Mond confirmed?

[jacob navia]

I would like to know what the experts here have to say about this:

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Study_Plunges_Standard_Theory_Of_Cosmology_Into_Crisis_999.html

A flurry of similar articles has appeared in the last days:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090505061949.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090422085830.htm

What do you think?

Thanks

--
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatique
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32

[Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply]

In article <mt2.0-4637...@hercules.herts.ac.uk>, jacob navia
<ja...@nospam.org> writes:

> I would like to know what the experts here have to say about this:
>
> http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Study_Plunges_Standard_Theory_Of_Cosmology_Into_Crisis_999.html

The title shows a basic misunderstanding of how science works. It is
extremely rare that one study can plunge a well established theory into
crisis. At most, it might give a hint of the direction of modification
of the theory.

> A flurry of similar articles has appeared in the last days:
>
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090505061949.htm
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090422085830.htm

There was one in the online edition of Der Spiegel (most important and
best German weekly news magazine) and I followed the links to the
original papers. I'm not a total sceptic regarding MOND, but I think
that any evidence for it, in order to be convincing, has to be
straightforward and free of any "fudge factors". In other words, the
work in question is too complex to see a clear signal for MOND. At most
a hint, but there are more convincing hints.

[Juergen Barsuhn]

Phillip Helbig... schrieb:

> .... jacob navia <ja...@nospam.org> writes:
>
>> I would like to know what the experts here have to say about this:
>>
>> http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Study_Plunges_Standard_Theory_Of_Cosmology_Into_Crisis_999.html
>

> The title shows a basic misunderstanding of how science works. ....

I would not be that harsh with such a newsletter. They need some kind of
exaggeration to attract their readers. Even well renowned organizations
sometimes use this kind of tricks. I remember that once a newsletter of
ESO titled "The beast in the belly" was removed to the junk folder by my
local spam filter....

>
......

> There was one in the online edition of Der Spiegel (most important and
> best German weekly news magazine)

.... really the best?

and I followed the links to the
> original papers. I'm not a total sceptic regarding MOND, but I think
> that any evidence for it, in order to be convincing, has to be
> straightforward and free of any "fudge factors". In other words, the
> work in question is too complex to see a clear signal for MOND. At most
> a hint, but there are more convincing hints.

The dark-matter hypothesis goes back to the 1930ies, when Zwicky found
that only some "unseen matter" was necessary to explain the otherwise
too rapid motions in the outskirts of some galaxies. But he certainly
did not yet think of mysterious non-baryonix matter that is only
detectable by its gravity. The present use of dark matter to explain a
motion that cannot be explained by the Newtonian force of the observed
matter appears to me as folloeing: Put dark matter at any place and in
any amount, unntil you can fit the observed motion. As you have
infinitely many parameters you will finally succeed.

The Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) faces much more difficulties.
There are only one or two additional parameters to formulate a generally
valid gravitational force (that deviates from Newton only at very low
amounts of the gravitational force).

It is ridiculous that the majority of astronomers believing in dark
matter and even better dark energy behave similar to the medieval chirch
in "excommunicating" the MOND-heretics". Obviously Kroupa and Metz avoid
any reference to MOND (atleast)in their abstracts.

All the best Jurgen

[Oh No]

[[Mod. note -- Recent posts in this thread seems to be diverging from
the science into meta-discussions about science. I hope future posters
can focus on the actual science itself.
-- jt]]

Thus spake Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply <hel...@astro.multiC
LOTHESvax.de>

I would have said that cosmology is already in crisis, and has been for
some time. Neither MOND nor CDM give consistent accounts of the
behaviour of matter, and both exist in a number of flavours and
variants, followed by different schools and individuals who stick their
heads in the sand and ignore evidence contrary to their opinion.

Although this should be considered crank behaviour, it is actually
normal in a period of crisis that this accounts for the behaviour of the
majority of scientists, who therefore refuse to acknowledge that there
is a crisis.

According to patterns of previous crises, the resolution will not have
much to do with any of the competing theories, and the fact of crisis
will not be widely recognised until after it is resolved, and even then
the main advocates of the different schools will not recognise the
resolution.

Regards

--
Charles Francis
moderator sci.physics.foundations.
charles (dot) e (dot) h (dot) francis (at) googlemail.com (remove spaces and
braces)

http://www.rqgravity.net