John Moffat (physicist)
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John Moffat (physicist)
John W. Moffat (born 24 May 1932) is a Danish-born British-Canadian physicist. He is currently professor emeritus of physics at the University of Toronto and is also an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and a resident affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Moffat is best known for his work on gravity and cosmology, culminating in his nonsymmetric gravitational theory and scalar–tensor–vector gravity (now called MOG), and summarized in his 2008 book for general readers, ''Reinventing Gravity''. His theory explains galactic rotation curves without invoking dark matter. He proposes a variable speed of light approach to cosmological problems. The speed of light ''c'' may have been more than 30 orders of magnitude higher during the early moments of the Big Bang. His recent work on inhomogeneous cosmological models purports to explain certain anomalous effects in the CMB data, and to account for the recently discovered acceler ...
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Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan area has 2,057,142 people. Copenhagen is on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the Øresund strait. The Øresund Bridge connects the two cities by rail and road. Originally a Viking fishing village established in the 10th century in the vicinity of what is now Gammel Strand, Copenhagen became the capital of Denmark in the early 15th century. Beginning in the 17th century, it consolidated its position as a regional centre of power with its institutions, defences, and armed forces. During the Renaissance the city served as the de facto capital of the Kalmar Union, being the seat of monarchy, governing the majority of the present day Nordic region in a personal union with Sweden and Norway ruled by the Danis ...
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Toronto Star
The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part of Torstar's Daily News Brands (Torstar), Daily News Brands division. The newspaper's offices are located at One Yonge Street in the Harbourfront, Toronto, Harbourfront neighbourhood of Toronto. The newspaper was established in 1892 as the ''Evening Star'' and was later renamed the ''Toronto Daily Star'' in 1900, under Joseph E. Atkinson. Atkinson was a major influence in shaping the editorial stance of the paper, with the paper having reflected his values until his death in 1948. The paper was renamed the ''Toronto Star'' in 1971. The newspaper introduced a Sunday edition in 1973. History The ''Star'' was created in 1892 by striking ''Toronto News'' printers and writers, led by future mayor of Toronto and social reformer Horatio Clarenc ...
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Inhomogeneous Cosmology
An inhomogeneous cosmology is a physical cosmological theory (an astronomical model of the physical universe's origin and evolution) which, unlike the currently widely accepted cosmological concordance model, assumes that inhomogeneities in the distribution of matter across the universe affect local gravitational forces (i.e., at the galactic level) enough to skew our view of the Universe. When the universe began, matter was distributed homogeneously, but over billions of years, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and superclusters have coalesced, and must, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, warp the space-time around them. While the concordance model acknowledges this fact, it assumes that such inhomogeneities are not sufficient to affect large-scale averages of gravity in our observations. When two separate studies claimed in 1998-1999 that high redshift supernovae were further away than our calculations showed they should be, it was suggested that the expansio ...
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Big Bang
The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale form. These models offer a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure. The overall uniformity of the Universe, known as the flatness problem, is explained through cosmic inflation: a sudden and very rapid expansion of space during the earliest moments. However, physics currently lacks a widely accepted theory of quantum gravity that can successfully model the earliest conditions of the Big Bang. Crucially, these models are compatible with the Hubble–Lemaître law—the observation that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is mo ...
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Speed Of Light
The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit for the speed at which conventional matter or energy (and thus any signal carrying information) can travel through space. All forms of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, travel at the speed of light. For many practical purposes, light and other electromagnetic waves will appear to propagate instantaneously, but for long distances and very sensitive measurements, their finite speed has noticeable effects. Starlight viewed on Earth left the stars many years ago, allowing humans to study the history of the universe by viewing distant objects. When communicating with distant space probes, it can take minutes to hours for signals to travel from Earth to the spacecraft and vice versa. In computing, the speed of light fixes ...
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Physical Cosmology
Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of fundamental questions about its Cosmogony, origin, structure, Chronology of the universe, evolution, and ultimate fate.For an overview, see Cosmology as a science originated with the Copernican principle, which implies that astronomical object, celestial bodies obey identical physical laws to those on Earth, and Newtonian mechanics, which first allowed those physical laws to be understood. Physical cosmology, as it is now understood, began with the development in 1915 of Albert Einstein's general relativity, general theory of relativity, followed by major observational discoveries in the 1920s: first, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe contains a huge number of external Galaxy, galaxies beyond the Milky Way; then, work by Vesto Sli ...
