Three leading-edge researchers in the field of galaxy formation have published their findings that most large galaxies have formed and developed without the involvement of galaxy mergers. This historic development in cosmology provides an important missing piece to the universe's cosmological puzzle.

Avishai Dekel published his scientific paper this month, Michael J. Disney published his late last year and Jerome Drexler authored relevant books in 2006 and 2008.The most obvious immediate effect could be a paradigm shift away from the 24-year-old Cold Dark Matter theory of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs).

The UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) central doctrine for Cold Dark Matter has been that small galaxies form first and larger galaxies are formed through mergers of smaller galaxies.

This is called hierarchal galaxy formation, a central principle of the UCSC Cold Dark Matter WIMP theory. Such a hierarchal galaxy merging procedure would probably lead to a complex galaxy formation process based upon a number of independent variables representing various parameters of the merging galaxies.

The October 23, 2008 Nature article, authored by Professor Michael J. Disney of UK's Cardiff University and five associates, is entitled, "Galaxies appear simpler than expected."

It turns out that through a statistical analysis of the radio and optical data from 200 galaxies, five of the six "independent" variables actually are dependent on some single unknown independent variable. The last sentence of the abstract makes a key statement, "Such a degree of organization [of galaxies] appears to be at odds with hierarchical galaxy formation, a central tenet of the cold dark matter model in cosmology."

More from Professor Disney's abstract: "Here we report that a sample of galaxies that were first detected through their neutral hydrogen radio-frequency emission, and are thus free from optical selection effects shows five independent correlations among six independent observables, despite having a wide range of properties. This implies that the structure of these galaxies must be controlled by a single parameter, although we cannot identify this parameter from our data set. Such a degree of organization appears to be at odds with hierarchical galaxy formation, a central tenet of the cold dark matter model in cosmology."

Professor Avishai Dekel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with nine associates, comes to the same general conclusion as Disney via a different set of data and different arguments in a Nature article dated January 22, 2009. It is entitled, "Cold streams in early massive hot haloes as the main mode of galaxy formation." A January 25, 2009 news release from The Hebrew University begins as follows:

"New understanding of the origin of galaxies advanced by Hebrew U astrophysicists.

"A new theory as to how galaxies formed in the Universe billions of years ago has been formulated by Hebrew University of Jerusalem cosmologists. The theory takes issue with the prevailing view on how the galaxies came to exist.

"The new theory, motivated by advanced astronomical observations and based on state-of-the-art computer simulations, maintains that the galaxies primarily formed as a result of intensive cosmic streams of cold gas (mostly hydrogen) and not, as the current theory contends, due primarily to galactic mergers. The researchers show that these mergers had only limited influence on the cosmological makeup of the universe as we know it.

"The galaxies are the building blocks of the Universe... . Every galaxy is embedded in a spherical halo made of dark matter that cannot be seen but is detected through its massive gravitational attraction. The exact nature of this matter is still unknown."

There are currently two schools of thought on galaxy formation. There is the Bottom-Up theory, supported by the vast majority of the world's universities, which states that small galaxies form first and larger galaxies are formed through mergers of the small galaxies.

The principal subject of this newswire is the Top-Down theory of galaxy formation, that Drexler, Disney, and Dekel support, which generally states that galaxies form and grow via some source of hydrogen not involving galaxy mergers.

Bell-Labs trained Jerome Drexler has authored a trilogy of astro-cosmology books and two scientific papers during the past five years supporting his 2003 claim that the long- sought dark matter of the universe is comprised of multitudinous galaxy-orbiting relativistic protons, which orbit groups of galaxies as well as individual galaxies. He contends that many relativistic cosmic-ray protons that enter Earth's atmosphere are dislodged straggler protons that had been dark-matter-halo protons orbiting the Milky Way.

Drexler describes and explains his Top-Down theory of galaxy formation in two of his three books. His May 22, 2006 book, entitled Comprehending and Decoding the Cosmos: Discovering Solutions to Over a Dozen Cosmic Mysteries by Utilizing Dark Matter Relationism, Cosmology, and Astrophysics, covers this subject in Chapters 19, 21, 31, 36, 40 and 41. His March 1, 2008 book, entitled Discovering Postmodern Cosmology: Discoveries in Dark Matter, Cosmic Web, Big Bang, Inflation, Cosmic Rays, Dark Energy, Accelerating Cosmos, discusses the Top-Down theory of galaxy formation in Chapters 9 and 19.

Drexler's well-proven relativistic-proton dark matter theory permits a more complete Top-Down theory of galaxy formation than that provided by others. Drexler's May 2006 book's definition of his Top-Down theory is "that long, large dark matter filaments form galaxy clusters where the dark matter filaments intersect/collide and then galaxies form from the remnants of these collisions." Drexler's March 2008 book's definition of the Top- Down theory is the same except for the addition of the then new words "of the cosmic web" between the words "filaments" and "form."

Thus in Drexler's 2006 galaxy-formation theory the evolving star-forming galaxies are fed with streams of warm-hot protons directly from the relativistic-proton dark matter itself rather than from a posited separate source of protons or hydrogen. Note that this star-forming system has Occam razor simplicity.

About the author of the three books: Jerome Drexler is a former member of the technical staff and group supervisor at Bell Labs, former research professor in physics at New Jersey Institute of Technology, founder and former Chairman and chief scientist of LaserCard Corp. He has been awarded 76 U.S. patents, honorary Doctor of Science degrees from NJIT and Upsala College, a degree of Honorary Fellow of the Technion, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship at Stanford University, a three-year Bell Labs graduate study fellowship, the 1990 "Inventor of the Year Award" for Silicon Valley and recognition as the original inventor in 1978 of the now widely-used digital optical disk "Laser Optical Storage System" and the LaserCard(R) nanotech data memory. He is a member of the Board of Overseers of New Jersey Institute of Technology and an Honorary Life Member of the Technion Board of Governors.