Category: Sociology

Ode to Vera

Ode to Vera

Vera Rubin passed away a few weeks ago. This was not surprising: she had lived a long, positive, and fruitful life, but had faced the usual health problems of those of us who make it to the upper 80s. Though news of her death was not surprising, it was deeply saddening. It affected me more than I had anticipated, even armed with the intellectual awareness that the inevitable must be approaching. It saddens me again now trying to write this, which must inevitably be an inadequate tribute.

In the days after Vera Rubin passed away, I received a number of inquiries from the press asking me to comment on her life and work for their various programs. I did not respond. I guess I understand the need to recognize and remark on the passing of a great scientist and human being, and I’m glad the press did in fact acknowledge her many accomplishments. But I wondered if, by responding, I would be providing a tribute to Vera, or merely feeding the needs of the never-ending hyperactive news cycle. Both, I guess. At any rate, I did not feel it was my place to comment. It did not seem right to air my voice where hers would never be heard again.

I knew Vera reasonably well, but there are plenty who knew her better and were her colleagues over a longer period of time. Also, at the back of my mind, I was a tiny bit afraid that no matter what I said, someone would read into it some sort of personal scientific agenda. My reticence did not preclude other scientists who knew her considerably less well from doing exactly that. Perhaps it is unavoidable: to speak of others, one must still use one’s own voice, and that inevitably is colored by our own perspective. I mention this because many of the things recently written about Vera do not do justice to her scientific opinions as I know them from conversations with her. This is important, because Vera was all about the science.

One thing I distinctly remembering her saying to me, and I’m sure she repeated this advice to many other junior scientists, was that you had to do science because you had a need to Know. It was not something to be done for awards or professional advancement; you could not expect any sort of acknowledgement and would likely be disappointed if you did. You had to do it because you wanted to find out how things work, to have even a brief moment when you felt like you understood some tiny fraction of the wonders of the universe.

Despite this attitude, Vera was very well rewarded for her science. It came late in her career – she did devote a lot of energy to raising a large family; she and her husband Bob Rubin were true life partners in the ideal sense of the term: family came first, and they always supported each other. It was deeply saddening when Bob passed, and another blow to science when their daughter Judy passed away all too early. We all die, sometimes sooner rather than later, but few of us take it well.

Professionally, Vera was all about the science. Work was like breathing. Something you just did; doing it was its own reward. Vera always seemed to take great joy in it. Success, in terms of awards, came late, but it did come, and in many prestigious forms – membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the National Medal of Science, to name a few of her well-deserved honors. Much has been made of the fact that this list does not include a Nobel Prize, but I never heard Vera express disappointment about that, or even aspiration to it. Quite the contrary, she, like most modest people, didn’t seem to consider it to be appropriate. I think  part of the reason for this was that she self-identified as an astronomer, not as a physicist (as some publications mis-report). That distinction is worthy of an entire post so I’ll leave it for now.

Astronomer though she was, her work certainly had an outsized impact on physics. I have written before as to why she was deserving of a Nobel Prize, if for slightly different reasons than others give. But I do not dread that she died in any way disappointed by the lack of a Nobel Prize. It was not her nature to fret about such things.

Nevertheless, Vera was an obvious scientist to recognize with a Nobel Prize. No knowledgeable scientist would have disputed her as a choice. And yet the history of the physics Nobel prize is incredibly lacking in female laureates (see definition 4). Only two women have been recognized in the entire history of the award: Marie Curie (1903) and Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1963). She was an obvious woman to have honored in this way. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the awarding of the prize is inherently sexist. Based on two data points, it has become more sexist over time, as there is a longer gap between now and the last award to a woman (63 years) than between the two awards (60 years).

Why should gender play any role in the search for knowledge? Or the recognition of discoveries made in that search? And yet women scientists face antiquated attitudes and absurd barriers all the time. Not just in the past. Now.

Vera was always a strong advocate of women in science. She has been an inspiration to many. A Nobel prize awarded to Vera Rubin would have been great for her, yes, but the greater tragedy of this missed opportunity is what it would have meant to all the women who are scientists now and who will be in the future.

Well, those are meta-issues raised by Vera’s passing. I don’t think it is inappropriate, because these were issues dear to her heart. I know the world is a better place for her efforts. But I hadn’t intended to go off on meta-tangents. Vera was a very real, warm, positive human being. So I what I had meant to do was recollect a few personal anecdotes. These seem so inadequate: brief snippets in a long and expansive life. Worse, they are my memories, so I can’t see how to avoid making it at least somewhat about me when it should be entirely about her. Still. Here are a few of the memories I have of her.

I first met Vera in 1985 on Kitt Peak. In retrospect I can’t imagine a more appropriate setting. But at the time it was only my second observing run, and I had no clue as to what was normal or particularly who Vera Rubin was. She was just another astronomer at the dinner table before a night of observing.

A very curious astronomer. She kindly asked what I was working on, and followed up with a series of perceptive questions. She really wanted to know. Others have remarked on her ability to make junior people feel important, and she could indeed do that. But I don’t think she tried, in particular. She was just genuinely curious.

At the time, I was a senior about to graduate from MIT. I had to beg permission to take some finals late so I could attend this observing run. My advisor, X-ray astronomer George Whipple Clark, kindly bragged about how I had actually got my thesis in on time (most students took advantage of a default one-week grace period) in order to travel to Kitt Peak. Vera, ever curious, asked about my thesis, what galaxies were involved, how the data were obtained… all had been from a run the semester before. As this became clear, Vera got this bemused look and asked “What kind of thesis can be written from a single observing run?” “A senior thesis!” I volunteered: undergraduate observers were rare on the mountain in those days; up till that point I think she had assumed I was a grad student.

I encountered Vera occasionally over the following years, but only in passing. In 1995, she offered me a Carnegie fellowship at DTM. This was a reprieve in a tight job market. As it happened, we were both visiting the Kapteyn Institute, and Renzo Sancisi had invited us both to dinner, so she took the opportunity to explain that their initial hire had moved on to a faculty position so the fellowship was open again. She managed to do this without making me feel like an also-ran. I had recently become interested in MOND, and here was the queen of dark matter offering me a job I desperately needed. It seemed right to warn her, so I did: would she have a problem with a postdoc who worked on MOND? She was visibly shocked, but only for an instant. “Of course not,” she said. “As a Carnegie Fellow, you can work on whatever you want.”

Vera was very supportive throughout my time at DTM, and afterwards. We had many positive scientific interactions, but we didn’t really work together then. I tried to get her interested in the rotation curves of low surface brightness galaxies, but she had a full plate. It wasn’t until a couple of years after I left DTM that we started collaborating.

fig3
Figure made by Vera Rubin from her measurements of the rotation curves of low surface brightness galaxies. Published in McGaugh, Rubin, & de Blok (2001).

Vera loved to measure. The reason I chose the picture featured at top is that it shows her doing what she loved. By the time we collaborated, she had moved on to using a computer to measure line positions for velocities. But that is what she loved to do. She did all the measurements for the rotation curves we measured, like the ones shown above. As the junior person, I had expected to do all that work, but she wanted to do it. Then she handed it on to me to write up, with no expectation of credit. It was like she was working for me as a postdoc. Vera Rubin was an awesome postdoc!

She also loved to observe. Mostly that was a typically positive, fruitful experience. But she did have an intense edge that rarely peaked out. One night on Las Campanas, the telescope broke. This is not unusual, and we took it in stride. For a half hour or so. Then Vera started calmly but assertively asking the staff why we were not yet back up and working. Something was very wrong, and it involved calling in extra technicians who led us into the mechanical bowels of the du Pont telescope, replete with steel cables and unidentifiable steam-punk looking artifacts. Vera watched them like a hawk. She never said a negative word. But she silently, intently watched them. Tension mounted; time slowed to a crawl till it seemed that I could feel like a hard rain the impact of every photon that we weren’t collecting. She wanted those photons. Never said a negative word, but I’m sure the staff felt a wall of pressure that I was keenly aware of merely standing in its proximity. Perhaps like a field mouse under a raptor’s scrutiny.

Vera was not normally like that, but every good observer has in her that urgency to get on sky. This was the only time I saw it come out. Other typical instrumental guffaws she bore in stride. This one took too long. But it did get fixed, and we were back on sky, and it was as if there had never been a problem in the world.

