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And yes, I did refer to MOND as “a fungus in the basement of astronomy”.

Do We Need to Rewrite General Relativity?

For NOVA “The Nature of Reality”:

General relativity, the theory of gravity Albert Einstein published 100 years ago, is one of the most successful theories we have. It has passed every experimental test; every observation from astronomy is consistent with its predictions. Physicists and astronomers have used the theory to understand the behavior of binary pulsars, predict the black holes we now know pepper every galaxy, and obtain deep insights into the structure of the entire universe.

Yet most researchers think general relativity is wrong.

To be more precise: most believe it is incomplete. After all, the other forces of nature are governed by quantum physics; gravity alone has stubbornly resisted a quantum description. Meanwhile, a small but vocal group of researchers thinks that phenomena such as dark matter are actually failures of general relativity, requiring us to look at alternative ideas. [Read the rest at NOVA…]