#156 Mass of the Milky Way revisisted

mikehelland2023-09-28, edited 2023-10-01OpenAstrophysics and Physics

Expanding universe proponents often cite the size of the Milky Way relative to more distant ones. Well…

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-revisited-mass-milky-smaller-cosmology.html

The total mass of the Milky Way is estimated to be only two hundred billion times that of the sun (2.06 x 1011 solar masses), marking a significant downward revision—approximately four to five times lower than previous estimates.

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Comments (6)

bgreenman2023-09-28, edited 2023-09-28

The result shows that the cold dark matter concept isn’t as viable as mainstream theorists thought

RedshiftDrift2023-09-28, edited 2023-09-28

The mass of the Milky Way is not as important as the rotation curve of the Milky Way reported by the paper. A Keplerian rotation curve means, for some astronomers, no “dark matter”.

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bgreenman2023-09-30, edited 2023-09-30

Correct idea

budrap002023-09-30, edited 2023-09-30

It’s hard to know what to make of this given it’s just a press release. For a nuanced discussion of the Gaia data see McGaugh’s recent treatment which doesn’t seem to find any significant mass discrepancy nor a Keplerian decline.

RedshiftDrift2023-09-30

it’s just a press release

The original paper is on arXiv

bgreenman2023-10-01, edited 2023-10-01

Problem is we are still trying to figure out the level of rotation curves and degree of mass discrepancies