Ultimately, Vera loved the science. She was one of the most intrinsically curious souls I ever met. She wanted to know, to find out what was going on up there. But she was also content with what the universe chose to share, reveling in the little discoveries as much as the big ones. Why does the Hα emission extend so far out in UGC 2885? What is the kinematic major axis of DDO 154, anyway? Let’s put the slit in a few different positions and work it out. She kept a cheat sheet taped on her desk for how the rotation curve changed if the position angle were missed – which never happened, because she prepared so carefully for observing runs. She was both thorough and extremely good at what she did.

Vera was very positive about the discoveries of others. Like all good astronomers, she had a good BS detector. But she very rarely said a negative word. Rarely, not never. She was not a fan of Chandrasekhar, who was the editor of the ApJ when she submitted her dissertation paper there. Her advisor, Gamow, had posed the question to her, is there a length scale in the sky? Her answer would, in the modern parlance, be called the correlation length of galaxies. Chandrasekhar declined to consider publishing this work, explaining in a letter that he had a student working on the topic, and she should wait for the right answer. The clear implication was that this was a man’s job, and the work of a woman was not to be trusted. Ultimately her work was published in the proceedings of the National Academy, of which Gamow was a member. He had predicted that this is how Chandrasekhar would behave, afterwards sending her a postcard saying only “Told you so.”

On another occasion, in the mid-90s when “standard” CDM meant SCDM with Ωm = 1, not ΛCDM, she confided to me in hushed tones that the dark matter had to be baryonic. Other eminent dynamicists have said the same thing to me at times, always in the same hushed tones, lest the cosmologists overhear. As well they might. To my ears this was an absurdity, and I know well the derision it would bring. What about Big Bang Nucleosynthesis? This was the only time I recall hearing Vera scoff. “If I told the theorists today that I could prove Ωm = 1, tomorrow they would explain that away.”

I was unconvinced. But it made clear to me that I put a lot of faith in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and this need not be true for all intelligent scientists. Vera – and the others I allude to, who still live so I won’t name – had good reasons for her assertion. She had already recognized that there was a connection between the baryon distribution and the dynamics of galaxies, and that this made a lot more sense if the dark and luminous component were closely related – for example, if the dark matter – or at least some important fraction of it in galaxies – were itself baryonic. Even if we believe in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, we’re still missing a lot of baryons.

The proper interpretation of this evidence is still debated today. What I learned from this was to be more open to the possibility that things I thought I knew for sure might turn out to be wrong. After all, that pretty much sums up the history of cosmology.

It was widely reported that Vera discovered dark matter or “proved” or “confirmed” its existence. I don’t think Vera would agree with this assessment, nor would many of her colleagues at DTM. I know this because we talked about it. A lot.

To my mind, what Vera discovered is both more specific and more profound than the dark matter paradigm it helped to create. What she discovered observationally is that rotation curves are very nearly flat, and continue to be so to indefinitely large radius. Over and over again, for every galaxy in the sky. It is a law of nature for galaxies, akin to Kepler’s laws for planets. Dark matter is an inference, a subsidiary result. It is just one possible interpretation, a subset of amazing and seemingly unlikely possibilities opened up by her discovery.

The discovery itself is amazing enough without conflating it with dark matter or MOND or any other flavor of interpretation of which the reader might be fond. Like many great discoveries, it has many parents. I would give a lot of credit to Albert Bosma, but there are also others who had early results, like Mort Roberts and Seth Shostak. But it was Vera whose persistence overcame the knee-jerk conservatism of cosmologists like Sandage, who she said dismissed her early flat rotation curve of M31 (obtained in collaboration with Roberts) as “the effect of looking at a bright galaxy.” “What does that even mean?” she asked me rhetorically. She also recalled Jim Gunn gasping “But… that would mean most of the mass is dark!” Indeed. It takes time to wrap our heads around these things. She obtained rotation curve after rotation curve in excess of a hundred to ensure we realized we had to do so.

Vera realized the interpretation was never as settled as the data. Her attitude (and that of many of us, including myself) is nicely summarized by her exchange with Tohline at the end of her 1982 talk at IAU 100. One starts with the most conservative – or at least, least outrageous – possibility, which at that time was a mere factor of two in hidden mass, which could easily have been baryonic. Yet much more more recently, at the last conference I attended with her (in 2009), she reminded the audience (to some visible consternation) that it was still “early days” for dark matter, and we should not be surprised to be surprised – up to, and including, how gravity works.

At this juncture, I expect some readers will accuse me of what I warned about above: using this for my own agenda. I have found it is impossible to avoid having an agenda imputed to me by people who don’t like what they imagine my agenda to be, whether they imagine right or not – usually not. But I can’t not say these things if I want to set the record straight – these were Vera’s words. She remained concerned all along that it might be gravity to blame rather than dark matter. Not convinced, nor even giving either the benefit of the doubt. There was, and remains, so much to figure out.

“Early days.”

I suppose, in the telling, it is often more interesting to relate matters of conflict and disagreement than feelings of goodwill. In that regards, some of the above anecdotes are atypical: Vera was a very positive person. It just isn’t compelling to relate episodes like her gushing praise for Rodrigo Ibata’s discovery of the Sagittarius dwarf satellite galaxy. I probably only remember that myself because I had, like Rodrigo, encountered considerable difficulty in convincing some at Cambridge that there could be lots of undiscovered low surface brightness galaxies out there, even in the Local Group. Some of these same people now seem to take for granted that there are a lot more in the Local Group than I find plausible.

I have been fortunate in my life to have known many talented scientists. I have met many people from many nations, most of them warm, wonderful human beings. Vera was the best of the best, both as a scientist and as a human being. The world is a better place for having had her in it, for a time.

Crater 2: the Bullet Cluster of LCDM

Crater 2: the Bullet Cluster of LCDM

Recently I have been complaining about the low standards to which science has sunk. It has become normal to be surprised by an observation, express doubt about the data, blame the observers, slowly let it sink in, bicker and argue for a while, construct an unsatisfactory model that sort-of, kind-of explains the surprising data but not really, call it natural, then pretend like that’s what we expected all along. This has been going on for so long that younger scientists might be forgiven if they think this is how science is suppose to work. It is not.

At the root of the scientific method is hypothesis testing through prediction and subsequent observation. Ideally, the prediction comes before the experiment. The highest standard is a prediction made before the fact in ignorance of the ultimate result. This is incontrovertibly superior to post-hoc fits and hand-waving explanations: it is how we’re suppose to avoid playing favorites.

I predicted the velocity dispersion of Crater 2 in advance of the observation, for both ΛCDM and MOND. The prediction for MOND is reasonably straightforward. That for ΛCDM is fraught. There is no agreed method by which to do this, and it may be that the real prediction is that this sort of thing is not possible to predict.

The reason it is difficult to predict the velocity dispersions of specific, individual dwarf satellite galaxies in ΛCDM is that the stellar mass-halo mass relation must be strongly non-linear to reconcile the steep mass function of dark matter sub-halos with their small observed numbers. This is closely related to the M*-Mhalo relation found by abundance matching. The consequence is that the luminosity of dwarf satellites can change a lot for tiny changes in halo mass.

apj374168f11_lr
Fig. 11 from Tollerud et al. (2011, ApJ, 726, 108). The width of the bands illustrates the minimal scatter expected between dark halo and measurable properties. A dwarf of a given luminosity could reside in dark halos differing be two decades in mass, with a corresponding effect on the velocity dispersion.

Long story short, the nominal expectation for ΛCDM is a lot of scatter. Photometrically identical dwarfs can live in halos with very different velocity dispersions. The trend between mass, luminosity, and velocity dispersion is so weak that it might barely be perceptible. The photometric data should not be predictive of the velocity dispersion.

It is hard to get even a ballpark answer that doesn’t make reference to other measurements. Empirically, there is some correlation between size and velocity dispersion. This “predicts” σ = 17 km/s. That is not a true theoretical prediction; it is just the application of data to anticipate other data.

