Professor Terry Matilsky's Theory

[Hugh]

I'm wondering if anyone on the forum has looked into Professor Terry Matilsky's theory involving a fourth spatial dimension. On his home page he talks about his research activities: "Most recently, I have become interested in fundamental theories of gravitation. It appears that all of the standard "dark matter" scenarios are significantly flawed, and recent work in string theory has pointed us toward modification of our current ideas concerning gravitational dynamics. I have examined a new idea that postulates an additional interaction in four spatial dimensions that has the potential to solve the dark matter problem, as well as address some fundamental questions in both cosmology and high-energy physics."

Here is a link:http://xray.rutgers.edu/~matilsky/

Go to the gravity section for the theory. Here is the abstract:

"We propose an additional term in the classical gravitational force law, which is repelling in nature, and which may solve the dark matter problem. As an inverse cube field interaction, it operates over 4 real spatial dimensions and its effect on our observable 3-D space may account both for flat rotation curves and standard Newtonian dynamics at small radial distances. By utilizing cosmological clustering scales, we can derive the universal interaction strength, and show that this naturally leads to an altered Planck mass that becomes the neutron/proton rest mass. Moreover, the correct value for the electron rest mass can be predicted using only classical electrostatics coupled with the current theory. On cosmological scales, the interaction easily accounts for the acceleration of the Hubble flow."

[jinydu]

I've looked at the introduction page, and it seems he made a typo:

"A) Although repelling by nature, it can substantially enhance the gravitational acceleration in the limit of large distances from the center of the potential, as well as yield standard Newtonian dynamics as r --> 0."

However, as he correctly points out later in the page:

"If the separation is increased, the inverse-square attractive term dominates (thereby decreasing the separation ), while if the separation is decreased, the inverse-cube repelling term dominates (thereby sending the system back toward larger values of the separation)."

This would then seem to imply that the inverse-cube force would only be noticeable at very small scales; at large scales, it would be negligible compared to the conventional inverse-square gravitational force. On the next page though, he once again claims that a Newtonian field is recovered as r --> 0 :? .