Controversial simulation creates galaxies without using dark matter – Astronomy Magazine
A simulation of galaxies (orange) and gas (blue) in the universe. There are rare pockets of gas left over from the Big Bang that has remained unpolluted by material from exploding stars.
TNG COLLABORATION
Dark matter dogma
Pavel Kroupa, an astrophysicist at the University of Bonn in Germany, is among these standard model critics. According to him, dark matter has become dogma. He cites a handful of real-world properties seen in galaxies that don’t make sense with dark matter. And he also questions many fundamental and widely-accepted aspects of modern cosmology, from the idea that galaxies can merge to whether the Cosmic Microwave Background is really evidence of the Big Bang.
Kroupa has spent the past two decades pushing MOND, an alternative theory of the universe. Scientists who support this model believe that the most puzzling aspects of the cosmos — the ones that led astronomers to discover dark matter and dark energy — can actually be explained with slight modifications to Newton’s laws describing gravity.
But to convince the larger scientific community, contrarians like Kroupa have to show that MOND can actually recreate our universe while also explaining the same mysteries that first led astronomers to embrace the dark side. And until now, computer simulations using MOND have failed to build virtual galaxies that look like the real ones we see today.
So, other scientists skeptical of the standard model see this new study as a potential milestone.
“This is clearly an important study, because MOND was often criticized for not being able to describe galaxy formation in the same successful way as models based on dark matter,” says University of Amsterdam theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde, a prominent dark matter critic who was not involved in the research.
