Mainstream astronomy invented invisible dark matter particles to explain why outer galaxy stars spin faster than Newton’s laws allow; Mordehai Milgrom proposed that gravity simply gets stronger when accelerations drop to an ultra-slow crawl. Published in 1983 to intense academic skepticism, Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) predicted the exact flat rotation curves and gas fractions of thousands of spiral galaxies, remaining the most resilient theoretical challenge to the dark matter paradigm.
When Vera Rubin measured the rotation speeds of spiral galaxies in the 1970s, she discovered that stars on the outer rims were spinning so fast they should fly off into space. Mainstream astrophysics assumed galaxies must be packed with invisible "Dark Matter" that creates extra gravitational glue.
Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom asked a bold alternative question: what if gravity itself changes? He proposed that when acceleration drops below a tiny cosmic threshold—one ten-billionth of a meter per second squared—gravity stops fading by the square of distance and instead drops much more slowly, holding spinning galaxies together without needing a single gram of dark matter.
MOND accurately predicted the exact rotation speeds of thousands of galaxies from their visible stars alone. By challenging the cosmological dogma of invisible matter, by explaining the tight Baryonic Tully-Fisher relation, and by inspiring modified relativistic gravity theories, MOND enriches fundamental physics.
A modification of the Newtonian dynamics as a possible alternative to the hidden mass hypothesis
view Abstract Citations (2400) References (10) Co-Reads Similar Papers Volume Content Graphics Metrics Export Citation NASA/ADS A modification of the Newtonian dynamics as a possible alternative to the hidden mass hypothesis. Milgrom, M. Abstract The author considers the possibility that there is not, in fact, much hidden mass in galaxies and galaxy systems. If a certain modified version of the Newtonian dynamics is used to describe the motion of bodies in a gravitational field (of a galaxy, say), the observational results are reproduced with no need to assume hidden mass in appreciable quantities. Various characteristics of galaxies result with no further assumptions. The basis of the modification is the assumption that in the limit of small acceleration a very low a0, the acceleration of a particle at distance r from a mass M satisfies approximately a2/a0 ≈ MGr-2, where a0 is a constant of the dimensions of an acceleration. Publication: The Astrophysical Journal Pub Date: July 1983 DOI: 10.1086/161130 Bibcode: 1983ApJ...270..365M Keywords: Cosmology; Galactic Structure; Nonrelativistic Mechanics; Stellar Motions; Particle Acceleration; Solar System; Astrophysics full text sources ADS |
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