Controversial Alternative Gravity Theory Revived by New Spin on Galaxy Rotation

Neutral Hydrogen Gas in Galaxy AGC 114905

Radio image of the neutral hydrogen gas in the galaxy AGC 114905. Its inclination is estimated from the black ellipse, which fits the data better. Assuming the galaxy is circular when viewed face-on, this implies a moderate inclination of 32°. However, the new study suggests that the blue ellipse for a very low inclination could actually be correct – thus saving the MOND theory – if the galaxy is intrinsically somewhat non-circular. The authors show that this is possible using a dedicated MOND simulation. Credit: Figure 7 of Mancera Pina et al. 2022 (MNRAS, 512, 3230)

An international group of astronomers, led by a physicist at the University of St Andrews, has revived an alternative gravity theory.

Headed by Dr. Indranil Banik of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St Andrews, the research revealed a high predicted rotation speed of gas in a dwarf galaxy consistent with the previously debunked theory known as Milgromian Dynamics (MOND).

An earlier study of the rotation speed of gas in the dwarf galaxy AGC 114905 (Mancera Pina et al, 2022) found that the gas rotated very slowly and therefore claimed the MOND theory was dead.

Such theories are essential in understanding our universe because, according to known physics, galaxies rotate so quickly they should fly apart. MOND is a controversial alternative to General Relativity, the prevailing Einstein-inspired understanding of the phenomenon of gravity. However, General Relativity requires dark matter to hold galaxies together, while MOND does not require dark matter.

Because dark matter has never been detected despite decades of very sensitive searches, various theories have been put forward to alternatively explain what holds galaxies together. Debate rages over which theory is right. The very low rotation speed reported in the Mancera Pina et al study is inconsistent with predictions in a universe governed by General Relativity with large amounts of dark matter.

Dr. Banik’s group argues that the high predicted rotation speed in the MOND gravity theory is consistent with observations if the inclination of the galaxy is overestimated.

The rotation of stars and gas in faraway galaxies cannot be measured directly. Only the component along the line of sight is known from precise spectroscopic measurements. If the galaxy is viewed nearly face-on, then it would mostly rotate within the plane of the sky. This could mislead observers into thinking that the galaxy is actually rotating very slowly, which would require them to overestimate the inclination between disc and sky planes. This inclination was estimated from how elliptical the galaxy appears (see image).

The new study explored this crucial issue using detailed MOND simulations of a disc galaxy similar to AGC 114905 made at the University of Bonn by Srikanth Nagesh and instigated by Pavel Kroupa, Professor at the University of Bonn and Charles University in Prague. The simulations show that it can appear somewhat elliptical even when viewed face-on. This is because stars and gas in the galaxy have gravity and can pull themselves into a somewhat non-circular shape. A similar process causes the spiral arms in disc galaxies, features which are so common that these are often called spiral galaxies.

As a result, the galaxy could be a lot closer to face-on than the observers thought. This could mean the galaxy is rotating much faster than reported, removing the tension with MOND.

Dr. Banik, lead author on the new study, said: “Our simulations show that the inclination of AGC 114905 might be significantly less than reported, which would mean the galaxy is actually rotating much faster than people think, in line with MOND expectations.”

Dr. Hongsheng Zhao, of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St Andrews, said: “The very low reported rotation speed of this galaxy is inconsistent with both MOND and the standard approach with dark matter. But only MOND is able to get around this apparent contradiction.”

The new study also argues that a similar ‘fake inclination’ effect is unlikely to arise in the standard dark matter approach because the galaxy is dominated by the smooth dark matter halo. The stars and gas contribute little to the gravity, so the disc is not ‘self-gravitating’.

This means it is likely to look very circular if viewed face-on, as confirmed by simulations carried out by another group (Sellwood & Sanders, 2022). As a result, the observed ellipticity must be due to a significant inclination between the disc and sky planes. The rotation velocity would then be very small, implying that the galaxy has very little dark matter. It is not possible in this framework that an isolated dwarf galaxy would have such a small amount of dark matter given how much mass it has in stars and gas.

Pavel Kroupa, Professor at the University of Bonn and Charles University in Prague, said of the broader context of these results: “While MOND works well in the tests conducted so far, the standard approach causes very severe problems on all scales ranging from dwarf galaxies like AGC 114905 all the way up to cosmological scales, as found by many independent teams.”

