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Paper: The Planar Satellite Distributions around Andromeda, the Milky Way and Other Galaxies, and Their Implications for Fundamental Physics
Volume: 486, Multi-Spin Galaxies
Page: 183
Authors: Kroupa, P.
Abstract: The existence of dark matter particles is a key hypothesis in present-day cosmology and galactic dynamics. The validity of this hypothesis is challenged significantly by two independent arguments. 1) The dual dwarf galaxy theorem must be true in any realistic cosmological model. But it is found to be falsified when the dark-matter-based model is applied to the observational data. A consistency check of this conclusion comes from the observed significantly disk-like distributions of satellite populations which orbit in the same direction around their hosting galaxy and which cannot be derived from dark-matter models. 2) The action of dynamical friction due to expansive and massive dark matter halos must be evident in the galaxy population. The evidence however for dynamical friction is void or meagre at best. The M81 group fo galaxies already appears to rule out the existence of dynamical friction through dark matter halos, and the Milky Way satellite galaxies have been shown to challenge dark-matter-induced dynamical friction. The implication of this deduction for fundamental physics would be that exotic dark matter particles do not exist and that consequently gravitational physics on the scales of galaxies and beyond ought to be non-Newtonian/Einsteinian. An analysis of the kinematical data in galaxies shows them to be described excellently by scale-invariant dynamics, as discovered by Milgrom. This leads to a natural emergence of laws that galaxies are observed to obey. Such success has not been forthcoming in the dark-matter-based models. A consequence of this novel understanding of galactic astrophysics is that most dwarf satellite galaxies are formed as tidal dwarf galaxies in galaxy–galaxy encounters and that galactic mergers are rare.
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