Galaxy rotation curves: NOT flat (Noordermeer et al, 2007)
Paolo Salucci has a bone to pick with the community. The Trieste-based astronomer is fed up with his colleagues’ misconceptions about galaxy rotation curves and has decided to Do Something About It. In his short paper posted to astro-ph last Friday, he describes the experiment he’s set up to convince the world that galaxy rotation curves are not flat (oh sorry, that’s: NOT flat) – he has set up a Facebook group with plots, background, links and discussion, to orchestrate a change in the hearts and minds of astronomers around the world, to stamp out once and for all the damaging “hoax” of flat galaxy rotation curves.
Rotation curves describe how the rotation velocity in galaxies changes with increasing distance from the galactic centre. For spiral galaxies these curves are useful for learning about the galaxies’ matter distribution and, importantly, the presence of dark matter. But I’m not going to talk about rotation curves – it’s not my field and I’m happy to accept that they’re not flat.
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