Publication Date
12-1-2022
Abstract
Based on the rotation of the stars around a galaxy center, one can estimate the corresponding gravitational acceleration -- which turns out to be much larger than what Newton's theory predicts based on the masses of all visible objects. The majority of physicists believe that this discrepancy indicates the presence of "dark" matter, but this idea has some unsolved problems. An alternative idea -- known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND, for short) is that for galaxy-size distances, Newton's gravitation theory needs to be modified. One of the most effective versions of this idea uses so-called simple interpolating function. In this paper, we provide a possible explanation for this version's effectiveness. This explanation is based on the physicists' belief that out of all possible theories consistent with observations, the true theory is the simplest one. In line with this idea, we prove that among all the modifications which explain both the usual Newton's theory for usual distance and the observed interactions for larger distances, this so-called "simple interpolating function" is indeed the simplest -- namely, it has the smallest computational complexity.
Comments
Technical Report: UTEP-CS-22-121