Abundance matching relations provide a highly uncertain estimate. The first time I tried to do this, I got unphysical answers (σ = 0.1 km/s, which is less than the stars alone would cause without dark matter – about 0.5 km/s). The application of abundance matching requires extrapolation of fits to data at high mass to very low mass. Extrapolating the M*-Mhalo relation over many decades in mass is very sensitive to the low mass slope of the fitted relation, so it depends on which one you pick.

he-chose-poorly

Since my first pick did not work, lets go with the value suggested to me by James Bullock: σ = 11 km/s. That is the mid-value (the blue lines in the figure above); the true value could easily scatter higher or lower. Very hard to predict with any precision. But given the luminosity and size of Crater 2, we expect numbers like 11 or 17 km/s.

The measured velocity dispersion is σ = 2.7 ± 0.3 km/s.

This is incredibly low. Shockingly so, considering the enormous size of the system (1 kpc half light radius). The NFW halos predicted by ΛCDM don’t do that.

To illustrate how far off this is, I have adopted this figure from Boylan-Kolchin et al. (2012).

mbkplusdwarfswcraterii
Fig. 1 of MNRAS, 422, 1203 illustrating the “too big to fail” problem: observed dwarfs have lower velocity dispersions than sub-halos that must exist and should host similar or even more luminous dwarfs that apparently do not exist. I have had to extend the range of the original graph to lower velocities in order to include Crater 2.

Basically, NFW halos, including the sub-halos imagined to host dwarf satellite galaxies, have rotation curves that rise rapidly and stay high in proportion to the cube root of the halo mass. This property makes it very challenging to explain a low velocity at a large radius: exactly the properties observed in Crater 2.

Lets not fail to appreciate how extremely wrong this is. The original version of the graph above stopped at 5 km/s. It didn’t extend to lower values because they were absurd. There was no reason to imagine that this would be possible. Indeed, the point of their paper was that the observed dwarf velocity dispersions were already too low. To get to lower velocity, you need an absurdly low mass sub-halo – around 107 M☉. In contrast, the usual inference of masses for sub-halos containing dwarfs of similar luminosity is around 109 M☉to 1010 M☉. So the low observed velocity dispersion – especially at such a large radius – seems nigh on impossible.

More generally, there is no way in ΛCDM to predict the velocity dispersions of particular individual dwarfs. There is too much intrinsic scatter in the highly non-linear relation between luminosity and halo mass. Given the photometry, all we can say is “somewhere in this ballpark.” Making an object-specific prediction is impossible.

Except that it is possible. I did it. In advance.

The predicted velocity dispersion is σ = 2.1 +0.9/-0.6 km/s.

I’m an equal opportunity scientist. In addition to ΛCDM, I also considered MOND. The successful prediction is that of MOND. (The quoted uncertainty reflects the uncertainty in the stellar mass-to-light ratio.) The difference is that MOND makes a specific prediction for every individual object. And it comes true. Again.

MOND is a funny theory. The amplitude of the mass discrepancy it induces depends on how low the acceleration of a system is. If Crater 2 were off by itself in the middle of intergalactic space, MOND would predict it should have a velocity dispersion of about 4 km/s.

But Crater 2 is not isolated. It is close enough to the Milky Way that there is an additional, external acceleration imposed by the Milky Way. The net result is that the acceleration isn’t quite as low as it would be were Crater 2 al by its lonesome. Consequently, the predicted velocity dispersion is a measly 2 km/s. As observed.

In MOND, this is called the External Field Effect (EFE). Theoretically, the EFE is rather disturbing, as it breaks the Strong Equivalence Principle. In particular, Local Position Invariance in gravitational experiments is violated: the velocity dispersion of a dwarf satellite depends on whether it is isolated from its host or not. Weak equivalence (the universality of free fall) and the Einstein Equivalence Principle (which excludes gravitational experiments) may still hold.

We identified several pairs of photometrically identical dwarfs around Andromeda. Some are subject to the EFE while others are not. We see the predicted effect of the EFE: isolated dwarfs have higher velocity dispersions than their twins afflicted by the EFE.

If it is just a matter of sub-halo mass, the current location of the dwarf should not matter. The velocity dispersion certainly should not depend on the bizarre MOND criterion for whether a dwarf is affected by the EFE or not. It isn’t a simple distance-dependency. It depends on the ratio of internal to external acceleration. A relatively dense dwarf might still behave as an isolated system close to its host, while a really diffuse one might be affected by the EFE even when very remote.

When Crater 2 was first discovered, I ground through the math and tweeted the prediction. I didn’t want to write a paper for just one object. However, I eventually did so because I realized that Crater 2 is important as an extreme example of a dwarf so diffuse that it is affected by the EFE despite being very remote (120 kpc from the Milky Way). This is not easy to reproduce any other way. Indeed, MOND with the EFE is the only way that I am aware of whereby it is possible to predict, in advance, the velocity dispersion of this particular dwarf.

If I put my ΛCDM hat back on, it gives me pause that any method can make this prediction. As discussed above, this shouldn’t be possible. There is too much intrinsic scatter in the halo mass-luminosity relation.

If we cook up an explanation for the radial acceleration relation, we still can’t make this prediction. The RAR fit we obtained empirically predicts 4 km/s. This is indistinguishable from MOND for isolated objects. But the RAR itself is just an empirical law – it provides no reason to expect deviations, nor how to predict them. MOND does both, does it right, and has done so before, repeatedly. In contrast, the acceleration of Crater 2 is below the minimum allowed in ΛCDM according to Navarro et al.

For these reasons I consider Crater 2 to be the bullet cluster of ΛCDM. Just as the bullet cluster seems like a straight-up contradiction to MOND, so too does Crater 2 for ΛCDM. It is something ΛCDM really can’t do. The difference is that you can just look at the bullet cluster. With Crater 2 you actually have to understand MOND as well as ΛCDM, and think it through.

So what can we do to save ΛCDM?

Whatever it takes, per usual.

One possibility is that Crater II may represent the “bright” tip of the extremely low surface brightness “stealth” fossils predicted by Bovill & Ricotti. Their predictions are encouraging for getting the size and surface brightness in the right ballpark. But I see no reason in this context to expect such a low velocity dispersion. They anticipate dispersions consistent with the ΛCDM discussion above, and correspondingly high mass-to-light ratios that are greater than observed for Crater 2 (M/L ≈ 104 rather than ~50).

A plausible suggestion I heard was from James Bullock. While noting that reionization should preclude the existence of galaxies in halos below 5 km/s, as we need for Crater 2, he suggested that tidal stripping could reduce an initially larger sub-halo to this point. I am dubious about this, as my impression from the simulations of Penarrubia  was that the outer regions of the sub-halo were stripped first while leaving the inner regions (where the NFW cusp predicts high velocity dispersions) largely intact until near complete dissolution. In this context, it is important to bear in mind that the low velocity dispersion of Crater 2 is observed at large radii (1 kpc, not tens of pc). Still, I can imagine ways in which this might be made to work in this particular case, depending on its orbit. Tony Sohn has an HST program to measure the proper motion; this should constrain whether the object has ever passed close enough to the center of the Milky Way to have been tidally disrupted.

Josh Bland-Hawthorn pointed out to me that he made simulations that suggest a halo with a mass as low as 107 M☉ could make stars before reionization and retain them. This contradicts much of the conventional wisdom outlined above because they find a much lower (and in my opinion, more realistic) feedback efficiency for supernova feedback than assumed in most other simulations. If this is correct (as it may well be!) then it might explain Crater 2, but it would wreck all the feedback-based explanations given for all sorts of other things in ΛCDM, like the missing satellite problem and the cusp-core problem. We can’t have it both ways.

maxresdefault
Without super-efficient supernova feedback, the Local Group would be filled with a million billion ultrafaint dwarf galaxies!

I’m sure people will come up with other clever ideas. These will inevitably be ad hoc suggestions cooked up in response to a previously inconceivable situation. This will ring hollow to me until we explain why MOND can predict anything right at all.

In the case of Crater 2, it isn’t just a matter of retrospectively explaining the radial acceleration relation. One also has to explain why exceptions to the RAR occur following the very specific, bizarre, and unique EFE formulation of MOND. If I could do that, I would have done so a long time ago.

No matter what we come up with, the best we can hope to do is a post facto explanation of something that MOND predicted correctly in advance. Can that be satisfactory?

Pulp Science

Pulp Science

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’?

xkcd’d

xkcd’d

So the always humorous, unabashedly nerdy xkcd recently published this comic:

astrophysics

This hits close to home for me, in many ways.

