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IMAGE: The best example is represented by the Sunflower galaxy (NGC 5055) with the strongest external field
among SPARC galaxies, whose well-measured rotation curve shows a mildly declining behavior at large
radial distance...
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Credit: Creative Commons
An international group of scientists, including Case Western Reserve University Astronomy Chair Stacy McGaugh, has published research contending that a rival idea to the popular dark matter hypothesis more accurately predicts a galactic phenomenon that appears to defy the classic rules of gravity.
This is significant, the astrophysicists say, because it further establishes the hypothesis--called modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), or "modified gravity"--as a viable explanation for a cosmological dilemma: that galaxies appear to buck the long-accepted rules of gravity traced to Sir Isaac Newton in the late 1600's.