HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44115973 (187 points | 3 months ago | 180 comments)

Note that in spite of the name it's not a "theory" that gives an clear and accurate prediction.

We mix results of many theories, like electromagnetism, general relativity dopler effect, atoms ionization and spectrum, centripetal force, ... to get an accurate prediction and error estimation of how much mass a galaxy must have. Different calculations disagree, so we are forced to try to fix the theory (MOND) or guess there is dome difficut to see mass (dark matter).

The "blowtorch theory" is only a few general ideas and handwaving, without clear and precice calculations. So it's impossible to know if it explains all the current data (without dark matter) or even if the predictions digree so much with the current data that we need even more weird stuff to match it.

> Note that in spite of the name it's not a "theory" that gives an clear and accurate prediction.

It does make verifiable predictions, and moreover, these predictions are much easier to test than those of string theory, which involves a lot of mathematics but is still not considered a scientific theory because it is impossible to verify