Mystery of the missing mini-galaxies

NewScientists reports scientists found barely 25 tiny satellite galaxies around our Milky Way, only about one percent of the predicted number of satellite galaxies according to our standard picture of the universe. university of Bonn in Germany researcher Pavel Kroupa explains this is the cleanest case in which we can see there is something badly wrong with the standard picture of the origin of galaxies. More info at NewScientist.

It isn't just the apparent dearth of galaxies that is causing consternation. At a conference earlier this year in the German town of Bad Honnef, Kroupa and his colleagues presented an analysis of the location and motion of the known satellite galaxies. They reported that most of those galaxies orbit the Milky Way in an unexpected manner and that, taken together, their results are at odds with mainstream cosmology. There is "only one way" to explain the results, says Kroupa: "Gravity has to be stronger than predicted by Newton."

Challenging Newton's description of gravity is controversial. But regardless of where the truth lies, the Milky Way's satellite galaxies have become the latest battleground between the proponents of dark matter and theories of modified gravity.