MOG and dark mattter.

[GutZ]

I was reading the book reinventing gravity by John Moffat. I was wondering wat your guys thoughts on it were? Specificially the idea behind dark matter not really being necessary? I think it even goes into the inflationery theory not being needed as well.

 

It's been a while since i could talk physics with anyone...Which I really don't understand. It's so interesting, The very making of yuor existence...i mean....how is that anyway boring?

 

anyways here is some background info:

 

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/071029-mm-mog-theory.html

[Martin]

Specificially the idea behind dark matter not really being necessary? ...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/071029-mm-mog-theory.html

 

Moffatt's ideas are out of date.

The beautiful thing is that in many papers that have been coming out, including the cluster collisions ones, they map the irregular clouds of DM by weak gravitational lensing.

They make these contour maps showing the varying density of the clouds.

 

I gather the computer software needed to do the mapping has only recently been developed. I've only been seeing it the DM cloud maps since around 2006-2007. At least the ones with stunning detail.

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Back in 2004-2006 I used to think the Mog people might be right. Not necessarily Moffatt and Browstein, but there were some other proposals. Bekenstein had one.

 

I was never convinced by Bekenstein's version of Mog, but I did think it had a chance and I was sometimes secretly "rooting" for some type of modification to do away with the need for DM and DE.

 

Then in 2006 the Bullet Cluster stuff came out. Moffatt's response was weak, I thought.

 

Moffatt and Browstein talked as if they could account for it but they never had much case after that.

 

The other people like Bekenstein stopped doing Mog and went away.

 

Moffatt is the die-hard but even he hasn't published very much about it since 2007. Except that popularization book that apparently makes him the central figure . I don't count a pop-sci book like that, I mean peer-review research papers. Heard very little from him about Mog after 2007.

 

Then later there was another cluster collision----like Bullet only different enough so if Moffatt fudged around and made it look like Bullet was OK then he couldn't make his Mog work for this other one.

 

So the interest in Mog died after 2007.

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The decisive 2006 paper was this

http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0608407

A direct empirical proof of the existence of dark matter

If you want to discuss it, read the abstract and then click on PDF and have a glance at the paper.

This paper has been cited in the professional literature 205 times.

Citations are a measure of the interest and importance of research as judged by other experts.

 

Moffatt papers about Mog written after 2006 tend to get, like, 2 citations. They could well be just Moffatt citing his own earlier work.

The 100 to 1 ratio in that objective expression of interest can't tell the whole story, but it is suggestive.

Another thing is the way other researchers moved on to other topics, which happened but would be more involved to document.

 

Personally I still think it is possible that someone (probably not Moffatt since he shows signs of being a bit inflexible) might come up with a modification of General Relativity that could explain dark energy. That would be nice. Maybe some of the new approaches to quantum GR will turn up something.

It would probably take a much younger person with completely fresh insight. Might happen though.

Edited March 27, 2009 by Martin

[GutZ]

Yeah I didn't know about all that. His book obviously is ummm self promoting.

 

I really hate the idea of dark matter though, so I hope someone finds something.