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355 points jchanimal | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.201s | source
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uoaei ◴[] No.42158729[source]
I follow the lead author, Stacy McGaugh, via his blog where he posts discussions and musings about the latest research into the dark matter vs MOND debate: https://tritonstation.com/new-blog-page/

His arguments are very convincing and relatively clear. I am not an astrophysicist but I have two degrees in physics and have always found the dark matter theory to be lacking -- in absence of any evidence of causation whatsoever, dark matter can only be described trivially as "where we would put matter if we could to make our theory of gravity make sense," which is totally backwards from a basic scientific perspective.

Predictions based on modern MOND postulates are shown to be more and more accurate as our observational instruments continue to improve in sensitivity.

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simonh ◴[] No.42158855[source]
I don’t think that’s quite fair. That approach is exactly how we find planets. Here’s an unexpected variance in the motion of a planet or star. It could be explained by a planet over there. Oh look, there’s a planet over there.
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1. MarkusQ ◴[] No.42158918[source]
Right, which is why it quickly led to the detection of dark matter...hmm.

I think a better analogy would be "that approach is exactly how we explain failing to find planets like Vulcan; we hypothesize that they are made of as-yet-unknown stuff that you can't see, touch, hear, smell, or in fact detect at all. But we know they're there because our calculations say they are."