New Theory of Gravity Might Explain Dark Matter

 http://phys.org/news/2016-11-theory-gravity-dark.html

A new theory of gravity might explain the curious motions of stars in galaxies. Emergent gravity, as the new theory is called, predicts the exact same deviation of motions that is usually explained by invoking dark matter. Prof. Erik Verlinde, renowned expert in string theory at the University of Amsterdam and the Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics, published a new research paper today in which he expands his groundbreaking views on the nature of gravity. [...]

According to Erik Verlinde, there is no need to add a mysterious dark matter particle to the theory. In a new paper, which appeared today on the ArXiv preprint server, Verlinde shows how his theory of gravity accurately predicts the velocities by which the stars rotate around the center of the Milky Way, as well as the motion of stars inside other galaxies.
"We have evidence that this new view of gravity actually agrees with the observations, " says Verlinde. "At large scales, it seems, gravity just doesn't behave the way Einstein's theory predicts."


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-theory-gravity-dark.html#jCp

According to Erik Verlinde, there is no need to add a mysterious dark matter particle to the theory. In a new paper, which appeared today on the ArXiv preprint server, Verlinde shows how his theory of gravity accurately predicts the velocities by which the stars rotate around the center of the Milky Way, as well as the motion of stars inside other galaxies.
"We have evidence that this new view of gravity actually agrees with the observations, " says Verlinde. "At large scales, it seems, gravity just doesn't behave the way Einstein's theory predicts."

Finally modern physics is moving closer to giving up speculative absurdities, dark matter being the first one. Many years ago I mentioned dark matter as one example where science had lost its way and had become science fiction. I also suggested that we have to rethink our theory of gravity, if it does not fit observation.
Hopefully this new theory allows us to get rid of other "dark things" like Black Holes and singularities, which all depend on our assumptions about how gravity works. If the above theory can be confirmed it even puts the Big Bang theory into question, at least in the way as we understand it today, because it also depends heavily on gravity.

It might be a big chance to fix the contradictions that we have currently in our physical theories. And maybe theoretical physicists will learn something from it. It is wrong to become too speculative, if you have not established the basics properly.

If it is confirmed that our current theory of gravity is simply wrong, then we can throw several decades of scientific research in physics out of the window. This is more or less also the time that there was no major breakthrough in physics. It appears we were on the wrong track - and we should have noticed it long ago. If I was able to notice it with my limited understanding of physics, why did the experts in theoretical physics not notice it? Apparently there is something wrong in how our international scientific community works. Physicists have become too comfortable in their office chairs, unwilling to think critical. They simply followed the path that others had gone before them: black holes, dark matter, big bang, inflation theory,  etc. It is about time that physics gets back down to earth. Then we might also see some tangible results coming from scientific research and not just useless and unverifiable speculations about the first milliseconds after a hypothetical Big Bang.

However it gives hope to see that science is indeed able to rethink and correct its theories and to go alternative ways, even if it takes several decades. When religion gets involved in explaining the universe, even after millennia they are unable to admit any mistakes. Therefore we should never let science become a new religion.

For now it seems that science is back on the right track again.