A non-Standard model
Called NGC 1052-DF2, this ‘ghostly’ galaxy seems to contain at most 1/400th of the amount of dark matter that astronomers had expected. It is as large as the Milky Way, but contains only 1/200th the number of stars. Photo courtesy NASA, ESA, and P van Dokkum (Yale University)
Called NGC 1052-DF2, this ‘ghostly’ galaxy seems to contain at most 1/400th of the amount of dark matter that astronomers had expected. It is as large as the Milky Way, but contains only 1/200th the number of stars. Photo courtesy NASA, ESA, and P van Dokkum (Yale University)
is a former professor of physics at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. His books include Dynamics and Evolution of Galactic Nuclei (2013) and A Philosophical Approach to MOND (2020).
The standard theory of cosmology is called the Lambda cold dark matter (Λ CDM) model. As that name suggests, the theory postulates the existence of dark matter – a mysterious substance that (according to the theorists) comprises the bulk of the matter in the Universe. It is widely embraced. Every cosmologist working today was educated in the Standard Model tradition, and virtually all of them take the existence of dark matter for granted. In the words of the Nobel Prize winner P J E Peebles: ‘The evidence for the dark matter of the hot Big Bang cosmology is about as good as it gets in natural science.’
