1306.6628 (HongSheng Zhao et al.)

Local Group timing in Milgromian dynamics. A past Milky Way-Andromeda encounter at z>0.8    [PDF]

HongSheng Zhao, Benoit Famaey, Fabian Lüghausen, Pavel Kroupa

The Local Group timing has been one of the first historical probes of the missing mass problem. Whilst modern cosmological probes indicate that pure baryonic dynamics is not sufficient on the largest scales, nearby galaxies and small galaxy groups persistently obey Milgrom's MOND law, which implies that dynamics at small scales is possibly entirely predicted by the baryons. Here, we investigate the Local Group timing in this context of Milgromian dynamics. Making use of the latest measured proper motions and radial velocities for Andromeda and the Magellanic clouds, we integrate backwards their orbits by making use of the Milgromian two-body equation of motion. We find that, with the currently measured proper motions and radial velocity of M31, MOND would imply that the Milky Way and M31 first moved apart via Hubble expansion after birth, but then necessarily got attracted again by the Milgromian gravitational attraction, and had a past fly-by encounter before coming to their present positions. This encounter would most probably have happened 7 to 11 Gyr ago (0.8View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.6628