Unique prediction of ‘modified gravity’ challenges dark matter
An international group of scientists, including Case Western Reserve University Astronomy Chair Stacy McGaugh, has published research contending that a rival idea to the popular dark matter hypothesis more accurately predicts a galactic phenomenon that appears to defy the classic rules of gravity.
This is significant, the astrophysicists say, because it further establishes the hypothesis—called modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), or “modified gravity”—as a viable explanation for a cosmological dilemma: that galaxies appear to buck the long-accepted rules of gravity traced to Sir Isaac Newton in the late 1600s.
The mystery: For decades, we’ve measured more gravitational pull in space than we think we should have—that there’s not enough visible or known matter to account for it all.
So, dark matter proponents theorize that most of the known universe is actually made of material that doesn’t interact with light, making it invisible and undetectable— but that this material accounts for much of the gravitational pull among galaxies. It has been the prevailing theory for nearly 50 years.
