Current data on the globular cluster Palomar 14 are not inconsistent with MOND

TL;DR

This study shows that current stellar kinematic data for Palomar 14 do not definitively refute MOND, as the small sample size limits the confidence in excluding MOND predictions.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that existing data on Palomar 14 are insufficient to conclusively disprove MOND, emphasizing the need for larger samples for robust tests.

Findings

Current data cannot exclude MOND at high confidence

Small sample size limits the conclusiveness of tests

MOND remains compatible with observed kinematics

Abstract

Certain types of globular clusters have the very important property that the predictions for their kinematics in the Newtonian and modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) contexts are divergent. Here, we caution the recent claim that the stellar kinematics data (using 17 stars) of the globular cluster Palomar 14 are inconsistent with MOND. We compare the observations to the theoretical predictions using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, which is appropriate for small samples. We find that, with the currently available data, the MOND prediction for the velocity distribution can only be excluded with a very low confidence level, clearly insufficient to claim that MOND is falsified.