Comment by fatbird

Comment by fatbird 2 days ago

4 replies

I wasn't saying, as a layman, that this is evidence for Dark Matter. I'm saying that the current thinking in astrophysics is that this is evidence for Dark Matter. Katie Mack, the astrophysicist in the podcast I linked, is a reknowned expert, and discusses how running the numbers on exactly these things provides evidence for Dark Matter, and how alternatives fail.

throwawaymaths 2 days ago

then she is being misleading, at best. To date no observed galaxies (versus galaxy clusters) have had the arrangement (as is in this image) wherein the galaxy is so perfectly in line with a background galaxy and close enough to estimate the rotation curves (and the background galaxy is of the right disposition to know if dark matter halos extend beyond the galaxy and estimate by how much space). Without both those factors it's really difficult to do a proper correlation of dark matter distribution around galaxies and the observed light bending.

  • fatbird 2 days ago

    She does not specifially address this scenario. I offered the link as a general dive into the evidence behind Dark Matter as it relates to lensing.

    I regret that now.

    • ziddoap 2 days ago

      >I regret that now.

      I, on the other hand, am thankful for it. I love watching Anton Petrov, PBS Space Time, and various other experts and communicators in anything space-related. This looks like a great podcast that slipped me by, so I appreciate the link.

    • throwawaymaths a day ago

      ok I apologize. She is not being misleading intentionally, but it's pretty clear, then, that it's easy to be misled into overly broad generalizations about the confidence we should have about cosmology by the things that she says.