Galaxy Rotation Curves Without Non-B. Dark Matter

marcus

This time the news is that on 21 September this paper was accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal. It will appear in January.

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0506370
Galaxy Rotation Curves Without Non-Baryonic Dark Matter
J. R. Brownstein, J. W. Moffat
43 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables, 101 galaxies.

Submitted to ApJ, June 20, 2005. Accepted for publication in ApJ, September 21, 2005. To be published in ApJ 636 (January 10, 2006)

Graphically the fits look impressively good. We have seen this from Moffat before. There are about 100 plots for individual galaxies.

Plus there is a lot of other stuff, like about clusters---plots and tables.

the trouble is Moffat's work is not exactly main stream. he does not assume dark matter. It must be something of a struggle to get a paper like this published. the thought that it could conceivably be right makes one a little giddy

perhaps SpaceTiger will have something bracing to say about the Moffaty modification of gravity.

Chronos

You might be able to dance around dark matter to model galaxy rotation curves, but there is no reasonable way to avoid dark matter when you look at SDSS and WMAP data without discarding things like the FRW model, big bang, inflation and expansion. Right now that looks like recommending exploratory brain surgery to explain a headache. Don't get me wrong, I'm not railing against solving rotation curves without dark matter. I only contend this is a baby step. More difficult issues remain to be addressed. For example, see Probing the Darkness:
http://www.seasky.org/cosmic/sky7a11.html