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FDG RESULTS FOR NGC 5055

NGC 5055 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici, also known as Messier 63, or the Sunflower galaxy. This galaxy does not have a central bulge component, but just a dominant stellar disk and gas components. NFDG results for NGC 5055 are described in the figure below: the top panel shows the variable dimension D(R) (red-solid curve) computed with the main NFDG model, and the new mass-dimension function Dm(R) (blue-dashed curve), computed with the NFDG field equation. Both dimensions decrease from D=3 at lower radial distances, to D=2.3-2.4 at larger distances. This is a bit unusual for a galactic structure dominated by the stellar disk component and is more similar to the NFDG behavior of bulge-dominated galaxies. Bottom panel: NFDG galactic rotation curves compared with SPARC data. There is perfect agreement between the main NFDG D(R) curve (red-solid) and the experimental data. This shows that, if this galaxy behaves as a fractal structure whose dimension D follows the red-solid curve in the top panel, then the resulting NFDG circular velocity curve in the bottom panel (red-solid) will perfectly fit the experimental data, without any need of dark matter. The NFDG Dm(R) curve (blue-dashed) is a bit less effective in fitting the experimental data, but is still a reasonably good fit.

A disk-dominated galaxy, such as NGC 5055, should be characterized by a fractional dimension close to D=2, due to the axially-symmetric, flattened-disk shape of this galaxy. However, this galaxy seems to behave more like the other bulge-dominated galaxies in the NFDG catalog. See my fifth paper for a full discussion of this galaxy.

NFDG analysis of NGC 5055. Top panel: variable space dimension D(R) (red-solid curve) and mass-dimension Dm(R) (blue-dashed curve). Bottom panel: NFDG rotation curves (circular velocity vs. radial distance) compared to the original SPARC data. Also shown: MOND (RAR) fit and Newtonian predictions.