchers believe that their study gave a holistic model of the Milky Way Galaxy which allowed them to measure the speed required to leave the galaxy.