Reference: “Overestimated inclinations of Milgromian disc galaxies: the case of the ultradiffuse galaxy AGC 114905” by Indranil Banik, Srikanth T Nagesh, Hosein Haghi, Pavel Kroupa and Hongsheng Zhao, 19 April 2022, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac1073

11 Comments on "Controversial Alternative Gravity Theory Revived by New Spin on Galaxy Rotation"

  1. Seisho Nakayama | May 24, 2022 at 4:08 am | Reply

    This is because the theory in the 4th dimension and the theory in the 5th dimension on the earth are different.

    • You need 6 dimensions because the invisible pink unicorns glow blue in the 5th.

      There, I fixed your science for you.

  2. Mike Pollock | May 24, 2022 at 7:01 am | Reply

    The only way science will ever understand the force of gravity will be to completely ignore the Lambda-CDM model that has existed for a century. The assumptions made to allow this theory to flourish are exactly why science is unable to understand what is going on with virtually anything in our universe. All observations, in space or in particle colliders, are doomed to be misunderstood because of the Big Bang theory.

    Which “assumption” makes gravity impossible to understand? It is the one that states a cloud of gas and dust can become a star. What this “fact” states is that the normal matter, that makes up the cloud, creates its own gravity. This assumption completely negates the need for dark matter at all. Dark matter could completely disappear from science and it wouldn’t matter. Of course, it is impossible to ignore something that takes up 95% of the mass of the universe. If that happens, difficulties in physics will exist from all sorts of directions.

    What will end this riddle is realizing what happened 13.8 billion years ago. Current explanations say the universe was “born” hot, cooled to make atoms, and then used gravity to make everything hot again. Gravity is assumed to be a “free energy”. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a free energy by law but many laws were ignored to make the Big Bang theory come true.

    The event that gave all the matter its energy wasn’t a “time-beginning nothing” as has been taught for a century. Something actually happened in an already existing, static universe. What happened happens here on Earth all the time in particle colliders where two objects are collided that break objects into quarks. That is what our universe did 13.8 billion years ago. Two objects that contained the mass of the observable galaxies collided at an astronomical speed in an already existing, static universe. The pressure and friction from this event created quark plasma shrapnel that are the galaxies. Particle colliders create quark plasma shrapnel and our universe created quark plasma shrapnel as the galaxies. The important thing to note here is that gravity DID NOT create the energy we see. Gravity doesn’t create energy, energy creates gravity. This statement is able to subtract the assumption that normal matter creates its own gravity and bring dark matter itself into the explanation for gravity because the collision created the energy.

    Einstein knew that the manipulation of space caused gravity but the Big Bang theory completely halted any attempt for him to see the reality. Unfortunately, he fell under the spell of Georges Lamaitres “primeval egg” hypothesis which now, in 2022, is a complete fact in science. The “gas and dust turning into a star” part completely contradicted Einsteins thoughts. Somehow, Einstein never came to any conclusion by stating to Lemaitre his “physics were atrocious”. It is unbelievable to me that Einstein allowed this discrepancy to flourish. If he ever did make a “biggest blunder”, it was letting himself get brainwashed by a priest with motives other than science.

    Gravity is created when energy manipulates dark matter. If the matter is in space at absolute zero. The manipulation of space stops so gravity stops no matter how large or dense the mass. A mass manipulates space by creating dark matter itself which I believe is made of extremely pressurized electron neutrinos. Energy breaks down electrons and turns them into electron neutrinos. These particles are shot from the mass gravitationally invisible yet they push out on space because they are all the same matter. This causes gravitational lensing. It is the natural pressure of space that uses its natural pressure to push through the outgoing matter and react with normal matter as gravity. The neutrinos that make up this incoming field are larger than the energized ones leaving. As they shower normal matter, their mass reacts with the matter as gravity. These same incoming electron neutrinos are responsible for the massive charges that cause lightning as the neutrinos form back into electrons and create the lightning. These incoming neutrinos are also causing the W boson to be too heavy and the muon to “wobble”. Without dark matter, there would be no gravity.

    Science considers the current theories about universe complete facts. This assumption is exactly why virtually nothing is understood in our universe. That isn’t a joke in that some things are understood and some not. Nothing is understood and it is all because of a theory that completely dismisses all the laws science knows of.

    • Your word soup is so filled with errors and pure fantasy, that it’s not worth even trying to correct you. You jump from one wrong assumption to another, constructing a completely false house of cards, while also erecting some straw men for you to knock down.

      Schizophrenia can be managed with medication. Seek help.

