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Another reason to stop looking for Dark Matter
"Smoking-gun evidence for modified gravity at low acceleration from Gaia observations of wide binary stars"
A new study reports conclusive evidence for the breakdown of standard gravity in the low acceleration limit from a verifiable analysis of the orbital motions of long-period, widely separated, binary stars, usually referred to as wide binaries in astronomy and astrophysics.
The study carried out by Kyu-Hyun Chae, professor of physics and astronomy at Sejong University in Seoul, used up to 26,500 wide binaries within 650 light years (LY) observed by European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope. The study was published in the 1 August 2023 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Chae explains, "From the start it seemed clear to me that gravity could be most directly and efficiently tested by calculating accelerations because gravitational field itself is an acceleration.
The study finds that when two stars orbit around with each other with accelerations lower than about one nanometer per second squared start to deviate from the prediction by Newton's universal law of gravitation and Einstein's general relativity.
What is intriguing is that this ... was suggested 40 years ago by theoretical physicist Mordehai Milgrom.
Thus, what the wide binary data show are not only the breakdown of Newtonian dynamics but also the manifestation of the external field effect of modified gravity.
Unlike galactic rotation curves in which the observed boosted accelerations can, in principle, be attributed to dark matter in the Newton-Einstein standard gravity, wide binary dynamics cannot be affected by (Dark Matter) even if it existed. (Emphasis and changes are mine)
Wide binary anomalies are a disaster to the standard gravity and cosmology that rely on dark matter and dark energy concepts. Because gravity follows MOND, a large amount of dark matter in galaxies (and even in the universe) are no longer needed. This is also a big surprise to Chae who, like typical scientists, "believed in" dark matter until a few years ago.
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-smoking-gun-evidence-gravity-gaia-wide.html [phys.org]
I'm not pushing MOND, just pushing back against Dark Matter.
