How to Modify Gravity Without Deep Theory

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Newtonian gravity is the limit though in the weak field of general relativity. So how would you go about changing gravity? How do you go about modifying gravity without any deep theoretical superstructure? Just the idea of how could gravity be modified? The easy thing to imagine doing and certainly something that was at the top of the minds of people who thought about rotation curves and things like that when they try to get rid of dark matter back in the day is that you change the inverse square law. All you are doing is changing the magnitude of the gravitational force from one over r squared to something else. And even if you do not have a deep seated quantum field theory justification for doing so you can

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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