Comment by hermitcrab
8 hours ago
Why does dark matter form halos/rings around galaxies. Why isn't it attracted to the centre of the galaxy like 'normal' matter?
8 hours ago
Why does dark matter form halos/rings around galaxies. Why isn't it attracted to the centre of the galaxy like 'normal' matter?
It is attracted to the center of the galaxy.
Normal matter also makes halos or rings around the center of the galaxy. That's how gravity works. And since dark matter interacts less, it stays more spread.
Halo implies empty (or low density) at the center. The 'normal' matter is denser at the center of a galaxy. I'm trying to understand why the difference.
>since dark matter interacts less
With electromagnetism or gravity?
Did a bit more reading. I was thinking of a halo like an angel's halo, a disk with greater density near the edge and less at the center. But it seems that dark matter halos are roughly spherical with greatest sensity near the centre. In which case halo seems like a pretty poor name.
2 replies →
I believe that you have the order of operations misunderstood.
I probably don't know that much more than you about the subject, but from what I understand, the prevailing model suggests that these Halos formed early in the formation of the universe when spacetime had varying "pockets" of density that naturally led to these halos - the formation of the galactic disk therein was actually supported by the halo existing first, because baryonic matter (aka non-dark matter, the stuff that makes up planets, stars, etc) was still too energetic from the formation of the universe to become gravitationally bound to itself.
Does the dark matter not move under the influence of gravity like 'normal' matter?
At this point my knowledge probably pales in comparison to skimming some Wikipedia articles, but my understanding is that there is just so much dark matter concentrated in these halos and inter-galactic structures of it that the gravitational effects of baryonic matter are negligible in comparison.
I believe dark matter comprises something like 80-85% of all matter in the universe.