Can Effects of Dark Matter be Explained by the Turbulent Flow of
  Spacetime?
  For the past forty years the search for dark matter has been one of the
primary foci of astrophysics, although there has yet to be any direct evidence
for its existence (Porter et al. 2011). Indirect evidence for the existence of
dark matter is largely rooted in the rotational speeds of stars within their
host galaxies, where, instead of having a ~ r^1/2 radial dependence, stars
appear to have orbital speeds independent of their distance from the galactic
center, which led to proposed existence of dark matter (Porter et al. 2011;
Peebles 1993). We propose an alternate explanation for the observed stellar
motions within galaxies, combining the standard treatment of a fluid-like
spacetime with the possibility of a "bulk flow" of mass through the Universe.
The differential "flow" of spacetime could generate vorticies capable of
providing the "perceived" rotational speeds in excess of those predicted by
Newtonian mechanics. Although a more detailed analysis of our theory is
forthcoming, we find a crude "order of magnitude" calculation can explain this
phenomena. We also find that this can be used to explain the graviational
lensing observed around globular clusters like "Bullet Cluster".
