{"id":143722,"date":"2022-08-07T08:02:19","date_gmt":"2022-08-07T13:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/the-dark-matter-hypothesis-isnt-perfect-but-the-alternatives-are-worse"},"modified":"2022-08-07T08:02:19","modified_gmt":"2022-08-07T13:02:19","slug":"the-dark-matter-hypothesis-isnt-perfect-but-the-alternatives-are-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/the-dark-matter-hypothesis-isnt-perfect-but-the-alternatives-are-worse","title":{"rendered":"The dark matter hypothesis isn\u2019t perfect, but the alternatives are worse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qm0dYbs5Dkc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But the dark matter hypothesis isn\u2019t perfect. Computer simulations of the growth of galaxies suggest that dark-matter-dominated galaxies should have incredibly high densities in their centers. Observations of real galaxies do show higher densities in their cores, but not nearly enough as those simulations predicted. Also, simulations of dark matter evolving in the universe predict that every galaxy should have hundreds of smaller satellites, while observations consistently come up short.<\/p>\n<p>Given that the dark matter hypothesis isn\u2019t perfect \u2014 and that we have no direct evidence for the existence of any candidate particles \u2014 it\u2019s worth exploring other options.<\/p>\n<p>One such option was introduced back in the 1970s alongside the original dark matter idea, when astronomer Vera Rubin first discovered the problem of stars moving too quickly inside galaxies. But instead of adding a new ingredient to the universe, the alternative changes the recipe by altering how gravity works at galactic scales. The original idea is called MOND, for \u201cmodified Newtonian dynamics,\u201d but the name also applies to the general family of theories descended from that original concept.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But the dark matter hypothesis isn\u2019t perfect. Computer simulations of the growth of galaxies suggest that dark-matter-dominated galaxies should have incredibly high densities in their centers. Observations of real galaxies do show higher densities in their cores, but not nearly enough as those simulations predicted. Also, simulations of dark matter evolving in the universe predict [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,33,48,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-cosmology","category-particle-physics","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}