Fast moving satellite galaxies put Newton's 'Gravitational Law' in peril

Washington, May 6 (ANI): New studies by cosmologists has found that the stars in the Milky Way's satellite galaxies are moving much faster than predicted by Isaac Newton's Gravitational Law, which puts the scientist's famous theory into question.

In these studies, Professor Dr. Pavel Kroupa of Bonn University's Argelander-Institut fur Astronomie (AIfA) and his team have examined the so-called "satellite galaxies".

This term is used for dwarf galaxy companions of the Milky Way, some of which contain only a few thousand stars.

According to the best cosmological models, they exist presumably in hundreds around most of the major galaxies.

Up to now, however, only 30 such satellites have been observed around the Milky Way, a discrepancy in numbers which is commonly attributed to the fact that the light emitted from the majority of satellite galaxies is so faint they remain invisible.

A detailed study of these stellar agglomerates has revealed some astonishing phenomena.

"First of all, there is something unusual about their distribution", Professor Kroupa explained. "The satellites should be uniformly arranged around their mother galaxy, but this is not what we found," he said.

More precisely, all classical satellites of the Milky Way - the eleven brightest dwarf galaxies - lie more or less in the same plane, they are forming some sort of a disc in the sky.

The research team has also been able to show that most of these satellite galaxies rotate in the same direction around the Milky Way - like the planets revolve around the Sun.

"The stars in the satellites we have observed are moving much faster than predicted by the Gravitational Law. If classical physics holds this can only be attributed to the presence of dark matter," said Dr. Manuel Metz, a former colleague of Professor Kroupa.

Or one must assume that some basic fundamental principles of physics have hitherto been incorrectly understood.

"The only solution would be to reject Newton´s classical theory of gravitation", said Pavel Kroupa. "We probably live in a non-Newton universe. If this is true, then our observations could be explained without dark matter," he added.

The deviations detected in the satellite galaxy data support the hypothesis that in space where extremely weak accelerations predominate, a "modified Newton dynamic" must be adopted.

This conclusion has far-reaching consequences for fundamental physics in general, and also for cosmological theories. (ANI)