Milgrom’s Law and the Microbe

Imagine you are a microbe living on the side of a powerful radio transmitter like a cell phone tower. One day you decide you want to measure the power of the electromagnetic field around you.

After many exhaustive experiments and many arduous years of rigorous observation and theory you find the power of that field falls away from the surface of your antenna at the inverse cube of the distance between that and any point to the extent of your ability to measure it.

Since you live on the surface of an antenna and that’s all you know it’s reasonable to conclude all objects must emit an electromagnetic field. Therefore it is reasonably concluded and generally accepted the power of an electromagnetic field follows an inverse cube relationship between any two objects.

Then one day you build a powerful telescope and look way out, way, way out and you use the inverse cube relationship to make predictions about the power of the field you will find between objects very far apart from each other.

Yet when you look you find the microbe universe your observing can’t possibly be following the inverse cube, so you add dark elecmagnetism to your equations to balance them out. Now, by adding that energy from an unknown and invisible benefactor, the microbe universe makes sense again, and things look they way the predictions prescribe.

Then someone comes along and says hold on, the microbe universe also would make sense if the power of the electromagnetic field at some relative distance switched from an inverse cube to an inverse square. Do that and the microbe universe makes sense again without the need for dark magnetism and it’s undetectable provider. If the power of an electromagnetic field had a near field governed by the inverse cube and a far field governed by the inverse square, the power of our field we measure at distance makes sense again, no dark anything required.

I imagine that microbe might meet some serious resistance due to a suggestion that years of theory might need to be thrown out the window and be reworked, but of course resistance gets countered by experiments and observation.

In the case of an electromagnetic field, if you’re advanced enough to measure it and build telescopes, you’re probably able to determine the field is in fact composed of two parts, the electric field, and the magnetic field. Being able to determine that distinction, you should be measure them independently both close to the surface and far from it.

So doing would show you that at close distances the two fields could in fact be considered independently, and while one did fall at the inverse square, the other fell at the inverse cube. While at far distances at lower energies the two must be considered together falling at a uniform inverse cube relationship.

Thus the new microbres law of electromagnetic waves in a field henceforth is considered in terms of a near field and a far field, rather than a near field that accumulates dark electromagnetism at distance.

Now imagine you’re a person, living on the surface of a planet, and you want to determine the force of gravity around you. Being aware of the work of Newton you know the force of gravity from the surface of the world can be measured in small distances as following an inverse square of the distance between two objects. This has been rigorously tested and borne out by experiments.

This approximation holds very well at lower energies but at higher energies and larger distances you know Einstein is needed with relativistic theory to describe how the force of gravity holds large things like the solar system together by curving the space around objects which other objects must follow.

Then one day you build the Hubble, and you look way out. Way, way out. Light years out. You focus on a patch of sky the size of a postage stamp for four months and when you look at what you see you find a magical and unimaginablely populated universe that can’t possibly be described either by an inverse square relationship or relativity.

So you add dark matter, a lot of it, to balance out your relationships in your equations. Now, by adding additional gravity from an unknown and invisible benefactor, you get the structure of galaxies and even the large scale structure of the universe itself which makes sense again and gives you a universe your predictions prescribe.

Then one day along comes Milgrom, who says hold on, the structure of a galaxy and the velocities of the stars in them would make sense if the power of gravity at some relative distance switched from an inverse square of the distance to just the inverse of the distance. So doing gives a little acceleration to stars farther out relative to the stars closer in, making them all orbit at the same speed, no dark matter needed.

As you can imagine Milgrom’s law, more commonly known as MoND, Modified Newtonian Dynamics, would meet with stiff resistance as it stood to throw out the window years of theory and force us to reevaluate our understanding of gravity and the universe itself, and that is precisely where we are at this moment in the story.

A key difference between a gravitational field and an electromagnetic field is the gravitational field is always considered as one uniform engery field, where the electromagnetic field is considered in terms of a near and far field with an arbitrary transition relative to the signal and size of the emitting object.

However when you couple the accuracy of MoND to predict the large scale structure of a galaxy with Einstein’s ability to describe a solar system you arguably arrive at a theory of gravity which consists of both a near and far field. All of our experiments of gravity would have been conducted in the near field for hundreds of years and only at the turn of the last century can we peer far enough to find our explanation of the power of gravity doesn’t hold up at the vast distances of a far field.

Milgrom’s law predicts the structure of galaxies with far greater precision than dark matter does, but fails to do so at larger scales like clusters and strings as well as dark matter, and that is where we stand right now with our understanding of the force of gravity in the universe.

Could gravitation be a binary effect like electromagnetism, and combined effect of spatially curved yet expanding accelerating space? We don’t know, our theories are yet incomplete, but I can’t help escape the sense that we have more in common the microbes than we realize…