Rotating thin-disk galaxies through the eyes of Newton

TL;DR

This paper uses Newtonian physics to model rotating disk galaxies, showing that their flat rotation curves can be explained by an exponential mass density distribution, challenging the necessity of dark matter assumptions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that Newton's laws can account for galaxy rotation curves without invoking dark matter, highlighting differences from Keplerian dynamics in stellar systems.

Findings

Rotation curves are consistent with exponential mass density distributions.

Newtonian dynamics can explain galaxy rotation without dark matter.

Keplerian assumptions may lead to errors in galactic modeling.

Abstract

By numerically solving the mass distribution in a rotating disk based on Newton's laws of motion and gravitation, we demonstrate that the observed flat rotation curves for most spiral galaxies correspond to exponentially decreasing mass density from galactic center for the most of the part except within the central core and near periphery edge. Hence, we believe the galaxies described with our model are consistent with that seen through the eyes of Newton. Although Newton's laws and Kepler's laws seem to yield the same results when they are applied to the planets in the solar system, they are shown to lead to quite different results when describing the stellar dynamics in disk galaxies. This is because that Keplerian dynamics may be equivalent to Newtonian dynamics for only special circumstances, but not generally for all the cases. Thus, the conclusions drawn from calculations based on Keplerian dynamics are often likely to be erroneous when used to describe rotating disk galaxies.