New uOttawa study suggests universe has no 'dark matter'

Spiral galaxy NGC 1365 observed from Chile in 2012 -- a new method gauges how to measure the universe's accelerating growth. AFP

The University of Ottawa (uOttawa) is challenging the current theoretical model of the universe that suggests it’s made of "normal matter, dark energy and dark matter."

According to a uOttawa new study, the universe has no room for dark matter. 

“In cosmology, the term 'dark matter' describes all that appears not to interact with light or the electromagnetic field, or that can only be explained through gravitational force. We can’t see it, nor do we know what it’s made of, but it helps us understand how galaxies, planets and stars behave,” the university explained in a news release on Friday.

The new discovery "challenges the prevailing understanding of the universe, which suggests that roughly 27 per cent of it is composed of dark matter and less than five per cent of ordinary matter, remaining being the dark energy," uOttawa adds.

What led uOttawa to reach the new conclusion?

The university says its physics professor at the Faculty of Science Rajendra Gupta combined two theories together to create a new model to reach this conclusion. The two theories are the covarying coupling constants (CCC) and “tired light” (TL), and the new model is (the CCC+TL model.)

“This model combines two ideas — about how the forces of nature decrease over cosmic time and about light losing energy when it travels a long distance. It’s been tested and has been shown to match up with several observations, such as about how galaxies are spread out and how light from the early universe has evolved,” uOttawa explained in the news release.

Dr. Gupta challenges the need for dark matter to prove the new model.

“The study's findings confirm that our previous work ('JWST early Universe observations and ΛCDM cosmology') about the age of the universe being 26.7 billion years has allowed us to discover that the universe does not require dark matter to exist,” said Gupta.

“In standard cosmology, the accelerated expansion of the universe is said to be caused by dark energy but is in fact due to the weakening forces of nature as it expands, not due to dark energy.”

Gupta explains further by referring to “Redshifts,” which happen when light is shifted toward the red part of the spectrum. The university’s researcher interpreted data from recent papers “on the distribution of galaxies at low redshifts and the angular size of the sound horizon in the literature at high redshift.”

Gupta adds there are multiple studies that question the existence of dark matter, but his is the first one “that eliminates its cosmological existence while being consistent with key cosmological observations that we have had time to confirm.”

The study, Testing CCC+TL Cosmology with Observed Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Features, was published Friday in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal.