John Moffat (physicist)
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John W. Moffat (born 24 May 1932) is a Danish-born British-Canadian physicist. He is currently
professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
of
physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
at the
University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...
and is also an
adjunct professor An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, however the genera ...
of
physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
at the
University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...
and a resident affiliate member of the
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI, Perimeter, PITP) is an independent research centre in foundational theoretical physics located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1999. The institute's founding and major benefactor i ...
. Moffat is best known for his work on
gravity In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stro ...
and
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 ...
, culminating in his
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 fiel ...
and
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' ...
(now called MOG), and summarized in his 2008 book for general readers, ''Reinventing Gravity''. His theory explains
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 ...
s without invoking
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 ab ...
. He proposes a
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 physi ...
approach to
cosmological 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's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...
problems. The
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 ...
''c'' may have been more than 30 orders of magnitude higher during the early moments of the
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 ...
. His recent work on inhomogeneous cosmological models purports to explain certain anomalous effects in the CMB data, and to account for the recently discovered acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Moffat has proposed a new nonlocal variant of
quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and ...
, that is finite at all orders and hence dispenses with
renormalization Renormalization is a collection of techniques in quantum field theory, the statistical mechanics of fields, and the theory of self-similar geometric structures, that are used to treat infinities arising in calculated quantities by altering v ...
. It also generates mass without a
Higgs mechanism In the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs mechanism is essential to explain the generation mechanism of the property "mass" for gauge bosons. Without the Higgs mechanism, all bosons (one of the two classes of particles, the other bein ...
.


Early life and education

Moffat was born in
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 ar ...
,
Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...
, the son of a Scottish father, George Moffat, and Danish mother, Esther (''née'' Winther). His father, a musician from Glasgow, was performing in a night club in Copenhagen when he met Esther, a dancer. They married three weeks later. In 1938, on the eve of the Second World War, John's father moved the family to London, correctly predicting that Denmark would be invaded by Germany. In later 1939, during
the Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...
, the 7-year-old John was evacuated to Glasgow to live with his grandparents. But he failed to thrive in Glasgow, struggling academically, so after a year he returned to his parents, and all three moved to
Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...
, where his father got a job searching ships for German spies. In Bristol, they lived close to the factory that manufactured the Bristol F2 Fighters. Air raids were frequent as the
Battle of Britain The Battle of Britain, also known as the Air Battle for England (german: die Luftschlacht um England), was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy defende ...
intensified in 1940. One day, they went to the boardwalk at
Weston-super-Mare Weston-super-Mare, also known simply as Weston, is a seaside town in North Somerset, England. It lies by the Bristol Channel south-west of Bristol between Worlebury Hill and Bleadon Hill. It includes the suburbs of Mead Vale, Milton, Oldmixon ...
to escape the raids in Bristol, only to have German planes appear overhead. As Moffat recalled in his memoir, '' Einstein Wrote Back'':
"I heard the shriek of the whistling bombs as they fell, and then the hollow booms as they detonated deep inside the mud of the beach... The blast blew my parents and me across the road adjacent to the boardwalk. I landed in a garden on my back, opened my eyes and stared at the blue sky, and there was a loud ringing in my ears. The blood was pouring out of my nose, and I felt a terrible tightness and pain in my chest... In a daze, I got up, and soon discovered my parents in the same garden, on all fours, attempting to stand up, also suffering from nosebleeds and chest pains."
The trauma from the bombing and the air-raids stayed with him for a lifetime, Moffat wrote:
"At the time, I was somehow able to suppress the horror of our experiences during the war, and carry on day by day. However, about a year after the bombings in Bristol and Weston-super-Mare, I began suffering from what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. I began getting severe nightmares and panic attacks. Even today I still occasionally experience panic attacks, generally when I am visiting Europe."
When John was 7 or 8, his father took him to a psychiatrist in London because he insisted on reading sentences and clocks backward. The psychiatrist told his father that he was a genius. John, overhearing, did not think the word meant much for his future. After the war, the family moved back to Denmark, where John's father started an import-export business. He contracted tuberculosis from one of his employees and became seriously ill for a year, and the family struggled to get by.


