Stacy McGaugh (born January 11, 1964) is an American

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

and professor in the Department of Astronomy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. His fields of specialty include

low surface brightness galaxies A low-surface-brightness galaxy, or LSB galaxy, is a diffuse galaxy with a surface brightness that, when viewed from Earth, is at least one magnitude lower than the ambient night sky. Most LSBs are dwarf galaxies, and most of their baryonic matt ...

galaxy formation and evolution The study of galaxy formation and evolution is concerned with the processes that formed a heterogeneous universe from a homogeneous beginning, the formation of the first galaxies, the way galaxies change over time, and the processes that have gen ...

, tests of

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 a ...

and alternative hypotheses, and measurements of cosmological parameters. Stacy McGaugh was an undergraduate student at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

(S.B. 1985) and a graduate student at

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

and the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

(Ph.D. 1992). He held postdoctoral appointments at

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

, the

Carnegie Institution of Washington The Carnegie Institution of Washington (the organization's legal name), known also for public purposes as the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), is an organization in the United States established to fund and perform scientific research. Th ...

, and

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

before joining the faculty of the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

in 1998. He moved to Case Western in 2012. He is married with two children. He is a Distinguished Alumnus of Flint (Michigan) Northern High School (2001) and of the Astronomy Department of the University of Michigan (2013). Known in the field of extragalactic astronomy for his early work on

Low Surface Brightness Galaxies A low-surface-brightness galaxy, or LSB galaxy, is a diffuse galaxy with a surface brightness that, when viewed from Earth, is at least one magnitude lower than the ambient night sky. Most LSBs are dwarf galaxies, and most of their baryonic matt ...

and the elemental abundances in

HII Regions An H II region or HII region is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized. It is typically in a molecular cloud of partially ionized gas in which star formation has recently taken place, with a size ranging from one to hundred ...

, McGaugh has also contributed to the study of the kinematics of galaxies, being among the first to point out that low surface brightness galaxies are dark matter dominated and that they pose the

cuspy halo problem The cuspy halo problem (also known as the core-cusp problem) refers to a discrepancy between the inferred dark matter density profiles of low-mass galaxies and the density profiles predicted by cosmological N-body simulations. Nearly all simulation ...

. He also coined the expression "baryonic

Tully–Fisher relation In astronomy, the Tully–Fisher relation (TFR) is an empirical relationship between the mass or intrinsic luminosity of a spiral galaxy and its asymptotic rotation velocity or emission line width. It was first published in 1977 by astronomer ...

." He predicted the first to second peak amplitude ratio of the acoustic power spectrum of the

Cosmic microwave background radiation In Big Bang cosmology the cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR) is electromagnetic radiation that is a remnant from an early stage of the universe, also known as "relic radiation". The CMB is faint cosmic background radiation filling all space ...

. McGaugh found surprising support for the

Modified Newtonian dynamics Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) is a hypothesis that proposes a modification of Newton's law of universal gravitation to account for observed properties of galaxies. It is an alternative to the hypothesis of dark matter in terms of explaining ...

proposed by

Mordehai Milgrom Mordehai "Moti" Milgrom is an Israeli physicist and professor in the department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. Biography He received his B.Sc. degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem i ...

as an alternative to

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 a ...

in his work on

. This has proven to be very controversial since it implies the non-existence of the non-baryonic

that is central to

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 f ...

. Nevertheless, his predictions for the mass distribution of the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

and the velocity dispersions of the dwarf Spheroidal satellites of the Andromeda spiral galaxy have largely been confirmed by subsequent observations. In 2016 McGaugh, Lelli, and Schombert reported a correlation between a radial acceleration relation (RAR) found among galactic rotation curves and the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation's prediction for galactic rotation curves. According to Paranjape and Sheth, this RAR has important implications for the ΛCDM paradigm and alternative gravity theories.arXiv preprint
/ref>

References

External links

Stacy McGaugh's home page

The MOND pages

Triton Station — A Blog About the Science and Sociology of Cosmology and Dark Matter

S. McGaugh
@

Astrophysics Data System The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned ...

Dark Matter or Modified Gravity? - Stacy McGaugh – YouTube, July 2, 2015
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:McGaugh, Stacy 1964 births Living people American astronomers Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni University of Michigan alumni University of Maryland, College Park faculty Case Western Reserve University faculty

See also

References

External links