Discovered a way to make MOND fully relativistic

  • Context: Graduate 
  • Thread starter Thread starter pervect
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    mond Relativistic
Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the potential for making Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) fully relativistic, particularly through the work of Bekenstein. Participants explore the implications of this approach, its complexities, and its relationship to general relativity (GR), as well as its observational motivations.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants note that Bekenstein's work represents a significant attempt to reconcile MOND with relativistic frameworks, suggesting it is one of the few alternatives to GR grounded in observational data.
  • Others highlight the complexity of Bekenstein's relativistic version of MOND, questioning its practicality and expressing a desire for feedback from critics of MOND.
  • It is mentioned that Bekenstein and Milgrom, the originator of MOND, are both Israeli scientists, which may influence their collaborative perspectives on the theory.
  • Some participants point out existing challenges, such as the inability of the theory to achieve a perfect Newtonian limit in certain astrophysical contexts, indicating that further work is needed to address these issues.
  • There is a suggestion that if TeVeS (the relativistic version of MOND) can make distinct predictions regarding gravitational lensing or rotation curves, these could be tested with existing observational data.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express interest in Bekenstein's approach, but there is no consensus on its effectiveness or feasibility. Multiple competing views regarding the implications and challenges of making MOND relativistic remain present.

Contextual Notes

Participants note the existence of "no go" theorems proposed by anti-MOND astronomers, which claim that a relativistic version of MOND could not be constructed, highlighting the theoretical challenges that remain unresolved.

pervect
Staff Emeritus
Science Advisor
Homework Helper
Insights Author
Messages
10,484
Reaction score
1,636
I ran across this some time ago (probably in this forum, somewhere or other) - but I thought it was quite interesting at the time.

It's one of the very few alternatives to GR that is actually inspired by considerations of actual observation.

Basically, someone feels that they've discovered a way to make MOND fully relativistic.

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0412652

So I thought I'd toss it out again and see what other people thought.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
pervect said:
I ran across this some time ago (probably in this forum, somewhere or other) - but I thought it was quite interesting at the time.

It's one of the very few alternatives to GR that is actually inspired by considerations of actual observation.

Basically, someone feels that they've discovered a way to make MOND fully relativistic.

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0412652

So I thought I'd toss it out again and see what other people thought.

I've been a regular on the topic. Just look at posts I've made under the link for my name and a good share of them discuss the topic. This paper was discussed at length, for example, here: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=58130
 
Last edited:
pervect said:
I ran across this some time ago (probably in this forum, somewhere or other) - but I thought it was quite interesting at the time.

It's one of the very few alternatives to GR that is actually inspired by considerations of actual observation.

Basically, someone feels that they've discovered a way to make MOND fully relativistic.

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0412652

So I thought I'd toss it out again and see what other people thought.

The someone is Bekenstein, the guy who brought you "black hole thermodynamics" and a corrected version of this paper just appeared at arXiv.
He makes a very favorable case for mond; but his relativistic version, while perhaps a good first stab, seems too complicated. It would be interesting to hear an anti-mond astronomer's comments.
 
Rob Woodside said:
The someone is Bekenstein, the guy who brought you "black hole thermodynamics" and a corrected version of this paper just appeared at arXiv.
He makes a very favorable case for mond; but his relativistic version, while perhaps a good first stab, seems too complicated. It would be interesting to hear an anti-mond astronomer's comments.

Bekestein is also a long time colleague of Milgrom who invented MOND. The are both Israeli scientists.

The main motivation for the relativistic version is to show that it is possible to craft a theory that is both MOND and relativistic and "well behaved". Several other papers by anti-mond astronomer's had suggested "no go" theorems that claimed that it couldn't be done.
 
It's certainly interesting, but as Bekenstein himself says "But some problems, such as the failure to achieve a perfect Newtonian limit in the outer solar system exist. There remains a large labor to assess how these may be fixed, and to extract consequences of TeVeS for the study of cosmological perturbations, gravitational wave astronomy, binary pulsar timing, and post-Newtonian tests regarding preferred frame effects, to name the most obvious.[/color]' (love that 'large labor'!)

The good news is that if TeVeS makes specific, concrete lensing or rotation curve predictions which are different for different types of objects (e.g. non-spherical vs spherical; size, mass, or density differences), it may be quite easy to test these using existing, publicly available data.
 

Similar threads

  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
3K
  • · Replies 11 ·
Replies
11
Views
5K
  • · Replies 19 ·
Replies
19
Views
4K
  • · Replies 15 ·
Replies
15
Views
2K
  • · Replies 18 ·
Replies
18
Views
2K
  • · Replies 71 ·
3
Replies
71
Views
7K
  • · Replies 3 ·
Replies
3
Views
2K
  • · Replies 72 ·
3
Replies
72
Views
12K
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
2K
  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
2K