Posts Tagged ‘Scott Tremaine’
Don’t Sweep Dark Matter Under the Rug!
Ever since astrophysicists discovered a discrepancy between the mass of the observed matter in galaxies and gravitational effects that gave them structure and hypothesized the existence of dark matter, some spoil-sports have tried to insist that dark matter doesn’t exist at all. Numerous theories have tried to hide dark matter – including attempts to modify gravitational theory itself. The latest blow against dark matter came from a team of astronomers who simply measured stars in the Milky Way and concluded that their motion could be entirely explained by visible mass – that there was no need for dark matter.
Galaxy Cluster Abell 1689 (Credit: NASA/ESA)
Why are people so hostile to the idea of dark matter? Well, maybe it’s because it compromises more than eighty percent of the matter in the universe (it has to, in order to have the gravitational effect that it does), yet we can’t see it and don’t know anything about it. It’s an elephant in every room and we can’t even see it there. That sort of thing tends to frustrate people – especially people who like to think that they already know everything about the universe.