Nereid said:If you google on 'dark matter radial profile', you get lots of references which include the mysterious letters 'NFW'. They stand for Navarro, Frenk and White, who wrote a paper (in 1996?) deriving a class of radial profiles. It's quite fun dipping into some of the papers google serves up ... sorry that I don't have a good one to recommend as a place to start
Dark matter is a type of matter that does not emit or absorb light, making it invisible to traditional telescopes. It is thought to make up about 27% of the universe and is responsible for the gravitational effects we observe in galaxies.
Dark matter exerts a gravitational force on the visible matter in galaxies, causing it to orbit around the center of the galaxy. This allows galaxies to maintain their shape and prevents them from flying apart due to the high speeds of their stars and gas clouds.
Scientists have observed the gravitational effects of dark matter on galaxies through various methods, such as analyzing the rotation curves of galaxies and observing the gravitational lensing of light from distant objects. Additionally, the cosmic microwave background radiation provides evidence for the existence of dark matter.
Dark matter does not interact with regular matter through any of the fundamental forces, except for gravity. This means that it does not emit or absorb light, nor does it have any electrical or nuclear interactions with regular matter.
While we cannot directly detect dark matter, scientists are working on indirect methods to study its properties and distribution. These include using particle colliders to search for evidence of dark matter particles and analyzing the effects of dark matter on the large-scale structure of the universe.