And now Einstein was wrong..
Allow me to tell the story when Einstein was proven wrong, not literally. What if someone told you today that everything you learnt in school about Newton’s laws were incorrect. I don’t know about you but I would be bummed a lot. Well the fact is, the statement is true to some sense but misleading.
None of Newton’s laws were proven false until 1898, when Lord Kelvin discovered something rather bizarre. While observing the movement of stars in galaxies, he discovered that the observations of the stars weren’t up to the calculations and predications that were carried out beforehand.
Seems like a beautiful thing to watch all day, at least for me but its a nightmare of Astrophysicists. Lord Kelvin was observing how the velocities of the stars should decrease as they get further from the center of the galaxy predicted by Newton’s laws. This was almost 17 years before Einstein published his Theory of General Relativity. None of the calculations according to Newton’s laws were matching with the observations by Lord Kelvin. The results were unchanged for other galaxies that were expected not to follow the anomaly.
The above which you see is the Velocity(y) vs Radius (x) graph of a galaxy popularly known as the Galaxy Rotational Curves. The dotted line that you see on the lower end depicts the predications according to the present day mathematics and the one above represents the actual observation when we observe a single motion of the stars of a single galaxy.
While Lord Kelvin couldn’t put more efforts than the observation, he concluded that due to presence of invisible mass- which influences the motion of any body in the universe- exists as you get further away from the center of any galaxy, for which he observed. He simply named this piece of invisible mass, “Dark Bodies”. The intriguing nature of the anomaly became a the topic countless discussions subsequently, specifically in the paper of Henry Poincaré where he officially named the problem, Dark Matter.
Astronomers following down the path of Lord Kelvin, Vera Rubin, Jan Oort and Fritz Zwicky among many others observed the same thing even years later unexplained by more developed theories by Einstein and others.
General Relativity, the Grand Theory of Gravity failed to explain this anomaly. The problem still remains unsolved- here was the part where Einstein wasn’t right but not wrong either.
Though it has been more than a century but the problem still holds its insolvability. Were there less efforts made, were people too foolish to look at the right place, was there less funding, were the observations just a hoax were some of the infinite questions that were prompted by many. The answer to all of them remains NO except one.
Were people too foolish to look at the right place?
Even after a century after tons of mistakes made, are people still holding it up to chance to finally make the discovery. Many of the people still, others think different. Over a 100 theories have been proposed to explain the anomaly and solve the insolvable followed by the experiments based on the same. The quest remains unfinished. But, Why?
The answer to this my friend holds two possible responses, either there are even more efforts and out-of-the-box thinking needed OR the theories proposed by Newton and Einstein wrong?
Theories and Physics proposed by these two great people holds true for phenomena that we see in our everyday life and to a certain astronomical scale. If you drop an apple, it would still obey the mathematics developed by both of these people, if you see planets revolving around Sun, the answer remains indifferent. Even for the bodies that revolve around the Black Holes at the center of the galaxies at close distances. The thing that still excites most people is the anomaly at the large radiuses in a galaxy.
This was the advent of Dark Matter, simply explained.
What were the theories proposed, what were the efforts made, what was the thing that keeps Physicists hooked up to the data till date?
The answer to this question you may find in the next story, or you curiosity!!
Thanks for reading till here, awesomely high-five 🙌🙌. Have a great day ahead!!
