Quantized vorticity and dark matter

Newtonian mechanics predicts that stars far from a galaxy's center should orbit more slowly (v ∝ r⁻¹ᐟ²). Observations show instead that their speeds stay flat at great distances. The standard response is Dark Matter, an invisible mass said to make up 85% of the galaxy.

RSI proposes a different cause. A galaxy is a macroscopic Topological Knot in the Eternal Consonance, acting as one giant, coherent vortex within the universal continuum. Like a superfluid, this continuum keeps its vortices circulating strongly even at their edges.

The stars are not carried along by the swirl, because the medium has no friction and pushes nothing. The vortex works through its pressure. A spinning fluid is always at lower pressure toward its center, which is why a hurricane has a calm eye and a whirlpool a dip. That low-pressure heart deepens the galaxy's pressure shadow beyond what its stars and gas make alone, and in RSI that shadow is gravity. So RSI proposes that the vortex acts on the outer stars, and bends light, as extra mass would, holding the stars on faster orbits; both effects remain to be derived. That would explain why dark matter shows up in gravitational lensing as well as in rotation curves. RSI calls this the galaxy's Vortex Shadow.

The theory sees a nested hierarchy of vortices. Particles are tiny Quantized Vortices, and galaxies are vast ones. Space is not empty. It is a superfluid ocean that foams into matter at specific thresholds.

Two tests remain. RSI must predict real rotation curves, including the tight link between a galaxy's visible mass and its flat rotation speed. And in colliding galaxy clusters such as the Bullet Cluster, where lensing follows the galaxies rather than the hot gas, it must show that the extra shadow, at cluster scale and larger than the gas mass, moves with the galaxies through the collision, even though in a frictionless medium vortex lines move with the medium rather than with matter. RSI proposes that the lines are pinned to the galaxies' stars rather than to the hot gas, which would carry them through the collision. RSI must show why pinning favors compact matter over hot gas, and that it survives the collision.