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Triton Station
Personal blog · tritonstation.comsciencephilosophy
Triton Station is a personal blog at tritonstation.com about science and philosophy. Since 2019, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 63 times, most often “What JWST Will See”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 36 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Triton Station, Stacy McGaugh's blog, for its arguments favouring MOND over dark matter, including galaxy rotation curves, the bullet cluster and early galaxies seen by JWST.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 36 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A blog about the science, philosophy, and sociology of astrophysics and cosmology, especially concerning dark matter and modified theories of gravity.
Most-linked posts?
- What JWST Will See4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-01-04
- Rotation curves: still flat after a million light-years3 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-06-20
- /new-blog-page/2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-08-10
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-10-28
- Checking in on Troubles with Dark Matter2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-05
- /2022/01/10/the-curious-case-of-agc-114905-an-isolated-galaxy-devoid-of-dark-matter/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-12
- Is NGC 1277 a problem for MOND?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-05
- Recent Developments Concerning the Gravitational Potential of the Milky Way2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-19
- Define Better (Modified Newtonian Dynamics)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-08-25
- /2024/02/06/clusters-of-galaxies-ruin-everything/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-06-20
What Hacker News says?
My hangup with MOND is still general relativity. We know for a fact that gravity is _not_ Newtonian, that the inverse square law does not hold. Any model of gravity based on an inverse law is simply wrong. Another comment linked to https://tritonstation.com/new-blog-page/ , which is an excellent read. It makes the case that GR has never been tested at low accelerations, that is might be wrong. But we know for a fact…
Comment linking /new-blog-page/
on “James Webb Space Telescope finds evidence for alternate theory of gravity”Submitted Big Trouble in a Deep Void as a story · 158 points
HN discussionI follow the lead author, Stacy McGaugh, via his blog where he posts discussions and musings about the latest research into the dark matter vs MOND debate: https://tritonstation.com/new-blog-page/ His arguments are very convincing and relatively clear. I am not an astrophysicist but I have two degrees in physics and have always found the dark matter theory to be lacking -- in absence of any evidence of causation wha…
Comment linking /new-blog-page/
on “James Webb Space Telescope finds evidence for alternate theory of gravity”Submitted Rotation curves: still flat after a million light-years as a story · 103 points
HN discussion> but nothing fit the data as well as LCDM. I think you mean, "nothing could be made to fit the data as well as LCDM". See below. > When new data came in, and it pointed yet again at LCDM, it was considered a disappointment. This is highly revisionist, and exemplifies the kind of cherry picking that has kept LCDM alive when it has outright failed numerous predictions and had to be adjusted after the fact to fit the…
Comment linking /2024/06/18/rotation-curves-still-flat-after-a-million-light-years/
on “The Webb Telescope further deepens the Hubble tension controversy in cosmology”Submitted Has dark matter been detected in the Milky Way? No. as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Isn’t there loads of evidence for dark matter including direct evidence like gravitational lensing? There is an equivalent boatload of evidence for modified gravity that can't be explained by particle dark matter [1], but one set of observations is hand waved away as a minor inconvenience while the other set is taken as definitive proof. If gravity doesn't work the way we expect, then lensing in galaxy collisions…
Comment linking /2024/06/18/rotation-curves-still-flat-after-a-million-light-years/
on “The Webb Telescope further deepens the Hubble tension controversy in cosmology”Submitted Define Better (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> MOND needs some pretty crazy arguing to explain decoupling of gravity from baryonic matter distributions. And it also needs a varying length scale parameter to account for different galaxy types. You mean the theory that has received 2-3 orders of magnitude less attention than DM has some conceptual holes to patch up? Colour me shocked. The fact that DM still fails despite all of that investment should worry you m…
Comment linking /2022/04/08/two-hypotheses/