      • You say all this but the problems remain. Have you, yourself, ever applied the laws of physics to the theory science holds as absolute truth? The answer is no because you have never even thought about what is going on. In just this article alone scientists are still, after all these decades, trying to figure out what they are missing. Do you even read the article? Have you ever seen the list of physics problems science faces every day?
        The answer is no to all the above.
        What do you think is pushing you to the ground? Nothing? Haven’t you ever heard of the “every action has an equal but opposite reaction” law?
        When Galileo stated that the Earth was not the center of the universe, would you have believed him? Of course not. That is because you only have an extremely thin surface of knowledge on the subject. You do what everyone else is doing without thinking about the problem at all. It is sad. The worst thing about it is that science is going on a wild goose chase because of what you believe. Fusion has never created energy and never will. My theory explains exactly why this is happening and what plasma they are actually looking for. The whole Big Bang theory is nothing but ad-hoc theories to allow our universe to spring into existence. Do you get it?

  3. Heidi Cornman | May 24, 2022 at 11:26 am | Reply

    I would like to know how gravity works because I have a balloon since January that is hanging out in my ceiling. Also I have my blankets that form together. I thought it is a spiritual energy but u keep showing these pictures of eyes. Could this energy be from the universe?

  4. David Turnbull | May 25, 2022 at 1:28 pm | Reply

    DEDMI: Dark energy dark matter implosion.Two opposing forces left to congregate until forces exceeds the limitation on the state prior to the description Big bang .
    black holes may be dark matter with a gravitational attraction that not only light cannot escape, but the sub atomic quantum existence has itself been stripped of its coheision .
    essentially visible matter is made of dark energy and dark matter trapped inside inself ,creating the quantum realm and on the macro scale trapped again as the observable universe locked op inside dark energy . Many current discoveries can support such a universal model.

  5. There is no such thing as Dark Matter or Dark Energy. Those are human invented math band-aids created to fix math in models of the Universe that doesn’t match observations. Instead of admitting there’s something wrong with either our observations (lensing effects within the boundaries of the Sun’s influence) or our physics model (We already know that Einstein’s theories can’t be merged with Quantum Physics. You get a divide by zero), we just apply math band-aids and make up mysterious energy forces that by all attempts at observation SIMPLY DON’T EXIST!

    The real problem is that man’s EGO won’t allow him to admit he’s got something completely wrong so we have this tendency to keep creating “fudge factors” in the math to force square pegs to fit into round holes where they don’t belong. Nature doesn’t do unnecessary complexity and our quantum physics are unnecessarily complex.

    We can’t even decide if light is a wave or a particle so we call it both. Sorry, wrong answer. It’s a wave and always has been so. They were closer with the idea of an “ether”. It’s just not made of matter and our language is based around matter. “Nothing” is “no thing” and implies matter. Space/Time is vague and suggests a medium, but what is space made out of and how does time attach to it? We don’t have answers; we have hypothesis and theories that have been around so long people just accept them as facts instead of questioning if perhaps there’s another reason for the double slit experiment behavior.

    Why would observing something change its quantum behavior? How does it know it’s being observed? If I were designing a VR simulation akin to The Matrix, I’d probably use calculation saving rendering methods so that things that aren’t observed aren’t drawn or calculated the same as when they are. How does the Universe know we’re observing it? Because the “Universe” is a computer simulation and we are the ones viewing it.

    • The “dark” in dark energy and dark matter indicates that we don’t know what those things are.
      There have been many attempts to change theories (eg, gravity) to account for dark matter/energy – just that none have succeeded thus far. Saying that theories need to change without saying what those changes might be is speculation, not science.
      Quantum physics: all observations disturb the object you are observing. E.g., you can’t measure electrical current in a circuit without changing it. Quantum physics is not an exception. What’s weird of Quantum physics is that the underlying mechanism is not known.
      Space-time: this is well tested and well understood. It doesn’t match our intuition because our intuitions are based on situations where time flows similarly everywhere. Doesn’t mean that the theory is wrong, especially when it is able to explain many observations.

  6. Aramis Sweeney | May 28, 2022 at 10:57 pm | Reply

    Our physics and the ones we observe and try to measure are different. For example… a laser will traverse the distance between two mirrors…actually spanning the length between each reflection..for, seemingly, ever. But I’m behind one mirror holding it.. and you are behind the other one….so how is there eternity between us?

    If you were the FBI looking through twoway glass into an interrogation room of all mirrors ..you wouldn’t see yourself, just eternity inside that room. A false one. Contained within a box…. like unlimited imagination in the soft confines of a brain. That is all…

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