John Moffat's STVGravity: Recognition by Physics Community?

[Kevin_Axion]

Is John Moffat's Scalar-Tensor-Vector Gravity an advancement of General Relativity? Is it acknowledged or recognized by the Theoretical Physics Community since it explains certain phenomenon such as Galaxy Rotation Curves and doesn't require directly observed dark matter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_curve

Here is a list of resources:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0506/0506021v7.pdf
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0506/0506370v4.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalar–tensor–vector_gravity

 

[Mentz114]

According to the (short) Wiki article it explains galactic rotation curves by fitting two adjustable parameters to the data. I don't think it is an advance on GR, but not for that reason alone.

 

[bcrowell]

Tensor-scalar theories have been around since 1960. "Acknowledged or recognized by the theoretical physics community" is kind of a vague criterion. It's not crank stuff: it was originated by respected relativists, published in peer-reviewed journals, and not found to be logically flawed. Whether the true laws of physics work that way is a question to be decided by experiment. Any such theory has GR as a special case, where some adjustable parameters are set to some specific values. In the case of the original Brans-Dicke tensor-scalar theory, solar-system observations in the 70's showed that those parameters had to be very close to the GR values. The same thing may or may not happen with Moffat's theory. The question for experimentalists to test would be whether, in some area other than galactic rotation curves, it makes predictions that are different from those of GR, and in that situation which theory matches up better with experiment. If Moffat's theory matches experiment and GR doesn't, then Moffat's theory would be an advance over GR. AFAIK no such observations have happened yet.