Milgrom's Latest MOND Paper

Mordehai Milgrom, who invented MOND, has long been ambivalent about whether this is really a modification of gravity or a modification of inertia. In his latest paper, he considers the possibility that it could be both.

It is plausible that in a more fundamental theory of MOND both gravity and inertia will differ from their Newtonian versions. Such theories, if they embody the basic tenets of MOND, will share its primary predictions with existing theories, which modify either gravity or inertia. But they are expected to differ in their structure and in their secondary predictions. 

Here, I discuss families of nonrelativistic MOND theories that modify both the kinetic and the gravitational actions of Newtonian dynamics. Each family is spanned by one parameter 0≤η≤1, which is the scaling dimension of the deep-MOND limit of all terms in the action. Pure modified gravity (η=0) and pure modified inertia (η=1) are the end cases in each family. I speak of families, since the modified action terms themselves are not strictly specified, but are treated in rather general terms. 

These theories are artificial in that they are not based on a single unifying idea that dictates the modification of the two components. But they are still useful in pinpointing some idiosyncracies of such theories. 

For example, neither of the two modified terms, by itself, leads to MOND phenomenology; only their combined effect does. I show how the two combine to make some of the primary MOND predictions, such as asymptotic flatness of rotation curves, the mass-asymptotic-speed relation, and the deep-MOND, virial, mass-velocity-dispersion (M−σ) relation. 

Another idiosyncracy of such theories is the emergence of different interpolating functions in the kinetic equations of motion and in the gravitational field equations, each relevant under different circumstances, and neither of which have the standard deep-MOND limit. Such examples alert us to the wide range of theories that can lead to MOND phenomenology.

Mordehai Milgrom, "Mixed modified-gravity--modified-inertia MOND theories" arXiv:2610.21699 (October 15, 2026).