A Wear-Activated Density-Release Refinement of the Hermes Gravity Equation: A Paper 1 Addendum

The Hermes equation (McGinty 2026a) predicts galaxy rotation curves from the baryonic acceleration profile, stellar age and peak baryonic acceleration with zero adjustable parameters per galaxy. In M33 its residual concentrates in the extended, low-density outer disk (McGinty 2026b). This addendum presents a wear-activated density-release refinement that acts only where the baryonic acceleration is low and keeps every Paper 1 constant. Five candidate operators were tested against eight constraints, including no per-galaxy parameters and no material SPARC casualties. Each failed for a specific structural reason and shaped the surviving operator, but the constraints do not single it out: its two new constants (a_u = a_k/π and 2π^2) are closed-form expressions of Paper 1 constants, chosen by trial on the same 133 galaxies. Applied to 133 SPARC galaxies at unit stellar mass-to-light ratio, the refinement improves the median reduced χ^2_ν from 1.323 to 1.189 (MOND 1.143) with zero material casualties, reduces the share of galaxies MOND fits better from 48.9% to 42.1%, and keeps the number above χ^2_ν = 5 at 21 (versus 38 for MOND); at the more usual ratios of 0.5 for disks and 0.7 for bulges, MOND fits better. Combined with a literature-motivated younger effective age for M33's outer disk (1 to 2 Gyr), the outer-disk χ^2_ν improves from 5.86 to 1.30–1.53; MOND reaches 0.23 on the same board with no age input. The production CSV files are deposited with this record, and the code that rebuilds them is public (Supplement F). Version note: Version 3 recomputes the M33 results with the gate as corrected in Paper 7 v3; earlier versions used the superseded gate, so the outer-disk χ^2_ν now falls from 5.86 to 1.30–1.53 rather than from 5.79 to 1.21. It also withdraws the statements that the operator was forced by constrained elimination and that its derived constants were uniquely selected, treats M33 as a motivating case rather than an independent test, adds a comparison at the more usual stellar mass-to-light ratios (where MOND fits better), corrects the summary of the M33 literature, and deposits the production data, with a pinned commit of the code that rebuilds them. The SPARC results at unit stellar mass-to-light ratio are unchanged.