g1_pulp_fiction

Vincent: Want to talk about MOND?

Jules: No man, I don’t consider MOND.

Vincent: Are you biased?

Jules: Nah, I ain’t biased, I just don’t dig MOND, that’s all.

Vincent: Why not?

Jules: MOND is an ugly theory. I don’t consider ugly theories.

Vincent: MOND makes predictions that come true. Fits galaxy data gooood.

Jules: Hey, MOND may fit every galaxy in the universe, but I’d never know ’cause I wouldn’t consider the ugly theory. MOND has no generally covariant extension. That’s an ugly theory. I ain’t considering nothin’ that ain’t got a proper cosmology.

Vincent: How about ΛCDM? ΛCDM has lots of small scale problems.

Jules: I don’t care about small scale problems.

Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider ΛCDM to be an ugly theory?

Jules: I wouldn’t go so far as to call ΛCDM ugly, but it’s definitely fine-tuned. But, ΛCDM’s got the CMB. The CMB goes a long way.

Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a theory of modified dynamics fit the CMB, it would cease to be an ugly theory. Is that true?

Jules: Well, we’d have to be talkin’ about one charming eff’n theory of modified dynamics. I mean, it’d have to be ten times more charmin’ than MOND, you know what I’m sayin’?

Stacy McGaugh is an astrophysicist and cosmologist who studies galaxies, dark matter, and theories of modified gravity. He is an expert on low surface brightness galaxies, a class of objects in which the stars are spread thin compared to bright galaxies like our own Milky Way. He demonstrated that these dim galaxies appear to be dark matter dominated, providing unique tests of theories of galaxy formation and modified gravity. Professor McGaugh is currently the chair of the Department of Astronomy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and director of the Warner and Swasey Observatory. Previously he was a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland, having also held research fellowships at Rutgers, the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

5 thoughts on “Pulp Science”

  1. Vincent: you mean, charming like … explaining the critical acceleration scale from first principles and stuff?
    Jules: Sure. Now you can do that, you got my attention. What’s this thing they do across the pond, quantized inertia ?

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  2. Could you enlight those of your readers who are not scientists about that paper : E.V. Karukes et al. The universal rotation curve of dwarf disk galaxies, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2016). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stw3055

    Thanks for this blog,
    John

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    1. This paper says much the same thing as the radial acceleration relation: the rotation curve of a galaxy depends on its luminous mass and size. It is just phrased differently, and focuses on dwarf galaxies. When one specifies dwarfs, one gets a fairly typical characteristic rotation curve shape.

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  3. Pingback: Crater 2: the Bullet Cluster of LCDM – Triton Station

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