For more than a decade the astrophysical community has been gathering observational evidence that seem to contradict the concept of dark matter in favor of new theories of gravity. In this article we summarize the most important ones, from to 2016 to present.

^{By Dr. Inés Urdaneta, Physicist at Resonance Science Foundation}

As we have explained in former articles, dark matter was inferred as an additional gravitational source that could explain the flattened rotation curves of spiral galaxies; spiral galaxies were found to rotate at a nearly constant rate, independently of its radius. From Newton’s law and the distribution of visible matter, one would expect the rotational velocity of stars and gas inside a galaxy to decrease with distance, but in the 70’s astronomers found this flattened anomaly, and dark matter was born.

Nevertheless, many teams have found astronomical evidence pointing towards modified gravity models instead. For instance, in 2016, a significant...

^{Credit: Nature}

^{By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at Resonance Science Foundation}

The standard model of particle physics is currently the best theory out there describing the fundamental constituents of nature. The model accurately describes the basic forces and their interactions with gravity being the only exception.

Despite the successes that the model boasts of, there are certain shortcomings of the theory that scientists around the world are trying to address and resolve. One of the key motivations is to find out the foundational building blocks of the so called Dark matter and Dark Energy which are believed to be made up of new unknown and undiscovered particles.

Recently, an interdisciplinary team of scientists led by physicists from Boston college in the US announced that they have discovered a new particle – or previously undetectable quantum excitation – known as the axial Higgs mode, a magnetic relative of the Higgs boson.

“The detection a decade ago...

By Dr. Inés Urdaneta, Physicist, Research Scientist at Resonance Science Foundation

One of the largest discrepancies found in modern physics is the ~122 orders of magnitude difference (i.e., 122 zeros!) between the vacuum energy density estimated by observations at the cosmological scale (a density which is represented by the cosmological constant) and the quantum vacuum energy density at the Planck scale as calculated or predicted by quantum physics.

Just to grasp the magnitude of this difference of 122 zeros we must recall that each position in a number refers to an order of magnitude. For instance, 10 is one order of magnitude bigger than 1, and 100 is two orders of magnitude bigger than 1. As we keep adding zeros, we see an increase called exponential. From this perspective, the size of a proton is of the order of 10^-15 m (this means that compared to a ruler the length of a meter, the proton is 15 orders of magnitude smaller, or a quadrillion times smaller) and the...

As reported in phys.org by Gemini Observatory, March 2018

Galaxies and dark matter go hand in hand; you typically don't find one without the other. So when researchers uncovered a galaxy, known as NGC1052-DF2, that is almost completely devoid of the stuff, they were shocked.

"Finding a galaxy without dark matter is unexpected because this invisible, mysterious substance is the most dominant aspect of any galaxy," said lead author Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University. "For decades, we thought that galaxies start their lives as blobs of dark matter. After that everything else happens: gas falls into the dark matter halos, the gas turns into stars, they slowly build up, then you end up with galaxies like the Milky Way. NGC1052-DF2 challenges the standard ideas of how we think galaxies form."

The research, published in the March 29th issue of the journal Nature, amassed data from the Gemini North and W. M. Keck Observatories, both on Maunakea, Hawai'i, the Hubble...