Dark matter makes a comeback
Astronomers with the European Southern Observatory announced in April a surprising lack of dark matter in the galaxy within the vicinity of our solar system.
The ESO team, led by Christian Moni Bidin of the Universidad de Concepción in Chile, mapped over 400 stars near our Sun, spanning a region approximately 13,000 light-years in radius. Their report identified a quantity of material that matched what could be directly observed: stars, gas, and dust… but no dark matter.
“Our calculations show that it should have shown up very clearly in our measurements,” Bidin had stated, “but it was just not there!”
But other scientists were not so sure about some assumptions the ESO team had based their calculations upon.
Researchers Jo Bovy and Scott Tremaine from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, have submitted a paper claiming that the results reported by Moni Biden et al are “incorrect”, and based on an “invalid assumption” of the motions of stars within — and above — the plane of the galaxy.