Interest in physics

As a teenager, Moffat quit school at 16 to become an artist. He gave up after living for a time in Paris with no income. Upon returning to Copenhagen, he became interested in the cosmos and began teaching himself mathematics and physics. The University of Copenhagen allowed anyone to check out books from its libraries, and he made such quick progress that within a year he began working on problems of
general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...
and
unified field theory In physics, a unified field theory (UFT) is a type of field theory that allows all that is usually thought of as fundamental forces and elementary particles to be written in terms of a pair of physical and virtual fields. According to the modern ...
. When Moffat was about 20 years old, he wrote a letter to
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
, informing the great physicist that he was working on one of his theories. "Dear Professor . . . I would be eternally indebted if you could find time to read my work," he began.
"In 1953 Einstein sent me a reply, from
Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...
, but it was written in German. So I ran down to my barber shop (in Copenhagen) to have my barber translate it for me. Through that summer and fall, we exchanged about a half dozen letters. The local press picked up on these stories which then caught the attention of physicist
Niels Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. B ...
and others. Suddenly doors of opportunity were swinging open for me". (
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI, Perimeter, PITP) is an independent research centre in foundational theoretical physics located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1999. The institute's founding and major benefactor i ...
, 2005)
Einstein's initial reply:
"Most honorable Mr. Moffat: Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open, and we try hard to discuss what is inside and what is not," Einstein replied.
Moffat's correspondence with Einstein and meeting with Bohr drew the attention of officials at the British consulate in Copenhagen, and he was invited to study at Cambridge. In 1958, he was awarded a PhD without a first degree at
Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...
. He was supervised by
Fred Hoyle Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001) was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and was one of the authors of the influential B2FH paper. He also held controversial stances on other sci ...
and
Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Punjabi Pakistani theoretical physicist and a ...
.


Variable speed of light: theory and controversy

In 1992, John Moffat proposed that the speed of light was much larger in the early universe, in which the speed of light had a value of more than 1030 km/s. He published his "
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 physi ...
" (VSL) theory in two places—on the Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL) online archive, 16 Nov. 1992, and in a 1993 edition of ''International Journal of Modern Physics D''.Michael Martin (24 March 2003)
"In From the Cold: A Toronto physicist's once-ridiculed theory gains acceptance"
''Maclean's''.
Michael Martin (1 July 2003


''St. Louis Journalism Review''
/ref> The scientific community mostly ignored VSL theory until in 2001, University of New South Wales astronomer John Webb and peers detected experimental evidence from telescopic observations that the cosmological
fine-structure constant In physics, the fine-structure constant, also known as the Sommerfeld constant, commonly denoted by (the Greek letter ''alpha''), is a fundamental physical constant which quantifies the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between ele ...
—which contains the speed of light—may have been different than its present value in the very early Universe. The observations supported Moffat's VSL theory—and started a race for primacy that began in 1998. That year, five years after Moffat had published his VSL papers, João Magueijo of
Imperial College Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
in London, and collaborators Andreas Albrecht of the
University of California at Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
and
John D. Barrow John David Barrow (29 November 1952 – 26 September 2020) was an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician. He served as Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College from 2008 to 2011. Barrow was also a writer of pop ...
of
Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
, published a strikingly similar idea in the more prestigious journal, ''
Physical Review D Physical may refer to: *Physical examination In a physical examination, medical examination, or clinical examination, a medical practitioner examines a patient for any possible medical signs or symptoms of a medical condition. It generally co ...
'', which had rejected Moffat's paper years earlier. Informed of the omission, Magueijo credited Moffat with an entire chapter in Magueijo's 2002 book, ''Faster Than the Speed of Light: The story of a scientific speculation.'' The controversy reignited, however, when during a worldwide publicity tour for Magueijo's book, the author neither credited Moffat nor corrected numerous erroneous press accounts—in such magazines as ''Discover'', ''Publishers Weekly'', ''Seed Magazine'' and the ''Christian Science Monitor''. In efforts to portray Magueijo as a "brash, young scientific upstart," dozens of publications attributed VSL theory entirely to Magueijo and his co-authors, leaving Moffat—in his late sixties by this time—out. Moffat expressed displeasure about the re-emergent omissions, urging reporters to check their facts, but to no avail. Stories emerged about the book tour media omissions in March and July 2003, written by a science journalist, Michael Martin, who had earlier attributed VSL theory to Moffat in a 2001 UPI article about Webb's astronomical discoveries. ''Discover Magazine'' writer Tim Folger acknowledged the omissions in his story and apologized. In response to a reader letter from Henry van Driel of the University of Toronto Department of Physics, Folger wrote, "Professor van Driel is absolutely right—John Moffat did develop a varying speed of light theory several years before João Magueijo, and I regret not including that information in my story." Months later, as other reports picked up on the reignited dispute, Magueijo reiterated Moffat's primacy in VSL theory. In September 2004, Discover Magazine's Tim Folger followed through on a promise he had made during the controversy to "write a story about John Moffat." The two physicists became friends, publishing a joint paper in 2007 in the journal ''General Relativity and Gravitation''.


