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Mordehai Milgrom Quotes (1946-)
Physicist
About Mordehai Milgrom
Mordehai (Moti) Milgrom (born 1946) is an Israeli astrophysicist, known for his proposal of Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND).
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βWhat makes MOND particularly intriguing is that it predicted many effects that could not even be tested when I formulated it.β
βOf all of the many mysteries of modern astronomy, none is more vexing than the nature of dark matter... This dark matter has eluded every effort by astronomers and physicists to bring it out of the shadows. A handful of us suspect that it might not really exist, and others are beginning to consider this possibility seriously.β
βI did encounter much opposition and sheer disregard, and this was against my expectation. I was surprised that people thought that this was not a legitimate avenue to explore. Many times I heard people say that it is too early to start considering such heretical ideas. Why? I wondered. I thought it was legitimate to consider anything.β
βTo explain the appearance in MOND of a cosmological acceleration constant, a0, I suggest that MOND inertia β as embodied in the actions of free particles and fields β is due to effects of the vacuum. The same vacuum effects enter both MOND (through a0) and cosmology e.g. through a cosmological constant Ξ).β
βThe nice thing is that MOND has not had to change or adjust itself to the many observations that came after it was proposed. β¦ In the end, the process that might sway people's minds could be a slow one, in which they become disillusioned and dissatisfied with DM, while MOND explains more and more of the observations. And, if MOND does turn out to have some truth to it, the fact that it encountered so much opposition will just show how nontrivial a thought it was.β
βIt seems to me that in understanding MOND and its fundamentals we have only scratched the surface. If the developments of quantum mechanics and relativity are any lesson here, departures of such magnitude from long- and well-tested physics may bring with them completely new concepts, not summarized by mere modifications of the governing actions or the equations of motion. MOND may also turn out to bring in concepts that are presently beyond our ken (as hinted perhaps by the cosmological connotations of a0).β
βWhat struck me was some regularity in the anomaly. The rotational velocities were not just larger than expected, they became constant with radius. Why? Sure, if there was dark matter, the speed of stars would be greater, but the rotation curves, meaning the rotational speed drawn as a function of the radius, could still go up and down depending on its distribution. But they didn't. That really struck me as odd. So, in 1980, I went on my Sabbatical in the Institute for Advance Studies in Princeton with the following hunch: If the rotational speeds are constant, then perhaps weβre looking at a new law of nature. If Newtonian physics canβt predict the fixed curves, perhaps we should fix Newton, instead of making up a whole new class of matter just to fit our measurements.β
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Mordehai Milgrom on Modified Newtonian dynamics 3 quotes
β... the interpretation of MOND as modified inertia (MI) ... ... Who is afraid of modified inertia? The interpretation of MOND as MI was on the table from the very inception of MOND ...β
Mordehai Milgrom on Statistical mechanics
βAnother crucial point is that MOND as we know it now is arguably only an approximate 'effective field theory' that approximates some more fundamental scheme at a deeper stratum β some 'FUNDAMOND' β conceptually, in a similar way to thermodynamics being an approximation of the statistical-mechanics, microscopic description.β
Mordehai Milgrom on Inertia
βThe idea that inertia is an acquired property is old, generally going under the name of βMachβs principleβ. According to it, inertia is due to the interaction of bodies with some omnipresent medium. Ideas along this line differ on what the medium is, and on the nature of the interaction. But if indeed such is the origin of inertia, then inertia is not some property of ultimate fundamentality, but can take different forms depending on where we are in parameter space of the body with respect to signposts and boundary stones defined by the characteristics of the medium.β
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Mordehai Milgrom on Jacob Bekenstein
βJacob was the first physicist to hear from me about MOND. It was 1982; Jacob was still at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheba. I went there from Rehovot with my initial MOND trilogy of preprints in my bag to tell Jacob and benefit from his advice. I had not prepared him for what was in these preprints. Jacob was immediately captured, but he also warned me β as I vividly remember β that this is going to encounter much opposition, but also that I should not heed such opposition. He was drawing on his own experience with black-hole entropy and on how his ideas had been received a decade earlier.β
About Mordehai Milgrom
Mordehai (Moti) Milgrom (born 1946) is an Israeli astrophysicist, known for his proposal of Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND).