4 - Theory Variant T0: The Foundational Postulates

Summary

The first variant of Milgrom’s theory (T0) consists simply of his three postulates from 1983. These postulates entail a number of novel predictions, predictions that have subsequently been confirmed by observational astrophysicists. The first is the “baryonic Tully–Fisher relation” (BTFR), a unique relation between the total mass of a galaxy and its asymptotic rotation speed. An even more surprising prediction is the “radial acceleration relation” (RAR), which states that the rotation speed anywhere in a disk galaxy is determined precisely by the observed distribution of matter – but not in the way that Newton’s laws would predict. According to Lakatos’s Methodology, these, and some other, successful novel predictions imply that Milgrom’s postulates constitute a progressive departure from the dark matter hypotheses of the standard cosmological model.