Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter
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Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter
#2I love theoretical physics - I do get tired of all the fluff articles churned out. It's like medical research. You'd think they've cured cancer by now.
If you google around for dark matter, you'll find sources, including nasa.gov saying "direct proof" of dark matter has been found already. This was back in 2006.
Theoretical physicists: disprove MOND, TeVeS, Mass in other dimensions, Scale relativity, or better yet, get better data before throwing around theoretical speculation with such confidence?
Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter
#3The edge of human understanding of the universe is a vague and scary place. When we dug deep below the atom level everything we took for granted fell apart. We had to invent an entirely new model of physics to make sense of our observations, which is complex and counter-intuitive (quantum mechanics)
Would it be reasonable to assume that the same applies at the opposite end of the spectrum: from the sub-atomic to the super-galactical? Could the rules at such scales necessitate a new form of physics that we have yet to derive because of the difficulty of observation?
I ask this because "dark matter" and "dark energy" always make me think of past primitive attempts to align unexpected data to existing models of understanding. Is it possible that they are just "echoes" or "shadows" of concepts that exceed the very nature of "matter" and "energy"?
Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter
#4The edge of human understanding of the universe is a vague and scary place. When we dug deep below the atom level everything we took for granted fell apart. We had to invent an entirely new model of physics to make sense of our observations, which is complex and counter-intuitive (quantum mechanics) Would it be reasonable to assume that the same applies at the opposite end of the spectrum: from the sub-atomic to the…
> Would it be reasonable to assume that the same applies at the opposite end of the spectrum: from the sub-atomic to the super-galactical?
Isn't special relativity complex and counter-intuitive enough?
Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter
#5This seems like something straight out of SciFi. Dark matter actually forming invisible rods that go through the Earth? Can we interact with these "hairs" if they are all around us? Can we at least detect it?
It seems that all question I and any non-specialist can ask are stupid and irrelevant, but it's still so exciting to think of all the possibilities.
Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter
#6The edge of human understanding of the universe is a vague and scary place. When we dug deep below the atom level everything we took for granted fell apart. We had to invent an entirely new model of physics to make sense of our observations, which is complex and counter-intuitive (quantum mechanics) Would it be reasonable to assume that the same applies at the opposite end of the spectrum: from the sub-atomic to the…
In a way relativity theory was such a new model, classical theory (Newton) worked well at all Earth scale observations of the time, it took quite few years after the theory was formulated before the first experimental evidence came in and relativistic effects are far more visible to us on a larger scale (but they're there on a smaller scale too, just harder to quantify).
Who knows, there may be yet another theory that explains things on a larger scale even better than our current understanding. This may also increase or change our understanding of what happens at the smallest scales. Laws of physics trend towards unification, a single model to explain all scales at once.
Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter
#7All this "dark matter might be here and there" articles makes me feel they are missing the point.
The article even fails to mention electromagnetism, which together with gravity causes matter to collapse on itself, causing black holes, which is the gravitational core of every galaxy.
Electromaginetic fields has also been dictating the galaxy cluster structures (aka "mega structures" that has emerged since the hypothesed event we commonly refer to as the big bang).
http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/how-the-universe-work...
http://www.setterfield.org/Astronomy/Galaxy_Cores.html#elect...
Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter
#8I love theoretical physics - I do get tired of all the fluff articles churned out. It's like medical research. You'd think they've cured cancer by now. If you google around for dark matter, you'll find sources, including nasa.gov saying "direct proof" of dark matter has been found already. This was back in 2006. Theoretical physicists: disprove MOND, TeVeS, Mass in other dimensions, Scale relativity, or better yet, g…
These types of questions seem to come up a lot, and while I'm not an expert, here are some typical responses, from one of the last dark matter threads (in particular, the two top replies): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10550732
I assume the tendency for the general public to give higher consideration to "other explanations," relative to professional physicists who seem to lean heavily towards the "matter" hypothesis, is lack of expertise in the current state of research. If you don't have a lot of good evidence one way or the other, all options seem about equally likely, so why take WIMPs more seriously than MOND or other hypotheses? Not that considering those alternatives is silly, but I think this might explain why this question keeps coming up even though the physics community seems pretty focused on the dark-matter-as-matter hypothesis.
Though whatever the answer should turn out to be, it will certainly be an interesting development.
Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter
#9All this "dark matter might be here and there" articles makes me feel they are missing the point. The article even fails to mention electromagnetism, which together with gravity causes matter to collapse on itself, causing black holes, which is the gravitational core of every galaxy. Electromaginetic fields has also been dictating the galaxy cluster structures (aka "mega structures" that has emerged since the hypothe…
Essentially the defining property of dark matter is that it does not interact electromagnetically, so there is no point to consider it.
Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter
#10The arxiv pre-print is http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.07009.pdf