I’m not saying they’re wrong, but the article seems to indicate that they based their findings on a sampling of 10 stars. That’s obviously a small sampling of a galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars. How can the researchers be confident that their results are not skewed by having a small sample size? What if those 10 stars are moving abnormally fast for unrelated reasons? I don’t see how you can rule out “localized” inconsistencies unless these stars were each selected from vastly different parts of the galaxy with a very low standard deviation.
Nevermind, I can’t read. Ten radio telescopes, not necessarily one star for each.
You might be starstruck. That's even worse than being sunspotted.
While it is possible for something other than an increased galactic mass to contribute to a star’s velocity, it is not possible for another phenomenon to account for this speed within a given orbit.
By this I mean that for a star to remain in orbit around the galactic core, it *must* be going a certain speed. If it goes faster, it will be escaping the Milky Way, and if it’s going slower, it’s orbit will be decaying toward the central sigularity.
If a star’s orbit is measured over a certain minimum sample, it can be determined faily easily mathematically if the orbit is stable or transitory.
Armed with this, 10 stars tracked over a sufficient sample period and with a good degree of accuracy is a fair test of the observable universe.
If you’re arguing that maybe the stars move faster because God wants them to, or for some similarly unobservable reason, I cannot disprove this, but based on our understanding of physics, the reported test is entirely valid.
I have to give Milky Way researchers an admiring nod from time to time because their job is essentially to see the forest in spite of the trees, as it were. May as well try to determine the size of a wheat field by laying on your back amongst the grass, and looking from side to side.