First, this is an every day experience for me. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t get an email, or worse, a phone call, from some wanna-be who has the next theory of everything. I try to be polite. I even read some of what I get sent. Mostly this is a waste of my time. News flash: at most, only one of you can be right. If the next Einstein is buried somewhere amongst these unsolicited, unrefereed, would-be theories, I wouldn’t know, because I do not have the time to sort through them all.

Second, it is true – it is a logical possibility that what we call dark matter is really just a proxy for a change in the law of gravity on galactic scales. It is also true that attempts to change the law of gravity on large scales do not work to explain the dark matter problem. (Attempts to do this to address the dark energy problem are a separate matter.)

Third, it is a logical fallacy. The implication of the structure of the statement is that the answer has to be dark matter. One could just as accurately turn the statement on its head and say “Yes, everybody has already had the idea, maybe it isn’t modified gravity – there’s just a lot of invisible mass on large scales!’ It sounds good but it doesn’t really fit the data.”

The trick is what data we’re talking about.

I have reviewed this problem many times (e.g., McGaugh & de Blok 1998, Sanders & McGaugh 2002, McGaugh 2006, Famaey & McGaugh 2012, McGaugh 2015). Some of the data favor dark matter, some favor modified gravity. Which is preferable depends on how we weigh the different lines of evidence. If you think the situation is clear cut, you are not well informed of all the facts.* Most of the data that we cite to require dark matter are rather ambiguous and can usually be just as well interpreted in terms of modified gravity. The data that isn’t ambiguous points in opposite directions – see the review papers.

Note that I was careful above to say “galactic scales.” The scale that turns out to matter is not a size scale but an acceleration scale. Galaxies aren’t just big. The centripetal accelerations that hold stars in their orbits are incredibly low: about one part in 1011 of what we feel on the surface of the Earth. The only data that test gravity on this acceleration scale are the data that evince the missing mass problem. We only infer the need for dark matter at these very low accelerations. So while it is not possible to construct an empirically successful theory that modifies gravity on some large length scale, it remains a possibility that a modification can be made on an acceleration scale.

That the mass discrepancy problem occurs on an acceleration scale and not at some length scale has been known for many years. Failing to make the distinction between a length scale and an acceleration scale is fine for a comic strip. It is not OK for scientists working in the field. And yet I routinely encounter reasonable, intelligent scientists who are experts in some aspect of the dark matter problem but are unaware of this essential fact.

To end with another comic, the entire field is easily mocked:

bloomcountydarkmatter

The astute scientific reader will recognize that Mr. Breathed is conflating dark matter with dark energy. Before getting too dismissive, consider how you would go about explaining to him that our cosmic paradigm requires not just invisible mass to provide extra gravity, but also dark energy to act like antigravity. Do you really think that doubling down on ad hoc hypotheses makes for a strong case?

*Or worse, you may fall prey to cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias.

Another quick-trick simulation result

Another quick-trick simulation result

There has already been one very quick attempt to match ΛCDM galaxy formation simulations to the radial acceleration relation (RAR). Another rapid preprint by the Durham group has appeared. It doesn’t do everything I ask for from simulations, but it does do a respectable number of them. So how does it do?

First, there is some eye-rolling language in the title and the abstract. Two words: natural (in the title) and accommodated (in the abstract). I can’t not address these before getting to the science.

Natural. As I have discussed repeatedly in this blog, and in the refereed literature, there is nothing natural about this. If it were so natural, we’d have been talking about it since Bob Sanders pointed this out in 1990, or since I quantified it better in 1998 and 2004. Instead, the modus operandi of much of the simulation community over the past couple of decades has been to pour scorn on the quality of rotation curve data because it did not look like their simulations. Now it is natural?

42300179

Accommodate. Accommodation is an important issue in the philosophy of science. I have no doubt that the simulators are clever enough to find a way to accommodate the data. That is why I have, for 20 years, been posing the question What would falsify ΛCDM? I have heard (or come up myself with) only a few good answers, and I fear the real answer is that it can’t be. It is so flexible, with so many freely adjustable parameters, that it can be made to accommodate pretty much anything. I’m more impressed by predictions that come ahead of time.

That’s one reason I want to see what the current generation of simulations say before entertaining those made with full knowledge of the RAR. At least these quick preprints are using existing simulations, so while not predictions in the strictest since, at least they haven’t been fine-tuned specifically to reproduce the RAR. Lots of other observations, yes, but not this particular one.

Ludlow et al. show a small number of model rotation curves that vary from wildly unrealistic (their NoAGN models peak at 500 km/s; no disk galaxy in the universe comes anywhere close to that… Vera Rubin once offered a prize for any that exceeded 300 km/s) to merely implausible (their StrongFB model is in the right ballpark, but has a very rapidly rising rotation curve). In all cases, their dark matter halos seem little affected by feedback, in contrast to the claims of other simulation groups. It will be interesting to follow the debate between simulators as to what we should really expect.

They do find a RAR-like correlation. Remarkably, the details don’t seem to depend much on the feedback scheme. This motivates some deeper consideration of the RAR.

The RAR plots observed centripetal acceleration, gobs, against that predicted by the observed distribution of baryons, gbar. We chose these coordinates because this seems to be the fundamental empirical correlation, and the two quantities are measured in completely independent ways: rotation curves vs. photometry. While measured independently, some correlation is guaranteed: physically, gobs includes gbar. Things only become weird when the correlation persists as gobs ≫ gbar.

The models are well fit by the functional form we found for the data, but with a different value of the fit parameter: g† = 3 rather than 1.2 x 10-10 m s-2. That’s a factor of 2.5 off – a factor that is considered fatal for MOND in galaxy clusters. Is it OK here?

The uncertainty in the fit value is 1.20 ± 0.02. So formally, 3 is off by 90σ. However, the real dominant uncertainty is systematic: what is the true mean mass-to-light ratio at 3.6 microns? We estimated the systematic uncertainty to be ± 0.24 based on an extensive survey of plausible stellar population models. So 3 is only 7.5σ off.

The problem with systematic uncertainties is that they do not obey Gaussian statistics. So I decided to see what we might need to do to obtain g† = 3 x 10-10 m s-2. This can be done if we take sufficient liberties with the mass-to-light ratio.

rar_lowmlforhighgdagger
The radial acceleration relation as observed (open points fit by blue line) and modeled (red line). Filled points are the same data with the disk mass-to-light ratio reduced by a factor of two.

Indeed, we can get in the right ball park simply by reducing the assumed mass-to-light ratio of stellar disks by a factor of two. We don’t make the same factor of two adjustment to the bulge components, because the data don’t approach the 1:1 line at high accelerations if this is done. So rather than our fiducial model with M*/L(disk) = 0.5 M⊙/L⊙ and M*/L(bulge) = 0.7 M⊙/L⊙ (open points in plot), we have M*/L(disk) = 0.25 M⊙/L⊙ and M*/L(bulge) = 0.7 M⊙/L⊙ (filled points in plot). Lets pretend like we don’t know anything about stars and ignore the fact that this change corresponds to truncating the IMF of the stellar disk so that M dwarfs don’t exist in disks, but they do in bulges. We then find a tolerable match to the simulations (red line).

Amusingly, the data are now more linear than the functional form we assumed. If this is what we thought stars did, we wouldn’t have picked the functional form the simulations apparently reproduce. We would have drawn a straight line through the data – at least most of it.

That much isn’t too much of a problem for the models, though it is an interesting question whether they get the shape of the RAR right for the normalization they appear to demand. There is a serious problem though. That becomes apparent in the lowest acceleration points, which deviate strongly below the red line. (The formal error bars are smaller than the size of the points.)

It is easy to understand why this happens. As we go from high to low accelerations, we transition from bulge dominance to stellar disk dominance to gas dominance. Those last couple of bins are dominated by atomic gas, not stars. So it doesn’t matter what we adopt for the stellar mass-to-light ratio. That’s where the data sit: well off the simulated line.

Is this fatal for these models? As presented, yes. The simulations persist in predicting higher accelerations than observed. This has been the problem all along.

There are other issues. The scatter in the simulated RAR is impressively small. Much smaller than I expected. Smaller even than the observational scatter. But the latter is dominated by observational errors: the intrinsic relation is much tighter, consistent with a δ-function. The intrinsic scatter is what they should be comparing their results to. They either fail to understand, or conveniently choose to gloss over, the distinction between intrinsic scatter and that induced by random errors.

