MOST of the small satellite galaxies around the Andromeda galaxy are lined up in a single plane that slices through its spiral disc, an alignment that suggests the satellites are floating on a river of dark matter.
Seeing regularities in the midst of a huge number of other possibilities is, really, suggestive of something other than chance. Seems like scientists do it all the time. In fact, it appears easy to do. Keep reading.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, Eva Grebel of the University of Basel in Binningen, Switzerland, and her colleagues found that nine of Andromeda’s 14 satellite galaxies lie in a relatively thin plane about 52,000 light years wide.
“It’s unlikely such a plane would arise by chance,” Grebel says, who presented the results at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington DC. The satellites in the plane also have similar characteristics – most are faint, low in mass, and no longer form stars.
According to Grebel, one of the more intriguing explanations for this observation is that the galaxies may have fallen towards Andromeda along an invisible filament of dark matter. Computer simulations have shown that such filaments can form a cosmic “web” along which galaxies flow, and maps of the universe’s large-scale structure reveal thousands of galaxies lining up along intersecting streams. “One question is, could we see such filaments in our immediate surroundings?” says Grebel.
Two other articles on the subject of dark matter, gravity, relativity, etc:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module6_Planck.htm
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn8631&feedId=online-news_rss20
Gravity theory dispenses with dark matter
New Scientist 11:01 25 January 2006
A modified theory of gravity that incorporates quantum effects can explain a trio of puzzling astronomical observations – including the wayward motion of the Pioneer spacecraft in our solar system, new studies claim.
The work appears to rule out the need to invoke dark matter or another alternative gravity theory called MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics). But other experts caution it has yet to pass the most crucial test – how to account for the afterglow of the big bang.
Astronomers realised in the 1970s that the gravity of visible matter alone was not enough to prevent the fast-moving stars and gas in spiral galaxies from flying out into space. They attributed the extra pull to a mysterious substance called dark matter, which is now thought to outweigh normal matter in the universe by 6 to 1.
But researchers still do not know what dark matter actually is, and some have come up with new theories of gravity to explain the galaxy observations. MOND, for example, holds that there are two forms of gravity.
Above a certain acceleration, called a0, objects move according to the conventional form of gravity, whose effects weaken as two bodies move further apart in proportion to the square of distance. But below a0, objects are controlled by another type of gravity that fades more slowly, decreasing linearly with distance.
But critics point out that MOND cannot explain the observed masses of clusters of galaxies without invoking dark matter, in the form of almost massless, known particles called neutrinos.
Quantum fluctuationsNow, Joel Brownstein and John Moffat, researchers at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, say another modified gravity theory can account for both galaxies and galaxy clusters.
The theory, called scalar-tensor-vector gravity (STVG), adds quantum effects to Einstein’s theory of general relativity. As in other branches of physics, the theory says that quantum fluctuations can affect the force felt between interacting objects.
In this case, a hypothetical particle called a graviton – which mediates gravity – appears in large numbers out of the vacuum of space in regions crowded with massive objects such as stars. “It’s as if gravity is stronger” near the centres of galaxies, Brownstein told New Scientist. “Then, at a certain distance, the stars become sparse, and the gravitons don’t contribute that much.” So at larger distances, gravity returns to the behaviour described by Newton.
Pioneer 10 anomalyBrownstein and Moffat tested the theory in several ways. They estimated that their gravitational change occurs 46,000 light years out from the centre of a large galaxy and half that distance for a small galaxy. They applied these estimates to 101 observed galaxies, and found that both their theory and MOND could account for their rotations. “The point is that neither of the two theories had any dark matter in them,” says Brownstein.
But the theories did diverge when the pair tested them against observations of 106 galaxy clusters. MOND could not reproduce the observed cluster masses but STVG accounted for more than half.
Furthermore, the team tested the theory against observations of NASA’s 34-year-old Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which appears about 400,000 kilometres away from its expected location in the outer solar system. Brownstein says the theory fits observations of the so-called Pioneer anomaly (see New Scientist feature, 13 things that do not make sense), while MOND cannot address it because Pioneer’s acceleration is above a0.
Big bang’s afterglow“At three different distance scales, we see answers that agree with experiment,” says Brownstein. “They are claiming they can solve all the world’s problems,” agrees Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, US. But these experiments are “not what most cosmologists would first think of if they were going to test a new theory of gravity”.
He says any theory must also explain the development of large-scale structures in the universe, and most importantly, the afterglow of the big bang. Called the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, this afterglow was produced about 370,000 years after the big bang when the first atoms formed and has been studied in great detail by satellites, such as NASA’s WMAP probe.
“The dark matter model is not perfect, but it made a very specific prediction for the microwave background that seems to be coming true, and it fits galaxies and clusters and large-scale structure and gravitational lensing,” Carroll told New Scientist. “Nobody would be happier than me if it turned out to be modified gravity rather than dark matter, but it’s becoming harder and harder to go along with that possibility.”
Brownstein says the team is currently testing its theories with work on CMB studies.
Sorry about editing your post, PaV, but I figured it was better than creating an entirely new one and dividing the conversation.
–Patrick