MUNICH, Germany, April 18 (UPI) -- A study of stars in the Milky Way found no evidence for dark matter in a large volume around the sun, a blow to current cosmological theories, scientists say.
Current theory suggests the solar neighborhood should be filled with dark matter, a mysterious invisible substance that can only be detected indirectly by the gravitational force it exerts.
But a new study by a team of astronomers in Chile has found that these theories just do not fit the observational facts, suggesting attempts to directly detect dark matter particles on Earth are unlikely to be successful.
Using a telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla facility in Chile, astronomers mapped the motions of more than 400 stars up to 13,000 light-years from the sun to calculate the mass of material in the vicinity of the sun.
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"The amount of mass that we derive matches very well with what we see -- stars, dust and gas -- in the region around the sun," Christian Moni Bidin of the Universidad de Concepcion, Chile, said.
"But this leaves no room for the extra material -- dark matter -- that we were expecting. Our calculations show that it should have shown up very clearly in our measurements. But it was just not there!"
It is widely accepted that dark matter makes up about 80 percent of the mass in the universe, despite the fact that it has resisted all attempts to clarify its nature, a release from ESO headquarters in Munich, German, said Wednesday.
"Despite the new results, the Milky Way certainly rotates much faster than the visible matter alone can account for. So, if dark matter is not present where we expected it, a new solution for the missing mass problem must be found," Moni Bidin said.
"Our results contradict the currently accepted models. The mystery of dark matter has just become even more mysterious."
