Moment of Inertia of Gas as a Source of Added Gravitational Field in Galaxies

Abstract

In this paper we propose a new perspective for explaining galaxy rotation curves. We conjecture that there is a gravitational moment of inertia which, together with gravitational mass, contributes to the gravitational potential. We substantiate a formula for the potential created by the moment of inertia. We validate our model by computing orbital rotation velocities for several galaxies and showing that computed rotation velocities correspond to the observed ones. Our proposed approach is capable of accounting for constant gas velocities outside of a galactic disc without relying on the dark matter hypothesis. Furthermore, it addresses several problems faced by the application of the dark matter hypothesis, e.g., the absence of inward collapse of dark matter into a galaxy, the spherical distribution of dark matter around galaxies, and absence of traces of the effect of dark matter in two ultra-diffuse galaxies, NGC 1052-DF2, and NGC 1052-DF4.