Modified gravity theory

Continuing Einstein's search for a
unified field theory In physics, a unified field theory (UFT) is a type of field theory that allows all that is usually thought of as fundamental forces and elementary particles to be written in terms of a pair of physical and virtual fields. According to the modern ...
, Moffat proposed a
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 fiel ...
that, like Einstein's unified field, incorporated a symmetric field (gravity) and an antisymmetric field. Unlike Einstein, however, Moffat made no attempt to identify the latter with
electromagnetism In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions of a ...
, instead proposing that the antisymmetric component is another manifestation of
gravity In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stro ...
. As investigation progressed, the theory evolved in a variety of ways; most notably, Moffat postulated that the antisymmetric field may be massive. The current version of his modified gravity (MOG) theory, which grew out of this investigation, modifies Einstein's gravity with the addition of a vector field, while also promoting the constants of the theory to scalar fields. The combined effect of these fields modifies the strength of gravity at large distances when large masses are involved, successfully accounting for a range of astronomical and cosmological observations. The resulting theory describes well, without invoking
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 ab ...
, the rotation curves of galaxies and the mass profiles of X-ray galaxy clusters.


Non-local quantum field theory

In 1990, Moffat proposed a finite, non-local
quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and ...
. The theory was developed extensively by Evens, Moffat, Kleppe and Woodard in 1991. In subsequent work, Moffat proposed this theory as an alternative to the standard
electroweak unification In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very differe ...
of
electromagnetism In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions of a ...
and the
weak nuclear interaction In nuclear physics and particle physics, the weak interaction, which is also often called the weak force or weak nuclear force, is one of the four known fundamental interactions, with the others being electromagnetism, the strong interaction, ...
s. Moffat's theory is a quantum field theory with a non-local term in the field
Lagrangian Lagrangian may refer to: Mathematics * Lagrangian function, used to solve constrained minimization problems in optimization theory; see Lagrange multiplier ** Lagrangian relaxation, the method of approximating a difficult constrained problem with ...
. The theory is gauge invariant and it is finite to all orders of perturbation theory. For the
standard model The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetism, electromagnetic, weak interaction, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying a ...
it can solve the
Higgs boson The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Stand ...
mass hierarchy naturalness problem.J. W. Moffat, Beyond The Standard Model
arxiv:hep-ph/9802228
/ref> It also leads to a finite quantum gravity theory.


Publications


Books

* * *


Selected articles

* (1990)
Finite nonlocal gauge field theory
" ''Phys. Rev. D'' 41: 1177–1184. * (1993)
Superluminary Universe: A Possible Solution to the Initial Value Problem in Cosmology
" ''Int. Jour. Mod. Phys''. D2: 351–366. * (1995)
Nonsymmetric Gravitational Theory
" ''Phys. Lett. B'' 355: 447–452. * (2006)
Scalar-Tensor-Vector Gravity Theory
" ''JCAP'' 0603: 004.


See also

*
List of University of Waterloo people The University of Waterloo, located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is a comprehensive public university that was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles. It has grown into an institution of more than 42,000 students, faculty, and ...
*
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 fiel ...
*
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 physi ...
*
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' ...


References


External links


Personal Website
University of Toronto press releases re Moffat:
199920032007Review
of ''Reinventing Gravity'' at Amazon.com. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Moffat, John 1932 births Living people Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge University of Toronto faculty 21st-century Canadian physicists Canadian cosmologists Quantum gravity physicists British relativity theorists Scientists from Bristol