Galaxy rotations from quantised inertia and visible matter only

M E Mcculloch

doi:10.1007/s10509-017-3128-6

Abstract

It is shown here that a model for inertial mass, called quantised inertia, or MiHsC (Modified inertia by a Hubble-scale Casimir effect) predicts the rotational acceleration of the 153 good quality galaxies in the SPARC dataset (2016 AJ 152 157), with a large range of scales and mass, from just their visible baryonic matter, the speed of light and the co-moving diameter of the observable universe. No dark matter is needed. The performance of quantised inertia is comparable to that of MoND, yet it needs no adjustable parameter. As a further critical test, quantised inertia uniquely predicts a specific increase in the galaxy rotation anomaly at higher redshifts. This test is now becoming possible and new data shows that galaxy rotational accelerations do increase with redshift in the predicted manner, at least up to Z=2.2.

Highlights

It has been well known since van Oort (1932), Zwicky (1933) and Rubin et al (1980), that galaxies rotate far too fast to be gravitationally stable
It is difficult to falsify so it is unsatisfying, and it has recently been shown by McGaugh et al (2016) that the acceleration of stars in galaxies is correlated with the distribution of the visible matter only, which implies there is no dark matter
One alternative to dark matter is MoND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) (Milgrom 1983) in which either the gravitational force on, or the inertial mass of, orbiting stars is changed for very low accelerations

Summary

Introduction

It has been well known since van Oort (1932), Zwicky (1933) and Rubin et al (1980), that galaxies rotate far too fast to be gravitationally stable. The usual solution for this is to add dark matter to the galactic haloes to hold stars in with more gravitational force. This solution is ad hoc since it has to be added to different galaxies in different amounts. It is difficult to falsify so it is unsatisfying, and it has recently been shown by McGaugh et al (2016) that the acceleration of stars in galaxies is correlated with the distribution of the visible matter only, which implies there is no dark matter. One alternative to dark matter is MoND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) (Milgrom 1983) in which either the gravitational force on, or the inertial mass of, orbiting stars is changed for very low accelerations. MoND is an empirical hypothesis that has no physical model and relies on its adjustable parameter (a0) which is fitted to the data by hand, which is unsatisfactory since no justification is given for this parameter

Methods

Results

Conclusion