A historical perspective on Modified Newtonian Dynamics

Abstract

I review the history and development of Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) beginning with the phenomenological basis as it existed in the early 1980s. I consider Milgrom's papers of 1983 introducing the idea and its consequences for galaxies and galaxy groups, as well as the initial reactions, both negative and positive. The early criticisms were primarily on matters of principle, such as the absence of conservation laws and perceived cosmological problems; an important step in addressing these issues was the development of the Lagrangian-based non-relativistic theory of Bekenstein and Milgrom. This theory led to the development of a tentative relativistic theory that formed the basis for later multi-field theories of gravity. On an empirical level the predictive success of the idea with respect to the phenomenology of galaxies presents considerable challenges for cold dark matter. For MOND the essential challenge remains the absence of a generally accepted theoretical underpinning of the idea and, thus, cosmological predictions. I briefly review recent progress in this direction. Finally I discuss the role and sociology of unconventional ideas in astronomy in the presence of a strongly entrenched standard paradigm.

25 pages, 9 figures, previous uploaded file was out of date, Canadian Journal of Physics

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Emergent Gravity and the Dark Universe
• From galactic bars to the Hubble tension: weighing up the astrophysical evidence for Milgromian gravity
• Asymmetrical tidal tails of open star clusters: stars crossing their cluster's prah challenge Newtonian gravitation
• Galactic dynamics and long-range quantum gravity
• Alternative ideas in cosmology
• Methodological Reflections on the MOND/Dark Matter Debate
• Galactic rotation curves of spiral galaxies and dark matter in f(R,T) gravity theory
• Exact semianalytical calculation of rotation curves with Bekenstein-Milgrom nonrelativistic MOND
• Dark Energy and Dark Matter in Emergent Gravity
• Why did the dark matter hypothesis supersede modified gravity in the 1980s?
• A new perspective on galactic dynamics