I hate this title, even though it's a good article. It's nothing to do with gravity "breaking down"; maybe oul the current THEORY of gravity breaking down. So annoying that titles need to be sensationalized.
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Well, it is a direct quote from the published study, so maybe not the journalist's fault this time:
"direct evidence for the breakdown of standard gravity at weak acceleration” and reveal “an immovable anomaly of gravity in favor of MOND-based modified gravity"
So it would be a breakdown of standard gravity, not of gravity full stop. Sensationalized headline.
Yeah, a better title would have been "new observations show gravity anomaly indicating that current dark matter theories are incomplete", but you get fewer clicks with something like that, right?
A scientist has observed a “gravitational anomaly” in certain star systems
Seems like the opening to a Star Trek episode
A warp drive is one of the few innovations that might save humanity from our current peril, here’s hoping
Huh, why do you think that? Why would faster than light speed technology have a different impact on society than our current space technologies? (Assuming we don't encounter aliens)
I mean we’d all still be fucked but a generation ship could give hope to the survival of the species as a whole
We haven't even gotten people to Mars and it would "only" be a couple of year trip with current technology. I can't imagine society making a generational trip happen any time soon. Sorry for being a Debbie downer.
I mean society as a while sure won’t, but desperate times and all that, unlikely for sure but it’s a glimmer
If humanity has proven anything it's that technology tends to make things worse.
Huh, this is interesting. I found a slightly more in depth article on this: https://www.universetoday.com/162749/evidence-for-modified-gravity-found-in-the-motions-of-binary-stars/
It'd be amazing if this actually led to something MoNDish being the prevalent theory of gravity. Wouldn't that essentially explain dark matter?
It could explain the observations of the orbits of stars around galactic centers that currently can't be explained (stars move faster than current models predict), yes. It would be an alternate explanation for this anomaly than dark matter, which is the other proposed "if this exists, it would explain what we see" hypothesis.
I’ve read 3bp…shit
I found an article that's more skeptical https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/binary-stars-prove-modified-gravity/. I'm no expert but it does make a good case for why this result might be suspect