Astrophysical ambulance-chasers everywhere got a bit excited this week, and why wouldn’t they? Here are some of the headlines we read:
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Dark matter theory challenged by gassy galaxies result (BBC)
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More Evidence Against Dark Matter? (Science NOW)
Wow. More evidence against dark matter? I didn’t know about the original evidence.
Sadly (and I mean that — see below) there is no evidence against dark matter here. These items were sparked by a paper and a press release from Maryland astronomer Stacy McGaugh, with the rather more modest titles “A Novel Test of the Modified Newtonian Dynamics with Gas Rich Galaxies” and “Gas rich galaxies confirm prediction of modified gravity theory,” respectively.
This dark matter debate will continue until the Large Hadron Collider and other efforts to detect dark matter simply peter out from lack of physical evidence. To read the rest of the article, click here.