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Variable Speed Of Light
A variable speed of light (VSL) is a feature of a family of hypotheses stating that the speed of light may in some way not be constant, for example, that it varies in space or time, or depending on frequency. Accepted classical theories of physics, and in particular general relativity, predict a constant speed of light in any local frame of reference and in some situations these predict apparent variations of the speed of light depending on frame of reference, but this article does not refer to this as a variable speed of light. Various alternative theories of gravitation and cosmology, many of them non-mainstream, incorporate variations in the local speed of light. Attempts to incorporate a variable speed of light into physics were made by Robert Dicke in 1957, and by several researchers starting from the late 1980s. VSL should not be confused with faster than light theories, its dependence on a medium's refractive index or its measurement in a remote observer's frame of ref ...
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Dark Matter
Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is, therefore, difficult to detect. Various astrophysical observationsincluding gravitational effects which cannot be explained by currently accepted theories of gravity unless more matter is present than can be seenimply dark matter's presence. For this reason, most experts think that dark matter is abundant in the universe and has had a strong influence on its structure and evolution. The primary evidence for dark matter comes from calculations showing that many galaxies would behave quite differently if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter. Some galaxies would not have formed at all and others would not move as they currently do. Other lines of evidence include observa ...
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Galactic Rotation Curve
The rotation curve of a disc galaxy (also called a velocity curve) is a plot of the orbital speeds of visible stars or gas in that galaxy versus their radial distance from that galaxy's centre. It is typically rendered graphically as a plot, and the data observed from each side of a spiral galaxy are generally asymmetric, so that data from each side are averaged to create the curve. A significant discrepancy exists between the experimental curves observed, and a curve derived by applying gravity theory to the matter observed in a galaxy. Theories involving dark matter are the main postulated solutions to account for the variance. The rotational/orbital speeds of galaxies/stars do not follow the rules found in other orbital systems such as stars/planets and planets/moons that have most of their mass at the centre. Stars revolve around their galaxy's centre at equal or increasing speed over a large range of distances. In contrast, the orbital velocities of planets in planetary syst ...
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Scalar–tensor–vector Gravity
Scalar–tensor–vector gravity (STVG) is a modified theory of gravity developed by John Moffat, a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. The theory is also often referred to by the acronym MOG (''MO''dified ''G''ravity). Overview Scalar–tensor–vector gravity theory, also known as MOdified Gravity (MOG), is based on an action principle and postulates the existence of a vector field, while elevating the three constants of the theory to scalar fields. In the weak-field approximation, STVG produces a Yukawa-like modification of the gravitational force due to a point source. Intuitively, this result can be described as follows: far from a source gravity is stronger than the Newtonian prediction, but at shorter distances, it is counteracted by a repulsive fifth force due to the vector field. STVG has been used successfully to explain galaxy rotation curves, the mass profiles of galaxy clusters, gravitational lensing in the Bulle ...
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Nonsymmetric Gravitational Theory
In theoretical physics, the nonsymmetric gravitational theory (NGT) of John Moffat is a classical theory of gravitation that tries to explain the observation of the flat rotation curves of galaxies. In general relativity, the gravitational field is characterized by a symmetric rank-2 tensor, the metric tensor. The possibility of generalizing the metric tensor has been considered by many, including Albert Einstein and others. A general (nonsymmetric) tensor can always be decomposed into a symmetric and an antisymmetric part. As the electromagnetic field is characterized by an antisymmetric rank-2 tensor, there is an obvious possibility for a unified theory: a nonsymmetric tensor composed of a symmetric part representing gravity, and an antisymmetric part that represents electromagnetism. Research in this direction ultimately proved fruitless; the desired classical unified field theory was not found. In 1979, Moffat made the observation that the antisymmetric part of the genera ...
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Cosmology
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosophy, German philosopher Christian Wolff (philosopher), Christian Wolff, in ''Cosmologia Generalis''. Religious cosmology, Religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on Mythology, mythological, Religion, religious, and Esotericism, esoteric literature and traditions of Cosmogony, creation myths and eschatology. In the science of astronomy it is concerned with the study of the chronology of the universe. Physical cosmology is the study of the observable universe's origin, its large-scale structures and dynamics, and the ultimate fate of the universe, including the laws of science that govern these areas. It is investigated by scientists, such as astronomers and physicists, as well as Philosophy, ph ...
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