on “Dark Matter Doesn't Exist”Submitted Why the search for particle dark matter is hopeless, part 1 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFamaey & McGaugh's review < https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3960 > (Stacey McGaugh is < https://tritonstation.com/ >, a frequent critic of particle dark matter) §7 is all about adding whole new fields ("parameters") to standard General Relativity in order to capture higher-order terms in post-Newtonian expansions (in 1/c^n or in the metric tensor) of theories that preserve the central characteristics of Milgrom's MOND. T…
Comment linking /
on “Dark Matter Doesn't Exist”Submitted Dark Matter and Modified Gravity as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe MOND guys are aware: https://tritonstation.com/2022/07/21/jwst-twitter-bender/ Specifically this paper[0] is mentioned as predicting it > Remarkably, the data roughly follow the green line, which is an L* galaxy magically put in place at the inconceivably high redshift of z=10. Galaxies seem to have gotten big impossibly early. This is why you see us astronomers flipping our lids at the JWST results. Can’t happe…
Comment linking /2022/07/21/jwst-twitter-bender/
on “Dark Matter Doesn't Exist”Submitted Recent Developments Concerning the Gravitational Potential of the Milky Way as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI mean MOND has made "surprising predictions that have come true". Here's one that seems very relevant: https://tritonstation.com/2022/01/03/what-jwst-will-see/
Comment linking /2022/01/03/what-jwst-will-see/
on “Dark Matter Doesn't Exist”Submitted Checking in on Troubles with Dark Matter as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> The weird thing about it though is that whatever the dark matter is it has to be spread out. In fact, they'd have to be so spread out that rotation curves remain flat past a million light years [1]. There seems to be no plausible particle dark matter distribution that can satisfy all of the necessary constraints at this point. [1] https://tritonstation.com/2024/06/18/rotation-curves-still-f...
Comment linking /2024/06/18/rotation-curves-still-flat-after-a-million-light-years/
on “Neutron Stars Hint at Another Dimension”Submitted Is NGC 1277 a problem for MOND? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnswer on the 5th figure on this page. https://tritonstation.com/2022/01/10/the-curious-case-of-agc...
Comment linking /2022/01/10/the-curious-case-of-agc-114905-an-isolated-galaxy-devoid-of-dark-matter/
on “Astronomers discover a strange galaxy without dark matter”Submitted Measuring the growth of the stellar mass of galaxies over cosmic time as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCan they explain flat rotation curves out to a million light years though? https://tritonstation.com/2024/06/18/rotation-curves-still-f...
Comment linking /2024/06/18/rotation-curves-still-flat-after-a-million-light-years/
on “The possibilities for dark matter have shrunk”Submitted Massive Galaxies at High Redshift: we told you so as a story · 1 points
HN discussionEven better recent evidence shows that rotation curves are flat up to a million light years, which no feasible particle dark matter halo could reproduce: https://tritonstation.com/2024/06/18/rotation-curves-still-f...
Comment linking /2024/06/18/rotation-curves-still-flat-after-a-million-light-years/
on “The possibilities for dark matter have shrunk”Submitted Full Speed in Reverse! as a story · 1 points
HN discussionHave you seen any work from Stacy McGaugh? https://tritonstation.com/new-blog-page/
Comment linking /new-blog-page/
on “Physicists who want to ditch dark energy”Submitted Wide binary debate heats up again as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAlso see [1], a follow up post by Stacy McGaugh, a MOND proponent, who is quoted in the Quanta article. He does not agree with the evidence as presented in that article. [1] https://tritonstation.com/2026/10/15/ghostly-galaxies-in-the...
Comment linking /2026/10/15/ghostly-galaxies-in-the-news/
on “Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't”Submitted Things go mostly right or badly wrong as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> Then you've got the "Bullet Cluster"[2] - where two colliding galaxies have had their observable and dark matter masses apparently separated. MOND can't explain this one without a lot of tweaking The bullet cluster is so over-played as a refutation of MOND. "A lot of tweaking" basically reduces to adding sterile neutrinos, as one possible solution. All galactic clusters have issues in both MOND and LCDM, the bulle…
Comment linking /2024/02/06/clusters-of-galaxies-ruin-everything/
on “Rotation curves: still flat after a million light-years”Submitted Recent Developments Concerning the Gravitational Potential of the Milky Way as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
