Small scales, big issues for cold dark matter

Details Small scales, big issues for cold dark matter Small scales, big issues for cold dark matter

Oct 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005aabb.book...59b&link_type=abstract

In: Advances in astronomy. Editor: J. M. T. Thompson. Royal Society Series on Advances in Science, Vol. 1. London: Imperial Coll

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Cosmology, Cold Dark Matter

Scientific paper

One of the theoretical cornerstones of modern cosmology is the concept of cold dark matter. This theory supposes that almost 90% of the mass in the Universe is made up of some unknown, invisible (hence "dark") particle which interacts with the rest of the Universe only through gravity and which is cold in the sense that the particles move slowly (like molecules in a cold gas). One of the grand achievements of observational cosmology in recent years has been to uncover strong evidence in favour of this idea, through means as diverse as gravitational lensing, surveys of millions of galaxies and studies of the cosmic microwave background. This observational evidence however, applies almost entirely on rather large scales (comparable to the sizes of galaxy clusters and larger). On smaller scales there is an uncomfortable disagreement between the theory and observations. Many galaxies seem to contain too little dark matter in their centres, while galaxies such as the Milky Way ought to have hundreds of small companion galaxies, but apparently have only a handful of them. I will describe these recent confirmations and refutations of the cold dark matter hypothesis and discuss their possible consequences. In particular, I will highlight some of the theoretical work which has been prompted by this discussion and describe how a debate over dark matter is leading to improvements in our understanding of how galaxies form.

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