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Dark matter passes another test to confirm its existence
- xt00 6y agoAfter reading the paper it looks like they are saying that even smaller galaxies that they observed appear to follow a relationship that appears to be fairly general for describing the distribution of stars and mass in various galaxy types. A previous paper they mentioned had found a similar relationship but did not extend well down to lower mass galaxies. So these folks created a more general model they are saying. Net result is that the new model affirms that dark matter plays a major role in describing the location and accelerations of the stars in galaxies. It sounds like they are aiming to target smaller galaxies because there is a greater chance that they can more fully understand all of the parts in the galaxy so their are less places for the dark matter to “hide” in the models they build up.
- riggsdk 6y ago(Not a physicist and I can’t comprehend the paper). It seems to me they are trying to mostly explain how some galaxies can rotate the way they do (inside part spinning about as fast as the outside) which in their eyes only makes sense if some strong mass keeps it together. To a layman like me it looks more like there is no dark matter but some galaxies are on a “lazy Susan” like part of space - caught in a whirl or eddy in space time where (local to the galaxy) it doesn’t really spin that fast. It is instead everything else on the sky that spins faster than it should from their point of view. I hope to learn enough physics sometime so I can shed my childish simplistic views of the universe.