Dark matter lives.
As early as the 1930’s Zwicky noted that stars alone could not account for the gravitational cohesion of galaxies. Stars rotate about the center of their galaxies too quickly and would fly off into space if the only thing holding them together was the mutual gravitational attraction of the stars. It was hoped that the discovery of black holes would explain the galactic dynamics. The problem is that the rotational rate of galaxies is independent of distance from the core. Pluto takes 248 years to circle the sun, Mercury 88 days. With stars, it’s as if Mercury and Pluto circled the sun at the same rate.
The solution called for matter to be embedded throughout the galaxy to cause gravitational attraction to increase with distance from the core. (Mass goes as distance cubed, surface gravity as distance for a uniformly filled sphere.)
There is evidence that dim stars and planets drifting in interstellar space cannot begin to make up the missing mass. Either the laws of gravity as currently understood are wrong, or there is something out there.
It is *not* the physicists and PhDs who are being narrow minded, or protecting turf, they would love to win the Nobel prize for unraveling this puzzle. It is altogether possible that there exist particles which do not interact with the electro-weak force or the strong force but do interact gravitationally. If so, the only evidence we may ever have of their existence is their effect on galactic an intergalatic dynamics.
I am in no way a physicist or well versed in the sciences.
My father passed a year ago and just today in his huge stack of papers, I came across a paper copy of an article published in 1979 that can now be accessed on-line (”Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe,” http://scilib-physics.narod.ru/Dyson/dyson.pdf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson%27s_eternal_intelligence).
My father was a brilliant man, always reading, studying and learning up to the moment he passed. I’ve been studying the Dyson article when this thread came up.
Talk about timing.
Anyway, too many equations and some very deep philosophical discussions for me to closely follow, though I do experience a glimmer of understanding time-to-time.
I think this is interesting. Perhaps you might as well.
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“Either the laws of gravity as currently understood are wrong, or there is something out there.”
Yes, but that “something” doesn’t necessarily have to be dark matter. Another force affecting the motion of galaxies in addition to gravity would be a much simpler solution than “smart matter” that somehow magically knew where it needed to be in every galaxy in order to make our equations work.