Uploaded November 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In this episode I’m digging into a recent announcement from the astronomy community. The Gaia satellite has been making high precision measurements of the position and velocity of billions of nearby stars. Researchers have used this data to test the theory of gravity, and more specifically Modified Newtonian Dynamics or MOND. This theory was developed to explain away the need for dark matter. Dark matter was originally postulated to account for the anomalous rotation curves of all galaxies. Basically, if you use their surface brightness as a proxy for their matter distribution you would expect the outer regions of the galaxy to be moving slower than they seem to be. MOND suggests that gravitational acceleration stops dropping off as fast when the acceleration drops below a particular threshold value.
Researchers analyzed the rotation curves of 10s of thousands of widely separated binary stars in the Gaia dataset and they believe that the data support MOND over Newton, and their results seem to provide a high degree of confidence. The press coverage seems to suggest that this is a smoking gun that decisively overthrows Newtonian gravity and General Relativity all at once. If this is true it is huge news. Why are the authors not packing their bags to Sweden as we speak?
With a little digging, I’ve found that other researchers looking at the same Gaia dataset have come to the opposite conclusion that the data supports General Relativity over MOND. What gives? To understand this discrepancy I’m interviewing a skeptical astronomer, Dr. Indranil Banik.
Dr Indranil Banik did his undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge before moving to Saint Andrews for his PhD with Hongsheng Zhao, where they worked together on Milgromian dynamics (MOND). Dr Banik then went to Bonn for a Humboldt fellowship with Pavel Kroupa. He returned to Saint Andrews in 2021 and spent his first year back on a detailed 150 page invited review on all aspects of MOND. He has been working on the wide binary test since late 2017. He organised the fortieth anniversary celebration of MOND conference in Saint Andrews in summer 2023. Among other results presented here, conflicting results were presented on the wide binary test and there was intense controversy surrounding whether the results indicate a failure of Newtonian gravity at low accelerations.
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In this episode I’m digging into a recent announcement from the astronomy community. The Gaia satellite has been making high precision measurements of the position and velocity of billions of nearby stars. Researchers have used this data to test the theory of gravity, and more specifically Modified Newtonian Dynamics or MOND. This theory was developed to explain away the need for dark matter. Dark matter was originally postulated to account for the anomalous rotation curves of all galaxies. Basically, if you use their surface brightness as a proxy for their matter distribution you would expect the outer regions of the galaxy to be moving slower than they seem to be. MOND suggests that gravitational acceleration stops dropping off as fast when the acceleration drops below a particular threshold value.
Researchers analyzed the rotation curves of 10s of thousands of widely separated binary stars in the Gaia dataset and they believe that the data support MOND over Newton, and their results seem to provide a high degree of confidence. The press coverage seems to suggest that this is a smoking gun that decisively overthrows Newtonian gravity and General Relativity all at once. If this is true it is huge news. Why are the authors not packing their bags to Sweden as we speak?
With a little digging, I’ve found that other researchers looking at the same Gaia dataset have come to the opposite conclusion that the data supports General Relativity over MOND. What gives? To understand this discrepancy I’m interviewing a skeptical astronomer, Dr. Indranil Banik.
Dr Indranil Banik did his undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge before moving to Saint Andrews for his PhD with Hongsheng Zhao, where they worked together on Milgromian dynamics (MOND). Dr Banik then went to Bonn for a Humboldt fellowship with Pavel Kroupa. He returned to Saint Andrews in 2021 and spent his first year back on a detailed 150 page invited review on all aspects of MOND. He has been working on the wide binary test since late 2017. He organised the fortieth anniversary celebration of MOND conference in Saint Andrews in summer 2023. Among other results presented here, conflicting results were presented on the wide binary test and there was intense controversy surrounding whether the results indicate a failure of Newtonian gravity at low accelerations.
Support the podcast at patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView
Post your opinion on Facebook @TheRationalView
Twix @AlScottRational
Insta @The_Rational_View
![Can we afford [not] to have Universal Basic Income? (re-release)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CAFoZ_Ak1Mo/mqdefault.jpg "Can we afford [not] to have Universal Basic Income? (re-release)
I think this episode is very pertinent and deserves to be re-released now that we are starting to experience what seems to be a revolution in artificial intelligence. The job market is about to be shaken up considerably. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!
The global economy is in a shambles due to CoVid-19 and millions of workers are suffering with no safety net. The last time the economy tanked like this in 2008 it was due to unregulated greed run amok in the mortgage financing industry. That time, Investment Bankers got a juicy handout to the tune of several trillion dollars approved within hours of the crash. Unemployed Canadian workers have received $2,000 per month since March. In the US today, however, desperate folks who have lost their jobs and health care have received a one-time cheque of $1,200. This leaves many people calling for a re-assessment of Universal Basic Income. Can our modern economy afford to provide a minimum standard of living to the poor? Will it disincentivize labour? What are the pros and cons?
On this episode I interview Mr. Floyd Marinescu to ask tough questions about Universal Basic Income. Mr. Marinescu is CEO and co-founder of C4Media which provides software development news and learning events serving 1.2M online on InfoQ.com, and 8000 attendees annually via QCon conferences in SF, NY, London, Beijing, Shanghai, and Sao Paulo. Floyd is an angel investor in over a dozen startups, and has built teams and businesses in the US, Canada, China, Brazil, Europe. Floyd is also a CEO activist for universal basic income. He is the founder of CEOs for Basic Income and UBI Works. Go to https://UBIWorks.ca for more info.
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