The Problem With Modified Gravity

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There's something about the manifestation of dark matter in galaxies and clusters that is weird. This is what Milgram first seized on in the 1980s when he started thinking about mon. The promise of modifying gravity is that you can explain a feature that is not yet otherwise explained by the dominant theory, but the problem with modified gravity is that it doesn't fit the data, it's ruled out. That's a bigger problem.

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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