It is worth noting that some of the same authors make this same mistake – and it is a straight up mistake – in discussing the scatter in the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation. The assertion there is “the scatter in the simulated BTF is smaller than observed”. But the observed scatter is dominated by observational errors, which we have taken great care to assess. Once this is done, there is practically no room left over for intrinsic scatter, which is what the models display. This is important, as it completely inverts the stated interpretation. Rather than having less scatter than observed, the simulations exhibit more scatter than allowed.

Can these problems be fixed? No doubt. See the comments on accommodation above.

What is the Baryon Density, Anyway?

To continue… we had been discussing the baryon content of the universe, and the missing baryon problem. The problem exists because of a mismatch between the census of baryons locally and the density of baryons estimated from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). How well do we know the latter? Either extremely well, or perhaps not so well, depending on which data we query.

At the outset let me say I do not doubt the basic BBN picture. BBN is clearly one of the great successes of early universe cosmology: it is pretty clear this is how the universe works. However, the absolute value we obtain for Ωb depends on the mutual agreement of independent measurements of the abundances of different isotopes. These agree well enough to establish the BBN paradigm, but not so well as to discount all debate about the exact value of Ωb – contrary to the impression one might get from certain segments of the literature.

BBN is thoroughly discussed elsewhere so I won’t belabor it here. In a nutshell, the primordial abundance of the isotopes of the light elements – especially deuterium, helium, and lithium relative to hydrogen – depends on the baryon density. Each isotope provides an independent constraint. This is perhaps the most (only?) over-constrained problem in cosmology.

It is instructive to look at the estimates of the baryon density over time. These are usually quoted as the baryon density multiplied by the square of the Hubble parameter normalized to 100 km/s/Mpc (Ωbh2). This is a hangover from the bad old days when we didn’t know H0 to a factor of 2.

bbnblog

The graph shows the baryon densities estimated by various methods by different people over the years. It starts with the compilation of Walker et al. (1991). By this time, BBN was already a mature subject, with an authoritative answer based on evidence from all the isotopes. Ωbh2 = 0.0125 ± 0.0025. It was Known, Khaleesi.

In the mid-90s there was a debate about the primordial deuterium abundance, largely between Hogan and Tytler. Deuterium (red tirangles) is a great isotope to measure for BBN because it is very sensitive to the baryon density, as it tends to get gobbled up into heavier isotopes like helium when there are lots of baryons around to react with. Moreover, one could measure it in the absorption along the line of sight to high redshift QSOs, presumably catching it before any nasty interstellar processing has polluted the primordial abundance. Unfortunately, Hogan found a high D/H (and hence a low baryon density) while Tytler found low D/H (hence high Ωbh2). This is a rare case when one side (Hogan) actually admitted error, and the standard density shot up to 0.019. At the time (1998) that seemed outrageously high, 2.6σ above the previous standard value. But we had bigger problems to wrap our head around (Λ) at the time, so this was accepted without much fuss.

The other elements (helium and lithium) preferred something in between at that time. Their uncertainties were large enough this didn’t seem a big deal. Helium in particular is notoriously hard to pin down. Not only is the measurement hard to make, but helium (unlike deuterium) is not particularly sensitive to the baryon density. You get about a quarter helium by mass out of BBN for any reasonable baryon density, so it is a great indicator that the basic picture is correct. But you really have to nail down the third decimal point to help distinguish between slightly lower or higher Ωb. So the new normal became Ωbh2 = 0.019 ± 0.001.

That was the summation of decades of work, but it wasn’t to last long. In 2000, cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments like BOOMERanG and MAXIMA began to resolve the acoustic power spectrum. A funny thing emerged: the second peak was lower than expected. (At least by other people. I totally nailed this prediction.) In order to explain the low second peak conventionally (in the context of ΛCDM), one had to crank up the baryon density. This first point from the CMB (blue in plot above) was well above previously suspected levels.

Note the dotted lines in the figure. These denote the maximum baryon density (horizontal line) before the first relevant CMB data (vertical line). No isotope of any light element had ever suggested Ωbh2 > 0.02 prior to CMB constraints. Once those became available, this changed.

The change happened first to deuterium, which has not suggested Ωbh2 < 0.02 since the CMB said so. Helium was slower to respond, but it has also drifted slowly upward. Lithium has remained put. This is a serious problem that has not been satisfactorily resolved. The general presumption seems to be that this is a detail to be blamed on stellar rotation or some similarly obscure mechanism.

Different communities work on each of these elements. Deuterium is the subject of high redshift astronomy, a field closely coupled to cosmology. Helium is the subject of nearby galaxies, a field aware of cosmology but less strongly tied to it. Lithium is measured in stars, a field that is not coupled to cosmology. Given the long history of confirmation bias in cosmology, it is hard not to be suspicious of the temporal variation in BBN baryon density estimates. The isotope most closely associated with cosmology, deuterium, quickly fell in line with the “right” result from the CMB. Helium has more gradually followed suit, while lithium continues to prefer lower baryon densities.

I do not doubt the sincerity of any particular measurement. But people talk. They have arguments about what is right and why. The communities that are closest are most likely to influence each other. Those further apart are less likely to be swayed. If we were suffering from confirmation bias, this is what it would look like.

The ΛCDM picture requires us to believe the CMB value, currently  Ωbh2 = 0.02230 ± 0.00023 (Planck 2015). You simply cannot fit the acoustic power spectrum with a number much different. Modern deuterium measurements are consistent with that, within the errors, so that has to be right, no? Lets just ignore lithium.

If instead we ignore the CMB and its associated baggage, this is not at all obvious. Perhaps the pre-CMB deuterium measurement is the one to trust. That is a bit higher than lithium, but consistent within the errors. Helium can go either way. So from a pure BBN (no CMB) perspective, maybe it is lithium and the other isotopes that are right and it is CMB fits that are misleading.

Where does this leave us with the missing baryons? The figure below shows the time evolution of the baryon density. The area is proportional to Ωbh2. This has grown over time, by an amount greater than the stated uncertainties (the circles show the change in area allowed). The baryon density has nearly doubled, being now ~4σ above the Known value of Walker.

baryoncontentblog

As the baryon density has grown, the missing baryon problem has grown worse. If we still had the classical Walker baryon density, there would be no missing baryon problem at al.  Indeed, Shull’s inventory is a bit too large, though it is consistent within the errors. If we go up to the pre-CMB deuterium value, then there is a missing baryon problem. It is big enough to solve the cluster problem in MOND, but without a lot left over. If we insist on the CMB-fitted baryon density, then the missing baryon problem is severe, at a level where it is hard to figure where else they could be.

IF ΛCDM is the right picture, then I think a high baryon density is unavoidable. Accepting this, there must then be something wrong with lithium. There is no lack of papers motivated by this line of reasoning, though the most common approach seems to be to ignore lithium entirely. I’ve heard a lot of talks bragging about the excellent agreement between BBN and the CMB, but this  really only applies to post-CMB deuterium.

IF BBN, as originally posed, is correct so that lithium and the other pre-CMB measurements are not misleading, then it becomes impossible to fit the CMB with pure General Relativity. This is the case even if we spot it non-baryonic cold dark matter and dark energy. This situation might be considered a motivation to seek extensions of the theory.

Regardless of where the right answer ultimately lies, there is real tension between primordial lithium measurements and the ΛCDM interpretation of the CMB. Something is fishy in the state of the early universe.

Missing baryons in LCDM and MOND

Missing baryons in LCDM and MOND

People often ask for a straight up comparison between ΛCDM and MOND. This is rarely possible because the two theories are largely incommensurable. When one is eloquent the other is mute, and vice-versa.

It is possible to attempt a comparison about how bad the missing baryon problem is in each. In CDM, we expect a relation between dynamical mass and rotation speed of the form Mvir ∝ Vvir3. In MOND the equivalent relation has a different power law, Mb ∝ Vf4.

