Astronomical Crisis! Missing Mass! Invisible Matter! An Unsolvable Mystery! A Cosmic Census?

The young scholar Oort from the Netherlands made a stunning debut.

Originally, no one had been particularly interested in the Milky Way's motion.

But he had uncovered an inconceivable problem.

The theoretical rotational velocity calculated according to the Law of Universal Gravitation was actually only one-fifth of the measured rotational velocity?

Although the astronomical community liked to claim that any data error within one order of magnitude was within a reasonable range.

That applied only to certain specific parameters or specialized fields.

Calculating celestial orbits had been accurate to the meter ever since Newton's era.

Take the famous Mercury precession problem. A mere 0.78% discrepancy between theory and reality had been enough to make the great minds question the Law of Universal Gravitation.

Yet now, the theoretical and actual values for the Milky Way's rotational velocity differed by a full 400%! (250-50)/50

This was absolutely not something that could be explained away as error.

One could well imagine the shock felt by the astronomical giants present.

At its core, it was because mechanics was an exceptionally precise and rigorous discipline.

Even on a scale as vast as the universe, the calculated velocity should not have such an enormous discrepancy.

Although the emergence of General Relativity had proven the flaws in the Law of Universal Gravitation, that did not mean the latter had been discarded.

On the contrary, when calculating celestial orbits, astronomers still often used the Law of Universal Gravitation rather than the obscure and difficult General Relativity.

As for the slight error of the Law of Universal Gravitation compared to General Relativity, it was entirely within an acceptable range.

Just as the three laws of Newtonian mechanics were still used to solve problems in low-speed macroscopic fields.

Therefore, the problem Oort had discovered had to be taken seriously!

Just