  The nature of the dark matter that binds galaxies remains an open question.
The favored candidate has been so far the neutralino. This massive species with
evanescent interactions is now in difficulty. It would actually collapse in
dense clumps and would therefore play havoc with the matter it is supposed to
shepherd. We focus here on a massive and non-interacting charged scalar field
as an alternate option to the astronomical missing mass. We investigate the
classical solutions that describe the Bose condensate of such a field in
gravitational interaction with matter. This simplistic model accounts quite
well for the dark matter inside low-luminosity spirals whereas the agreement
lessens for the brightest objects where baryons dominate. A scalar mass m=0.4
to 1.6 10^{-23} eV is derived when both high and low-luminosity spirals are
fitted at the same time. Comparison with astronomical observations is made
quantitative through a chi-squared analysis. We conclude that scalar fields
offer a promising direction worth being explored.
