Reference: “Dark Matter Comes and Goes at April Meeting” – American Physical Society APS News. June 2013, Vol 22, #6, Pgs 1 & 7.
This article is a summary regarding Dark Matter at the American Physical Society April 2013 Astrophysical Conference in Denver Colorado. Various earlier reports regarding possible Mysterious Dark Matter detection all fizzled under scrutiny. But they will keep trying (as long as money is available).
Reference: “Gigantic IceCube Tightens Limits on Theories that Predict Dark-Matter Particles” by Schwarzchild, Physics Today, May 2013, pgs 14-16.
Therein several experiments are described which failed to detect Dark Matter Particles/Halos. This is consistent with our publications (below) that reveal Galactic Rotation can be described with Newtonian gravity/dynamics and there is no need to invoke Massive Peripheral Spherical Halos of Mysterious Dark Matter around Rotating Disk Galaxies.
Reference: “Dwarf Galaxies Orbit Andromeda in a Surprisingly Thin Plane,” Physics Today, March 2013, Pgs 12-14.
In the above reference, observations cast doubt on the existence of Massive Peripheral Spherical Halos of Mysterious Dark Matter Around Rotating Disk Galaxies. But the overall evidence is far stronger against this Dark Matter configuration as follows.
(1) For the past ~35 years, all searches by telescopes, satellites, and underground detectors have FAILED to detect any such Dark Matter configurations.
(2) A Massive Hollowish Spherical configuration is gravitationally unstable, an unexplained mystery.
(3) This Mysterious Dark Matter supposedly exerts gravitational forces on the observed ordinary galactic matter in the disk, but apparently does not itself respond to gravitational forces, otherwise it would be pulled down into the rotating disk. Another unexplained mystery.
(4) In the analysis of galactic rotation, some authors assume a spherically symmetric (Keplerian) field, which is NOT appropriate for disk galaxies.
(5) In the analysis of galactic rotation, many authors introduce the Mass-to-Light (M/L) concept.
But this is a very crude approximation at best. Since edge-on observations of disk galaxies reveal a darker edge against a brighter bulge background, it is clear that M/L concepts do not apply to disk galaxies.
(6) To compensate for the inconsistencies encountered with above approaches (3) and (4), other authors unjustifiably assume Dark Matter exists in Spherical Distributions, which leads to the untenable speculation re Massive Peripheral Spherical Halos of Mysterious Dark Matter around Rotating Disk Galaxies. It would be more appropriate to assume that any Dark Matter exists within the disk, and then discover that there is slightly more ordinary matter towards the cooler/darker periphery, consistent with our analyses (references below).
The persistent penchant for cosmologists to speculate re Dark Mysteries is UNscientific, and worsened by unjustified claims of “undeniability” contrary to experiments, observations and experimentally established physics.
But alternative perspectives are available in the literature as follows.
For example, in our approach (references below), we assume Newtonian gravity and dynamics applied to a rotating thin-disk galaxy of finite radial dimensions.
We balance the gravitational and centrifugal forces at each and every point on the rotating disk, and use the galactic rotational data (radially dependent) as input, and solve for the consistent radial mass distribution.
Our radial mass distributions do not differ drastically from the M/L ratio, but we find more mass towards the galactic periphery which is cooler/darker consistent with the darker edge-on observations. And we deduce total galactic masses consistent with star counts, a critical additional confirmation of the validity of our approach and results.
“Modeling the Newtonian Dynamics for Rotation Curve Analysis of Thin-Disk Galaxies,” By Feng and Gallo, Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics 11 (2011) 1429-1448. www.raa-journal.org. http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.3236
“A Thin-Disk Gravitational Model for Galactic Rota