Cooling Flows and the Formation of Dark Matter

The distribution of matter condensing out of cooling flows in clusters of galaxies and individual elliptical galaxies has been studied using X-ray data and is found to resemble the expected mass profiles of the underlying galaxies. Most of the cooled gas must create objects of high mass-to-light ratio, although some more normal stars are produced. Cooling flows provide an observable mechanism for the continual formation of dark matter around galaxies. Since the conditions at galaxy formation are similar to those in cooling flows if the gas reaches the virial temperature, cooling flows are strong candidates for local models of galaxy formation.