The Galactic Dark Matter: Predictions and Obsevations

Abstract

After two decades of efforts to identify the enigmatic dark matter that comprises the dominant form of matter in our galaxy, the mass range for viable candidates appears to have been reduced by more than 50 orders of magnitude. Positive results have thus far been confined to the range: 10-7 Mo to 1.0 Mo, with apparent clustering within the ranges 10-5 Mo to 10-3 Mo and 0.08 Mo to 0.5 Mo. Positive and negative results are compared with specific predictions of cosmological models.