Re: poly: Grav diffusion w/o dark matter

In a message dated 5/4/98 11:01:00 AM, hanson@econ.berkeley.edu quoted:

>2. A GRAVITATIONAL DIFFUSION MODEL WITHOUT DARK MATTER
>R.J. Britten (California Institute of Technology, US) presents a
>model that without dark matter quantitatively describes the flat
>rotation curves of galaxies and the mass-to-light ratios of
>clusters of galaxies. The hypothesis is that the agent of
>gravitational force is propagated as if it were scattered with a
>mean free path of about 5 kiloparsecs. As a result, the force
>between moderately distant masses separated by more than the mean
>free path diminishes as the inverse first power of the distance,
>following diffusion equations, and describes the flat rotation
>curves of galaxies. The force between masses separated by < 1
>kiloparsec diminishes as the inverse square of the distance.

That wouldn't be exact, would it? A kiloparsec is an awfully long
way but it seems that some effect would be detectable in highly
elliptical orbits.

A strange theory, but it has an attractive simplicity.
Received on Mon May 4 22:26:44 1998