Nearby dark-matter-free zone poses cosmic conundrum

Nearby dark-matter-free zone poses cosmic conundrum: ...until now most velocity measurements considered only stars zipping around the Milky Way radially, like an ant sitting on a vinyl record. By contrast, Moni Bidin's team looked outward from the plane of the galaxy, perpendicular to the galactic disc. Using historical survey data and new observations from telescopes at the La Silla Observatory and the Las Campanas Observatory, both in Chile, the researchers mapped the motions of more than 400 stars up to 13,000 light-years from the sun.

They used those measurements to calculate the mass of matter in a volume four times larger than had been considered before at this level of precision. Under the standard dark matter theory, there should be at least as much dark matter as visible matter in this region. "Contrary to our expectations, there is none," Moni Bidin says. "The result matches the visible mass strongly."