Friday 12 March 2021

"Factoring in Gravitomagnetism Could Do Away With Dark Matter"

From SciTechDaily:

The main role of dark matter, Ludwig points out in the paper, has historically been to resolve the disparity between astrophysical observations and current theories of gravity. Put simply, if baryonic matter — the form of matter we see around us every day which is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons — is the only form of matter, then there shouldn’t be enough gravitational force to prevent galaxies from flying apart.

By disregarding general relativistic corrections to Newtonian gravity arising from mass currents, and by neglecting these mass currents, Ludwig asserts these models also miss significant modifications to rotational curves — the orbital speeds of visible stars and gas plotted against their radial distance from their galaxy’s center.

This is because of an effect in general relativity not present in Newton’s theory of gravity — frame-dragging or the Lense Thirring effect. This effect arises when a massive rotating object like a star or black hole ‘drags’ the very fabric of spacetime along with it, in turn giving rise to a gravitomagnetic field.


That all seems very plausible to me. Well done, Ludwig, and let's shut down all these hugely expensive projects trying to identify or isolate Dark Matter, which will turn out to be the 21st century's equivalent of aether or caloric.

5 comments:

Mark In Mayenne said...

See also physics with an edge on the subject of quantised inertia.

Mark Wadsworth said...

MIM, QI is a bit left field, even for me.

Derek said...

Yup, I'm a quantised inertia fan too but I like this idea. It's good in an Occam's Razor kind of way.

Bayard said...

" the 21st century's equivalent of aether or caloric."

or, indeed, phlogiston.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, or that.