A new hypothesis, testable with public data, challenges the 50-year-hunt for dark matter particles.
This is the greatest ghost story in science.
Sometime in the 1970s, astronomers realized that our universe is haunted. Galaxies were spinning impossibly fast. The stars on their outer edges were moving with such velocity that the gravity from all visible matter wasn't nearly strong enough to hold them. By all rights, these galaxies should have torn themselves apart.
Yet, they didn't.
To solve this puzzle, physicists proposed the existence of a ghost: an invisible, untouchable substance we call "dark matter." To make the math work, dark matter must constitute a staggering 85% of all matter in the universe. The rest is a ghost we've been hunting for half a century, with absolutely nothing to show for it.
What if we've been searching for something that isn't there?
The Crime Scene: A Broken Law
The core evidence for dark matter comes from the galactic rotation curve. Physics dictates that the farther an object is from the center of gravity, the slower it should move. But in galaxies, the velocity of the stars stops decreasing. It flattens out.
For 50 years, our only explanation has been a halo of invisible matter providing extra gravity. But this theory requires multiple parameters to be custom-fit for every galaxy. It feels less like a universal law and more like a mathematical patch.
What if the law of gravity isn't broken? What if we've been misunderstanding its geometry?
A New Perspective: The Phase Collapse Hypothesis
Instead of asking "What is the missing matter?", we asked, "Where does the law of gravity itself appear to change?"
This led us to a testable hypothesis we call the Phase Collapse Principle. It proposes that the "dark matter effect" is not caused by any new substance, but is a built-in geometric feature of every rotating system.
The principle is this:
In any rotating disk of a certain diameter n, there exists a critical radius, r = n/2. At precisely half the system's diameter, a geometric resonance occurs, enhancing the strength of gravity from that point outward.
The Physical Picture
In classical General Relativity, gravity is the curvature of spacetime. Our framework proposes that in rotating systems, there's an additional effect. We hypothesize that at the critical radius r = n/2, matter on opposite sides of the disk, having exactly opposite orbital velocities, creates a standing-wave-like pattern in the time-averaged gravitational field. This specific geometric configuration could enhance the effective field strength, mimicking the presence of extra mass.
This is not necessarily "new physics" that modifies Einstein's equations. It's a prediction about a collective, geometric effect in rotating systems that may have been overlooked.
Why Hasn't This Been Noticed?
If the solution could be as simple as r = n/2, why didn't anyone see this in 50 years? There are several possible reasons:
- Different Coordinates: Astronomers traditionally plot rotation curves against mass or luminosity, not against the galaxy's own geometric scale n. The relationship may have been hiding in a different coordinate system.
- Model Dependence: Once the dark matter paradigm became standard, research focused on fitting halo models to data rather than searching for alternative geometric patterns.
- Data Availability: High-quality rotation curves extending to large radii (like those in the SPARC database, from 2016) have only become widely available in recent years.
- It Might Be Wrong: The simplest explanation may be that this is a spurious correlation in a small sample. Only testing on the full dataset will tell.
The Initial Test: A Proof-of-Concept
This is a falsifiable claim, and we performed an initial test on a sample of 25 galaxies from the SPARC public database.
- Prediction: The rotation curve will flatten at r = n/2.
- Result: The formula correctly predicted the location of the "dark matter" effect with an 84% success rate (21 out of 25 galaxies).
- Precision: The average prediction error was just 16%.
Statistical Details: The 25 spiral galaxies were selected from SPARC based on high-quality photometry and clear rotation curve plateaus, representing a diverse range of masses (four orders of magnitude). Success was defined as a prediction within 25% of the observed value. A full statistical analysis of all 175+ SPARC galaxies is the necessary next step.
What This Hypothesis Explains (and What It Doesn't)
It is critical to state the limited scope of this proposal.
✅ What it aims to explain: The flat rotation curves of spiral galaxies.
❌ What it does NOT yet explain: Other key evidence for dark matter, such as gravitational lensing (the Bullet Cluster), the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), or large-scale structure formation.
This is a hypothesis for one piece of the dark matter puzzle, not a complete replacement theory.
How to Prove This Wrong
We invite the global astrophysics community to rigorously test and attempt to falsify this claim. The hypothesis can be proven wrong by:
- Testing it on the full SPARC sample (175+ galaxies). If the 84% success rate does not hold, the hypothesis is falsified.
- Showing a systematic deviation. If the prediction is consistently off in a way that correlates with another property (like mass), the r = n/2 law is incomplete.
- Finding clear counter-examples. A significant number of well-measured galaxies where the "dark matter" effect clearly begins at a radius other than n/2 would invalidate the principle.
The data is public. The formula is simple. The test is clear.
A New Direction?
If this geometric principle is validated by further, large-scale testing, it would suggest that the flat rotation curves of galaxies may be an effect of gravitational geometry rather than a new type of particle. The 50-year hunt for a mysterious substance may have been sending us in the wrong direction. The search continues, but perhaps, with this new clue, we can start looking in a new place—not in the dark, but in the geometry hiding in plain sight.
CRITICAL SCIENTIFIC DISCLAIMER
This article presents a highly speculative hypothesis about one aspect of the dark matter problem. It is essential to understand:
What has been done:
- An initial test on 25 carefully selected galaxies.
- A simple geometric prediction was formulated: r = n/2.
- Preliminary results are promising.
What has NOT been done:
- Peer review by the astrophysics community.
- Testing on the full 175+ galaxy SPARC sample.
- An explanation for other dark matter evidence (CMB, lensing, structure formation).
- A rigorous theoretical derivation from first principles.
The standard view:
The existence of dark matter as a new particle is supported by multiple independent lines of evidence and is the consensus view of the cosmology community. This hypothesis challenges only one piece of that evidence.
This is a call for testing, not a claim of proven fact. If you are an astrophysicist, we strongly encourage you to test the r = n/2 prediction on additional galaxies and attempt to falsify this hypothesis.
Authorship and Theoretical Foundation:
The concepts presented are built upon a unified theoretical framework developed by Yahor Kamarou, which includes the Principle of Minimal Mismatch, Distinction Mechanics, and the Phase Collapse Principle.
