anon
23.04.09, 18:46
A group of physicists say that the distribution of satellite galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, as well as the apparent dark matter within them, presents a direct challenge to Newton's theory of gravitation, as the galaxies are not where they should be. "There is something odd about their distribution," said Professor Pavel Kroupa from the University of Bonn in Germany. "They should be uniformly arranged around the Milky Way, but this is not what we found." Standard cosmological models predict the presence of hundreds of these companions around most of the larger galaxies, but up to now only 30 have been observed around the Milky Way. The physicists say that Newton’s theory of gravitation should be modified.
The astronomers from Germany, Austria and Australia looked at the small dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way and discovered that the eleven brightest of the dwarf galaxies lie more or less in the same plane - in a kind of disk shape - and that they revolve in the same direction around the Milky Way (in the same way as planets in the Solar System revolve around the Sun). Some of these contain only a few thousand stars and so are relatively faint and difficult to find.
Do We Need a New Theory of Gravitation? | Universe Today (http://www.universetoday.com/2009/04/21/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-gravitation/)
The astronomers from Germany, Austria and Australia looked at the small dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way and discovered that the eleven brightest of the dwarf galaxies lie more or less in the same plane - in a kind of disk shape - and that they revolve in the same direction around the Milky Way (in the same way as planets in the Solar System revolve around the Sun). Some of these contain only a few thousand stars and so are relatively faint and difficult to find.
Do We Need a New Theory of Gravitation? | Universe Today (http://www.universetoday.com/2009/04/21/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-gravitation/)