Dark Matter: The evidence from astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology

Abstract

Dark matter has been introduced to explain many independent gravitational effects at different astronomical scales, in galaxies, groups of galaxies, clusters, superclusters and even across the full horizon. This review describes the accumulated astronomical, astrophysical, and cosmological evidence for dark matter. It is written at a non-specialist level and intended for an audience with little or only partial knowledge of astrophysics or cosmology.

Review article of 25 pages, 17 figures. Two figures in Section 4 have been replaced by one in this version

References in corpus (15)

• Seven-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• A direct empirical proof of the existence of dark matter
• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Data Processing, Sky Maps, and Basic Results
• Improved Cosmological Constraints from New, Old and Combined Supernova Datasets
• Three Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Polarization Analysis
• Measuring the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation scale using the SDSS and 2dFGRS
• How do galaxies populate Dark Matter halos?
• On the mass-to-light ratio of the local Galactic disc and the optical luminosity of the Galaxy
• Revealing the properties of dark matter in the merging cluster MACSJ0025.4-1222
• Determination of the Local Dark Matter Density in our Galaxy
• Abell 370 revisited: refurbished Hubble imaging of the first strong lensing cluster
• Cosmological Parameters from the QUaD CMB polarization experiment
• New evidence for dark matter
• Dark energy and the mass of the Local Group
• Dark matter dominated dwarf disc galaxy Segue 1

Cited by in corpus (8)

• What kind of science is cosmology?
• Backreaction as an alternative to dark energy and modified gravity
• On the rotation curves for axially symmetric disk solutions of the Vlasov-Poisson system
• Geometric and growth rate tests of General Relativity with recovered linear cosmological perturbations
• Speakable and unspeakable in cosmology: dark matter vs. gravitational self energies. Hubble's constant, the cosmological term and all that
• Dark Matter in the Central Region of the Spiral Galaxy NGC 4321
• Testing and Emulating Modified Gravity on Cosmological Scales
• Towards physical cosmology: geometrical interpretation of Dark Energy, Dark Matter and Inflation without fundamental sources