MOND with or without dark matter

Luc Blanchet, Francoise Combes

Published 2009-10-27Version 1

In our current cosmological model, the main constituents of the Universe are dark matter and dark energy, whose nature is unknown, and for which there is no place in the standard model of particle physics. How to include dark matter and dark energy in the set of fundamental laws? All observations can as well be explained either within the frame of general relativity, by adding unknown components in the Universe, or by modifying fundamentally the theory. Would not the last possibility be more simple? This is the case of the MOND hypothesis (for MOdified Newtonian Dynamics) proposed by Milgrom in 1983, which is quite successfull to describe the kinematics and dynamics of galaxies. It might however also be possible to reach the same success through a new kind of matter, dipolar dark matter, keeping general relativity for the law of gravity.