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Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

nasa.gov

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Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

#61

Post by pavel_lishin »

trhway wrote: post #42
jahnu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we don't have the capacity to understand how the universe works? I can't remember where I read it but someone made the point that no matter how hard you try you can never teach a mouse to understand French.

>no matter how hard you try you can never teach a mouse to understand French. humans couldn't so far teach mouse a human language. That doesn't mean that mouse doesn't have something like several thousands or tens of thousands of basic sounds and combinations of them into meaningful (for mouse) sequences. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/catch-the... After all as a mouse says to another mouse - "no…

> After all as a mouse says to another mouse - "no matter how hard you try you can never teach a human to understand mouse language".

But mice don't say that. They can't. jahnu's statement wasn't a parable.

Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

#62

Post by pavel_lishin »

trhway wrote: post #45
jstanley wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but the point is a mouse simply does not have the capacity to understand French. Maybe humans do not have the capacity to understand the complete workings of physics.

>a mouse simply does not have the capacity to understand French. we don't really know what capacity is required to do it. 1PFlops? 1P neuron synapse transfers/minute? What capacity and in what units mouse brain is? Our human brain evolution has abused low efficiency size increase approach. As result we're using only like 10% of capacity of our brain. This dog knows 1000 words in human language. That's more than i kno…

> This dog knows 1000 words in human language. That's more than i know in Chinese, and the task of learning a 1000 Chinese hieroglyphs scares the hell out of me.

Okay; but that dog can't have a conversation. It doesn't know what they mean, it just knows that follows a certain stimulus. It's like saying I understand cloud language, because I can tell when it's going to rain after looking at the sky.

And even if that dog "understands" a thousand words, and you're scared of learning a thousand Chinese characters, you still have the capacity for learning Chinese. Or French. Or Spanish, or Esperanto, or Russian, or Thai. You could spend a year learning Russian, and we could have this conversation in that language; I will never be able to explain this conversation to a dog, in any language.

Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

#64

Post by pavel_lishin »

wfn wrote: post #19
hliyan wrote: post #11

I find this fascinating, but still purely hypothetical, yes? Basically: IF the observed expansion of the universe is indeed due to dark matter as we think of it, and IF such dark matter exist as streams, and IF such streams mix with ordinary galaxies, and IF the solar system is passing through such a stream THEN Earth MAY have dark matter filaments in its vicinity. IF we locate such a filament and send a probe, we mi…

@ 'berntb, you've been shadowbanned for unclear reasons IMO, FYI. Their dead comment: You are mixing up dark matter and dark energy. The main effect of dark matter is not universal expansion, it is from both influences of gravity on galaxies and theory. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evidence

I don't see their comment as shadowbanned, even when not logged in.

Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

#65

Post by wfn »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #64
wfn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@ 'berntb, you've been shadowbanned for unclear reasons IMO, FYI. Their dead comment: You are mixing up dark matter and dark energy. The main effect of dark matter is not universal expansion, it is from both influences of gravity on galaxies and theory. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evidence

I don't see their comment as shadowbanned, even when not logged in.

It was shadowbanned before, but apparently it isn't anymore.

Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

#66

Post by idlewords »

CBABIES wrote: post #17

Dark matter seems like a misunderstood component of gravity. The current explanations just seem ridiculous.

You're not the first, second, or ten thousandth person to have this thought. But dark matter fits the phenomena better than any proposed modification of gravity. See the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster for a textbook example.

Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

#67

Post by idlewords »

One thing I can't figure out from the arxiv preprint is the lifetime of these hairs, which I assume are a transient and dynamic phenomenon. Does anyone have an idea of how long a hair remains near the planet in question and retains its shape?

Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

#68

Post by trhway »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #62
trhway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a mouse simply does not have the capacity to understand French. we don't really know what capacity is required to do it. 1PFlops? 1P neuron synapse transfers/minute? What capacity and in what units mouse brain is? Our human brain evolution has abused low efficiency size increase approach. As result we're using only like 10% of capacity of our brain. This dog knows 1000 words in human language. That's more than i kno…

> This dog knows 1000 words in human language. That's more than i know in Chinese, and the task of learning a 1000 Chinese hieroglyphs scares the hell out of me. Okay; but that dog can't have a conversation. It doesn't know what they mean , it just knows that follows a certain stimulus. It's like saying I understand cloud language, because I can tell when it's going to rain after looking at the sky. And even if that…

>Okay; but that dog can't have a conversation.

dogs do have conversations. And other animals too. Check the link on the prairie dogs for example.

>I will never be able to explain this conversation to a dog, in any language.

it is the deficiency of human-to-dog communication, not the dog's lack of mental capacity to handle the complexity of conversation.

Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

#69

Post by ajuc »

wlievens wrote: post #56
jstanley wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but the point is a mouse simply does not have the capacity to understand French. Maybe humans do not have the capacity to understand the complete workings of physics.

But that could only be the case if those laws are very, very complicated. So far physical laws have been on the side of "understandable if you invest a couple years of study as a reaonably intelligent person".

We wouldn't have discovered the impossible to understand laws no matter if they exist or not.

Re: Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

#70

Post by trhway »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #61
trhway wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>no matter how hard you try you can never teach a mouse to understand French. humans couldn't so far teach mouse a human language. That doesn't mean that mouse doesn't have something like several thousands or tens of thousands of basic sounds and combinations of them into meaningful (for mouse) sequences. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/catch-the... After all as a mouse says to another mouse - "no…

> After all as a mouse says to another mouse - "no matter how hard you try you can never teach a human to understand mouse language". But mice don't say that. They can't . jahnu's statement wasn't a parable.

>But mice don't say that.

check the various articles on animal language decoding. Mice and other animals do say that or similar complexity things.

>They can't.

That just an empty statement of belief unsubstantiated by facts. Again check the articles.

In general, the "only humans have language" is simply the religious "only humans have soul" dogma in disguise.

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