Simplicity II

My first framework for this: adimensional gravity plus superfluid dark matter.

Simplicity

From Stacy McGaugh I have learned that MOND predicts the exponent in the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation to be exactly 4. It reminds me of how the hypothesis of a critical Higgs (in Shaposhnikov and Wetterich) directly predicted the actual mass. In both cases, the mainstream prefers models (dark matter, supersymmetry) which are less accurate, more complicated, and permit endless fiddling with details, over searching for models which implement the simpler and more accurate prediction. I believe this is the reverse of how things should be.

I also think that the "inflation criticality" of the Higgs, discovered by Bezrukov, equally deserves attention. But I am not aware of any mechanism which produces that property, whereas we do have models for MOND and the critical Higgs.

Conformal universe II

A paper today takes seriously the idea that "at large scales", gravity is scale-invariant.

My notion has been that conformal symmetry is broken only inside what we now call "dark matter halos". And it is tempting to suppose that the Higgs boson is the dilaton, the goldstone boson of broken scale symmetry.

But wouldn't those two hypotheses somehow imply that electroweak symmetry is unbroken in intergalactic space too; and wouldn't that screw up the propagation of light?

Even if every little whorl of intergalactic gas inhabits its own bubble of spontaneously broken conformal symmetry, the fact that we can see the distant galaxies seems to imply that photons can survive the journey through the scale-invariant regions of space. And I don't know if that makes sense.