In CDM we speak of virial quantities – the total mass of everything, including dark matter, and the circular speed way out at the virial radius (typically far outside the luminous extent of a galaxy). In MOND, we use the observed baryonic mass (stars and gas) and the flat rotation speed. These are not the same, so strictly speaking, still incommensurable. But they provide a way to compare the baryonic mass with the total inferred mass.

missingbaryonsinLCDMMOND

This plot shows the detected baryon fraction as a function of mass. The top panel is identical to last time. In ΛCDM we see most of the baryons in the most massive systems, but progressively less in smaller systems. In MOND the situation is reversed. The check-sum is complete in galaxies, but falls short in clusters of galaxies. (Note that the error bars have been divided by an extra power of velocity in the lower panel, which amplifies their appearance.) The reader may judge for himself which of these problems is more serious.

Critics of MOND frequently cite the bullet cluster as having falsified MOND. Period. No room for debate. See the linked press release from NASA: dark_matter_proven.

OK, what kind of dark matter? As discussed previously, we need at least two kinds of dark matter in ΛCDM: non-baryonic cold dark matter (some entirely novel particle) and dark baryons (normal matter not yet detected). Unfortunately, “dark matter” is a rather generic, catch-all term that allows these two distinct problems to be easily confused. We see the need for unseen mass in objects like the bullet cluster, and make the natural leap to conclude that we are seeing the non-baryonic cold dark matter that we expect in cosmology. There it is, case closed.

This is an example of a logical fallacy. There is nothing about the missing mass problem suffered by MOND in clusters that demands the unseen mass be non-baryonic. Indeed, even in ΛCDM we suffer some missing baryon problem on top of the need for non-baryonic cold dark matter. In both theories, there is a missing baryon problem in clusters. In both cases, this missing baryon problem is more severe at small radii, suggestive of a connection with the also-persistent cooling flow problem. Basically, the X-ray emitting gas observed in the inner 200 kpc or so of clusters have time to cool, so it ought to be condensing into – what? Stars? MACHOs? Something normal but as yet unseen.

It is not obvious that cooling flows can solve MOND’s problem in clusters. The problem is both serious and persistent. It was first pointed out in 1988 by The & White, and is discussed in this 2002 Annual Review. A factor or two (or even a bit more) of the expected baryons in clusters are missing (the red portion of the plot above). Note, however, that this problem was known long before the bullet cluster was discovered. From this perspective, it would have been very strange had the bullet cluster not shown the same discrepancy as every other cluster in the sky.

I do not know if the missing mass in clusters is baryonic. I am at a loss to suggest a plausible form that the missing baryons might be lurking in. Certainly others have tried. But lets take a step back and as if it is plausible.

As seen above, we have a missing baryon problem in both theories. It just manifests in different places. Advocates of ΛCDM do not, by and large, seem to consider the baryon discrepancy in galaxies to be a problem. The baryons were blown out, or are there but just not detected yet. No Problem. I’m not as lenient, but if we are to extend that grace to ΛCDM, why not also to MOND?

Recall that Shull et al. found that about 30% of baryons remain undetected in the local universe. In order to solve the problem MOND suffers in clusters, we need a mass in baryons about equal to the ICM wedge in this pie chart:

GlobalMissingBaryons

Note that the missing wedge is much larger than the ICM wedge. There are more than enough baryons out there to solve this problem. Indeed, it hardly makes a dent in the global missing baryon problem. Those baryons “must” be somewhere, so why not some in clusters of galaxies?

The short answer is cognitive dissonance. If one comes to the problem sure of the answer, then one sees in the data what one expects to see. MOND fits rotation curves? That’s just a fluke: it bounces off the wall of cognitive dissonance without serious consideration. MOND needs dark matter in clusters? Well of course – we knew that it had to be wrong in the first place.

I understand this perspective exceedingly well. It is where I started from myself. But the answer I wanted is not the conclusion that a more balanced evaluation of the evidence leads one to. The challenge is not in the evidence – it is to give an unorthodox idea a chance in the first place.

Natural Law

Natural Law
or why Vera Rubin and Albert Bosma deserve a Nobel Prize

Natural Law: a concise statement describing some aspect of Nature.

In the sciences, we teach about Natural Law all the time. We take them for granted. But we rarely stop and think what we mean by the term.

Usually Natural Laws are items of textbook knowledge. A shorthand all in a particular field known and agree to. This also brings with it an air of ancient authority, which has a flip side. The implicit operating assumption is that there are no Natural Laws left to be discovered, which implies that it is dodgy to even discuss such a thing.

The definition offered above is adopted, in paraphrase, from a report of the National Academy which I can no longer track down. Links come and go. The one I have in mind focussed on biological evolution. To me, as a physical scientist, it seems a rather soft definition. One would like it to be quantitative, no?

Lets consider a known example: Kepler’s Laws of planetary motion. Everyone who teaches introductory astronomy teaches these, and in most cases refers to them as Laws of Nature without a further thought. Which is to say, virtually everyone agrees that Kepler’s Laws are valid examples of Natural Law in a physical science. Indeed, this sells them rather short given their importance in the Scientific Revolution.

Kepler’s Three Laws of Planetary Motion:

  1. Planetary orbits are elliptical in shape with the sun at one focus.
  2. A line connecting a planet with the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times.
  3. P2 = a3

In the third law, P is the sidereal period of a planet’s orbit measured in years, and a is the semi-major axis of the ellipse measured in Astronomical Units. This is a natural system of units for an observer living on Earth. One does not need to know the precise dimensions of the solar system: the earth-sun separation provides the ruler.

To me, the third law is the most profound, leading as it does to Newton’s Universal Law of Gravity. At the time, however, the first law was the most profound. The philosophical prejudice/theoretical presumption (still embedded in the work of Copernicus) was that the heavens should be perfect. The circle was a perfect shape, ergo the motions of the heavenly bodies should be circular. Note the should be. We often get in trouble when we tell Nature how things Should Be.

By abandoning purely circular motion, Kepler was repudiating thousands of years of astronomical thought, tradition, and presumption. To imagine heavenly bodies following elliptical orbits that are almost but not quite circular must have seemed to sully the heavens themselves. In retrospect, we would say the opposite. The circle is merely a special case of a more general set of possibilities. From the aesthetics of modern physics, this is more beautiful than insisting that everything be perfectly round.

It is interesting what Kepler himself said about Tycho Brahe’s observations of the position of Mars that led him to his First Law. Mars was simply not in the right place for a circular orbit. It was close, which is why the accuracy of Tycho’s work was required to notice it. Even then, it was such a small effect that it must have been tempting to ignore.

If I had believed that we could ignore these eight minutes [of arc], I would have patched up my hypothesis accordingly. But, since it is not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed the road to a complete reformation in astronomy.

This sort of thing happens all the time in astronomy, right up to and including the present day. Which are the important observations? What details can be ignored? Which are misleading and should be ignored? The latter can and does happen, and it is an important part of professional training to learn to judge which is which. (I mention this because this skill is palpably fading in the era of limited access to telescopes but easy access to archival data, accelerated by the influx of carpetbaggers who lack appropriate training entirely.)

Previous to Tycho’s work, the available data were reputedly not accurate enough to confidently distinguish positions to 8 arcminutes. But Tycho’s data were good to about ±1 arcminute. Hence it was “not permissible to ignore” – a remarkable standard of intellectual honesty that many modern theorists do not meet.

I also wonder about counting the Laws, which is a psychological issue. We like things in threes. The first Law could count as two: (i) the shape of the orbit, and (ii) the location of the sun with respect to that orbit. Obviously those are linked, so it seems fair to phrase it as 3 Laws instead of 4. But when I pose this as a problem on an exam, it is worth 4 points: students must know both (i) and (ii), and often leave out (ii).

The second Law sounds odd to modern ears. This is Kepler trying to come to grips with the conservation of angular momentum – a Conservation Law that wasn’t yet formally appreciated. Nowadays one might write J = VR = constant and be done with it.

The way the first two laws are phrased is qualitative. They satisfy the definition given at the outset. But this phrasing conceals a quantitative basis. One can write the equation for an ellipse, and must for any practical application of the first law. One could write the second law dA/dt = constant or rephrase it in terms of angular momentum. So these do meet the higher standard expected in physical science of being quantitative.

The third law is straight-up quantitative. Even the written version is just a long-winded way of saying the equation. So Kepler’s Laws are not just a qualitative description inherited in an awkward form from ancient times. They do in fact quantify an important aspect of Nature.

What about modern examples? Are there Laws of Nature still to be discovered?

