Galactic Dynamics Without Dark Matter: Sinertia Flow and Scalar Geometry in NUVO Theory - Part 6.1 of the NUVO Theory Series

Conventional explanations of galactic rotation curves rely on the presence of unseen dark matter halos to account for the observed flat velocity profiles at large radii. In this paper, we explore a novel reinterpretation of these observations using the scalar field λ(r) defined in NUVO theory, where spacetime geometry is modulated by finite scalar coupling to both kinetic and gravitational potential energy. We show that, even without invoking dark matter, the scalar field reconstructed from observational data can be explained as the consequence of distributed sinertia depletion. Unlike the case of a single massive object, a galaxy presents a network of gravitational sinks, each locally drawing on the finite reservoir of sinertia that space provides. The result is a global reduction in available sinertia throughout the galactic interior, leading to an increase in λ(r) even in regions of minimal gravitational gradient. This distributed demand, rather than local curvature alone, produces the observed modulation structure. We compare the reverse-engineered λ(r) field derived from dark-matterbased velocity curves to NUVO’s baryonic-only prediction and demonstrate that the missing modulation can be interpreted as a scalar response to multi-source sinertia draw. This new interpretation provides a scalar-field–based alternative to dark matter and offers a physically motivated mechanism for explaining flat galactic rotation curves within the NUVO framework.