- #1
Buzz Bloom
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I just came across an August 2012 article that suggests possible first evidence for a disk of dark matter.
Here are some quotes.
Over this past year I have been reading several PF threads about dark matter that explain why there should not be any dark matter disks. The argument is that dark matter does not have any known mechanism for converting its gravitational orbital energy into an energy form that dissipates the orbital energy. This is unlike ordinary matter converting some of its orbital energy into EM radiation, which is the mechanism for forming disk-like galaxys.
Does anyone know if over the past 5 years there has been any new publications about dark matter disks.
Here are some quotes.
Astronomers at the University of Zürich, the ETH Zurich, the University of Leicester and NAOC Beijing have found large amounts of invisible "dark matter" near the Sun. Their results are consistent with the theory that the Milky Way Galaxy is surrounded by a massive "halo" of dark matter, but this is the first study of its kind to use a method rigorously tested against mock data from high quality simulations. The authors also find tantalising hints of a new dark matter component in our Galaxy. The team's results will be published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Lead author Silvia Garbari says: "We are 99% confident that there is dark matter near the Sun. In fact, our favoured dark matter density is a little high. There is a 10% chance that this is merely a statistical fluke. But with 90% confidence, we find more dark matter than expected. If future data confirms this high value, the implications are exciting. It could be the first evidence for a "disc" of dark matter in our Galaxy, as recently predicted by theory and numerical simulations of galaxy formation. Or it could be that the dark matter halo of our Galaxy is squashed, boosting the local dark matter density."
Over this past year I have been reading several PF threads about dark matter that explain why there should not be any dark matter disks. The argument is that dark matter does not have any known mechanism for converting its gravitational orbital energy into an energy form that dissipates the orbital energy. This is unlike ordinary matter converting some of its orbital energy into EM radiation, which is the mechanism for forming disk-like galaxys.
Does anyone know if over the past 5 years there has been any new publications about dark matter disks.