I have worked on rotation curves for over two decades now. For most of that time, it never occurred to me to ask this question. But I did have the experience of asking for telescope time to pursue how far out rotation curves remained flat. This was, I thought, an exciting topic, especially for low surface brightness galaxies, which seemed to extend much further out into their dark matter halos than bright spirals. Perhaps we’d see evidence for the edge of the halo, which must presumably come sometime.

TACs (Telescope Allocation Committees) did not share my enthusiasm. Already by the mid-90s it was so well established that rotation curves were flat that it was deemed pointless to pursue further. We had never seen any credible hint of a downturn in V(R), no matter how far out we chased it, so why look still harder? As one reviewer put it, “Is this project just going to produce another boring rotation curve?”

Implicit in this statement is that we had established a new law of nature:

The rotation curves of disk galaxies become approximately flat at large radii, a condition that persists indefinitely.

This is quantitative: V(R) ≈ constant for R → ∞. Two caveats: (1) I do mean approximately – the slope dV/dR of the outer parts of rotation curves is not exactly zero point zero zero zero. (2) We of course do not trace rotation curves to infinity, which is why I say indefinitely. (Does anyone know a mathematical symbol for that?)

Note that it is not adequate to simply say that the rotation curves of galaxies are non-Keplerian (V ∼ 1/√R). They really do stay pretty nearly flat for a very long ways. In SPARC we see that the outer rotation velocity remains constant to within 5% in almost all cases.

Never mind whether we interpret flat rotation curves to mean that there is dark matter or modified gravity or whatever other hypothesis we care to imagine. It had become conventional to refer to the asymptotic rotation velocity as V∞ well before I entered the field. So, as a matter of practice, we have already agreed that this is a natural law. We just haven’t paused to recognize it as such – largely because we no longer think in those terms.

Flat rotation curves have many parents. Mort Roberts was one of the first to point them out. People weren’t ready to hear it – or at least, to appreciate their importance. Vera Rubin was also early, and importantly, persistent. Flat rotation curves are widely known in large part to her efforts. Also important to the establishment of flat rotation curves was the radio work of Albert Bosma. He showed that flatness persisted indefinitely, which was essential to overcoming objections to optical-only data not clearly showing a discrepancy (see the comments of Kalnajs at IAU 100 (1983) and how they were received.)

And that, my friends, is why Vera Rubin and Albert Bosma deserve a Nobel prize. It isn’t that they “just” discovered dark matter. They identified a new Law of Nature.

The Central Density Relation

I promised more results from SPARC. Here is one. The dynamical mass surface density of a disk galaxy scales with its central surface brightness.

This may sound trivial: surface density correlates with surface brightness. The denser the stars, the denser the mass. Makes sense, yes?

Turns out, this situation is neither simple nor obvious when dark matter is involved. The surface brightness traces stellar surface density while the dynamical mass surface density traces stars plus everything else, including dark matter. The latter need not care about the former when dark matter dominates.

Nevertheless, we’ve known there was some connection for some time. This first became clear to me in the mid-90s, when we discovered that low surface brightness galaxies did not shift off of the Tully-Fisher relation as expected. The only way to obtain this situation was to fine-tune the dynamical mass enclosed by the disk with the central surface brightness. Galaxies had to become systematically more dark matter dominated as surface brightness decreased (see Zwaan et al 1995). This was the genesis of the now common statement that low surface brightness galaxies are dark matter dominated (see also de Blok & McGaugh 1996; McGaugh & de Blok 1998).

This is an oversimplification. A more precise statement would be that dark matter dominates to progressively smaller radii in ever lower surface brightness galaxies. Even as dark matter comes to dominate, the dynamics “know” about the stellar distribution.

The rotation curve depends on the enclosed mass, dark as well as luminous. The rate of rise of the rotation curve from the origin correlates with surface brightness. Low surface brightness galaxies have slowly rising rotation curves while high surface brightness galaxies have steeply rising rotation curves. This is very systematic (e.g., Lelli et al 2013).

LellidVdRSB

The rate of rise of rotation curves (dV/dR) as a function of central surface brightness (from Lelli 2014).

Recently, Agris Kalnajs pointed out to us that in a paper written before even I was born, Toomre (1963) had shown how to obtain the central mass surface density of a thin disk from the rotation curve. This has largely been forgotten because dark matter complicates matters. However, we were able to show that Toomre’s formula returns the correct dynamical surface density within a factor of two even in the extreme case of complete domination by a spherical halo component. This breakthrough was enabled by Kalnajs pointing out a straightforward way to include disk thickness (Toomre assumed a razor thin disk) and Lelli pursuing this to the extreme case of a “spherical” disk with a flat rotation curve.

A factor of two is not much to quibble about when one has the large dynamic range of a sample like SPARC. After all, the data cover four orders of magnitude in central surface brightness. Variations in disk thickness and halo domination will only contribute a bit to the scatter.

Without further ado, here is the result:

CentralDensityRelation

The central dynamical mass surface density as a function of the central stellar surface density (left) and stellar mass (right). From Lelli et al (2016). Points are color coded by morphological type. The dashed line shows the 1:1 relation expected in the absence of dark matter.

The data show a clear correlation between mass surface density and surface brightness. At high surface brightness, the data have a slope and normalization consistent with stars being the dominant form of mass present. This is the long-known result of “maximum disk” (van Albada & Sancisi 1986). The observed distribution of stars does a good job of matching the inner rotation curve. It is only as you go further out, where rotation curves flatten, or to lower surface brightness that dark matter becomes necessary.

Something interesting happens as surface brightness declines. The data gradually depart from the line of unity. The dynamical surface density begins to exceed the stellar surface density, so we begin to need some dark matter. Stars and Newton alone can no longer explain the data for low surface brightness galaxies.

Note, however, that the data depart from the line of unity with a considerable degree of order. It is not like things go haywire as dark matter comes to dominate, as one might reasonably expect. After all, why should the mass surface density depend on the stellar surface density at all in the limit where the former greatly outweighs the latter? But it does: the correlation persists to the point that the mass surface density is predictable from the surface brightness.

It is not only rotation curves that show this behavior. A similar result was found from the vertical velocity dispersions of disks in the DiskMass survey. Specifically, Swaters et al (2014) show essentially the same plot. However, the DiskMass sample is necessarily restricted to rather high surface brightness galaxies. Consequently, those data show only a hint of the systematic departure from the line of unity, and one could argue that it is linear. A large number of low surface brightness galaxies with good data is key to our result (see the discussion of the sample in SPARC).

This empirical result sheds some light on the debate about dark matter halo profiles. The rotation curves of low surface brightness galaxies rise slowly. This is not consistent with NFW halos, as shown long ago (e.g., de Blok et al. 2001; Kuzio de Naray 2008, 2009, and many others). It is frequently argued that everything is OK with NFW, it is the data that are to blame. The basic idea is that somehow (usually for inadequate resolution, though sometimes other effects are invoked) rotation curves fail to show the steep predicted rise.  It is there! we are assured. We just can’t see it.

Beware of theorists blaming data that doesn’t do what they want. A recent example of this kind of argument is offered by Pineda et al. (2016). Their basic contention is that rotation curves cannot correctly recover the true mass distribution. They invoke a variety of effects to make it sound like one has no chance of recovering the central mass profile from rotation curves.

The figure above shows that this is manifestly nonsense. If the data were incapable of measuring the dynamical surface density, the figure would be a mess. In one galaxy we’d see one wrong thing, in another we’d see a different wrong thing. This would not correlate with surface brightness, or anything else: the y-axis would just be so much garbage. Instead, we see a strong correlation. Indeed, we understand the errors well enough to calculate that most of the scatter is observational. Yes, there are uncertainties. They do add scatter to the plot. A little. That means the true relation is even tighter.

There is a considerable literature in the same vein as Pineda et al. (2016). These concerns can be completely dismissed. Not only are they incorrect, they stem from a form of solution aversion: they don’t like the answer, so deny that it can be true. This attitude has no place in science.

What is theory?

What is theory?

OK, I’m not even going to try to answer that one. But I am going to do some comparison exploration.

A complaint often leveled against MOND is that it is not a theory. Or not a complete theory. Or somehow not a proper one. Sometimes people confuse MOND with the empirical observations that display MONDian phenomenology.

