Author ORCID Identifier
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-1-2021
Abstract
Galaxies are the basic structural element of the universe; galaxy formation theory seeks to explain how these structures came to be. I trace some of the foundational ideas in galaxy formation, with emphasis on the need for non-baryonic cold dark matter. Many elements of early theory did not survive contact with observations of low surface brightness galaxies, leading to the need for auxiliary hypotheses like feedback. The failure points often trace to the surprising predictive successes of an alternative to dark matter, the Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). While dark matter models are flexible in accommodating observations, they do not provide the predictive capacity of MOND. If the universe is made of cold dark matter, why does MOND get any predictions right?
Keywords
astrophysics, cosmology, dark matter, galaxy formation, history and philosophy of physics, modified gravity
Language
236
Publication Title
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Grant
80NSSC19k0570
Rights
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/), which permits non-commercial copying and redistribution of the material in any medium or format, provided the original work is not changed in any way and is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Stacy S. McGaugh, Testing galaxy formation and dark matter with low surface brightness galaxies, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Volume 88, 2021, Pages 220-236, ISSN 0039-3681, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.05.008.
Manuscript Version
Final Publisher Version