I would say that MOND is a hypothesis, as is dark matter. We observe a discrepancy between the motions observed in extragalactic systems and what is predicted by application of the known law of gravity to the mass visible in ordinary baryonic matter. Either we need more mass (dark matter) or need to change the force law (modify dynamical laws, i.e., gravity). MOND is just one example of the latter type of hypothesis.

Put this way, dark matter is the more conservative hypothesis. It doesn’t require any change to well established, fundamental theory. There’s just more mass there than we see.

But what is it? Dark matter as so far stated is not a valid scientific hypothesis. It is a concept – there is unseen stuff out there. To turn it into science, we need to hypothesize a specific candidate.

An example of a dark matter candidate that most people would agree has been falsified at this point is brown dwarfs. These are very faint, sub-stellar objects – failed stars if you like, things not quite massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion in their cores to shine as stars. In the early days of dark matter, it was quite reasonable to believe there could be an enormous amount of mass in the sum of these objects. Indeed, the mass spectrum of stars as then known (via the Salpeter IMF) diverged when extrapolated to the low masses of brown dwarfs. It appeared that there had to be lots of them, and their integrated mass could easily add up to lots and lots – potentially enough to be the dark matter.

The hypothesis of brown dwarf-like dark matter, dubbed MACHOs (MAssive Compact Halo Objects), was tested by a series of microlensing experiments. Remarkably, if you stare at the stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud long enough, you should occasionally witness a MACHO pass in front of one of them. You don’t see the MACHO directly, but you can see an enhancement to the brightness of the background star due to the gravitational lensing effect of the MACHO.

Long story short: microlensing events are observed, but not nearly enough are seen for the dark matter halo of the Milky Way to be composed of brown dwarf MACHOs. Nowadays we have a better handle on the stellar mass spectrum. Lots of brown dwarfs are indeed known, but nothing like the numbers necessary to compose the dark matter.

Many of us, including me, never gave MACHOs much of a chance. In order to add up to the total mass density we need in dark matter cosmologically, we need an amount 5 or 6 times as great as the density allowed in baryons by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. So MACHO dark matter would break some pretty fundamental theory after all.

The most popular hypothesis, then and now, is some form of non-baryonic dark matter. Most prominent among these are WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). This is a valid, specific hypothesis that can be tested in the laboratory. Indeed, it has been. If the WIMP hypothesis were correct, we really should have detected them by now. It only persists because it is very flexible: we can keep adjusting the interaction cross-section to keep them invisible.

It would be a long post to revisit all the ways in which the WIMP hypothesis has repeatedly disappointed. Here I’d like to point out merely that WIMPs are hypothetical particles that exist in a hypothetical supersymmetric sector. There are compelling theoretical arguments in favor of supersymmetry, but so far it too has repeatedly disappointed. Anybody else remember how the decay of the Bs meson was suppose to be the Golden Test of supersymmetry? No? Nobody seems to talk about it anymore because it flunked badly. So supersymmetry itself is in dire shape. No supersymmetry, no WIMPs.

Like WIMPs, supersymmetry can be made more complicated to avoid falsification. This allows it to persist, but it is not the sign of a healthy theory. Still, everybody seems to agree that it is a theory, and most people seem to think it is a good one.

Unlike MACHOs, WIMPs do require a fundamentally new theory. Supersymmetry is not a part of the highly successful Standard Model of particle physics. It is a hypothetical extension thereof. So they aren’t really as conservative as just saying there is some unseen mass. There have to be invisible particles that reside in an entirely novel and itself hypothetical dark sector. That they have never been detected in the laboratory, and so far we have zero laboratory evidence to support the existence of the supersymmetric sector in which they reside, despite enormous (and expensive) effort (e.g., the LHC), might strike some as cause for concern.

So why do WIMPs persist? Time lag and training. If you are an astronomer, you don’t really care what the dark matter particle is, just that it is there. You are unlikely to keep close tabs on the tribulations of dark matter detection experiments. If you are an astroparticle physicist, dark matter particles are your bread and butter. We all know the Standard Model is incomplete; surely the dark matter problem is just a sign of that. Suggesting that the problem might instead be with gravity is to admit that the entire field is an oxymoron. Yes, we need new physics. But that would be the wrong kind of new physics!

winnie-the-pooh-balloon-bees

The MOND hypothesis is an example of the wrong kind of new physics. No new particles; rather, new dynamics. The idea is to tweak the force law below a critical acceleration scale (of order 1 Å/s/s). Intriguingly, this can be interpreted as either a modification of gravity (which gets stronger) or of inertia (which gets less, so particles become easier to push around).

From such a hypothesis, one must construct a proper theory – whatever that is. One thing is for sure – the motivation is the opposite of supersymmetry. Supersymmetry is motivated by theory. It is a Good Idea that therefore ought to be true, even if it appears that Nature declined to implement it. MOND has no compelling theoretical motivation or basis. (Who ordered that?) Rather, it is empirically motivated. It started by seeking a possible explanation for a particular observation: the apparent flatness of spiral galaxy rotation curves. In this regard, it could be considered an effective theory, though it does have strong implications for what the underlying cause is.

The original (1983) MOND formula did not conserve energy or momentum. That’s not a property of a healthy theory. Some people seem to think it is still stuck there.

The first step towards building a proper theory was taken by Bekenstein and Milgrom in 1984 with AQUAL. They introduced an aquadratic Lagrangian that led to a modified Poisson equation, a form of modified gravity. Being derived form a Lagrangian, it automatically satisfies the conservation laws.

Since then, a variety of MOND theories have been posited. By this, I mean distinct theories that lead to the hypothesized behavior at low acceleration. These may be modifications of either gravity or inertia, and can lead to subtly different higher order predictions.

So far most MOND theories are extensions of Newtonian dynamics. MOND always contains Newton in the high acceleration limit, just as General Relativity contains Newton in the appropriate limit. The trick is to write a theory that does both. That’s the theoretical Holy Grail.

The following Venn diagram might help:

GravityTheoryVennDiagram

Both MOND and General Relativity encompass Newtonian dynamics. However, they do not contain each other. Since General Relativity came first, I think when people say MOND is not a theory they usually mean that it doesn’t capture all the previous theory that it needs to. We know General Relativity is correct – so far as we have tested it – so it doesn’t suffice to write down a theory that is merely an extension of Newton. We need a theory that does both – the Holy Grail.

Of course I agree that we want to have it all. I also think it is appropriate to take one step at a time. If Newtonian dynamics is in itself a valid theory – and I think it is – the so too is MOND, as it contains all of Newton in the appropriate limit. MOND is an incomplete theory, but it is certainly a theory.

For many years, an argument against MOND was that Bekenstein had sought the Holy Grail long and hard without success. Bekenstein was really smart, implying that if he couldn’t do it, it couldn’t be done.  In 2004, Bekenstein published TeVeS (for Tensor-Vector-Scalar), the first example of a theory that contained both General Relativity and MOND without obviously having some dreadful failing, like ghosts. The argument then became that TeVeS was inelegant.

It is not clear that TeVeS is the correct generalized version of General Relativity. Indeed, it is not the only such theory possible. Hence the question mark in the Venn diagram. If we falsify TeVeS, it doesn’t falsify the MOND hypothesis – just that particular realization thereof.

What theory the question mark in the Venn diagram represents is what we should be trying to figure out. Unfortunately, most scientists interested in the subject are not trained nor equipped to do this sort of work, and for the most part are conditioned to be actively hostile to the project. That’s the wrong kind of new physics!

I find this a strange attitude. We all know that, as yet, there is no widely accepted theory of quantum theory. In this regard, General Relativity is itself incomplete. It is a noble endeavor to seek a quantum theory of gravity. How can we be sure that there is no intermediate step? Perhaps some of the difficulty in getting there stems from playing with an incomplete deck. I sometimes wonder if some string theorist has already come up with the correct theory but discarded it because it predicted this crazy low acceleration behavior he didn’t know might actually be desirable.

Whatever the final theory may be, be it dark matter based or a modification of dynamics, it must explain the empirical phenomena we observe. An enormous amount of galaxy phenomenology can be put down to one simple fact: galaxies behave as if MOND is the effective force law. We can write down a single formula that describes the dynamics of hundreds of measured galaxies and has had tremendous predictive success. If you don’t find that compelling, your physical intuition needs a check up.