It's interesting to see the epistemological differences at the frontiers of knowledge.
Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
11–20 of 116 posts
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#12Correct me if I'm wrong (please), but don't we still lack any kind of fundamental definition of what dark energy/matter is other than..."the cause of the difference between what is calculated, and what is observed"? To the point that we aren't even really sure that there is such a "thing" as dark matter (in that it exists in any conventional sense)? From Wikipedia: "Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter though…
From what I understand, this has nothing to do with dark matter. It's only about dark energy, which is an unrelated concept.
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#13I'm a layman, but I like this idea intuitively. It's not mentioned in the article, but this theory also necessitates that black holes aren't singularities, which gets rid of what always seemed to me like the biggest hack in physics.
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#14[flagged]
Nonsense. Inside the global warming field there are loads of different models and predictions and intense debate about different ideas.
There are some outlier models that are ignored by other scientists because of their bad faith assumptions and methodology but that's true of many fields of science like quantum physics and cosmology.
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#15[flagged]
Scientists are also tired of arguing about the reality of evolution, perpetual motion mechanisms, flat earth, a non-plate techtonic earth and maybe other settled matters. Try to get a research fellowship for flat earth or perpetual motion and see just how ruthlessly science cuts down dead ideas. Or maybe now in Florida you can get a flat earth fellowship, the Republicans certainly seem eager to remove the benefits of our scientific learnings as fast as they can.
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#16I'm a layman, but I like this idea intuitively. It's not mentioned in the article, but this theory also necessitates that black holes aren't singularities, which gets rid of what always seemed to me like the biggest hack in physics.
Nature hides singularities :)
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#17Could the cosmic web explain dark matter/energy?
Could gravity not being homogenous across universe explain dark matter/energy?
What if law of gravity has other terms that only reduce to the versions we think of as true in the scenarios we've tested...but the other terms are affecting things of supermassive scale?
What if there is some other "force" between things cosmically that we have never seen on the scales we've done stuff...but that we can observe (but misinterpret as dark stuff) on galactic/cosmic scales?
What if quantum correlation produces a "force" among particles that's only apparent on super massive scales? If all particles used to be close together in the big bang, couldn't they have some lingering correlations? Or became correlated with movement of electricity through cosmic web?
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#18Correct me if I'm wrong (please), but don't we still lack any kind of fundamental definition of what dark energy/matter is other than..."the cause of the difference between what is calculated, and what is observed"? To the point that we aren't even really sure that there is such a "thing" as dark matter (in that it exists in any conventional sense)? From Wikipedia: "Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter though…
> I find it kind of funny that humans are so confident that our models of reality are correct that we truly think it's more likely there's just hidden "stuff" than there's just something hugely wrong with our idea of what the universe really is.
> Obviously, I don't have an explanation myself, and I understand that we can only work with the evidence we have, but I think it's a sign we need to radically rework our basic assumptions about reality, and not just look for our missing keys...
Looking for missing keys is fine. This is how models are validated or invalidated. For example, Neptune's location was predicted in the 19th century before it was observed due to discrepencies in Uranus' observed orbit and what was modeled.
There are alternative theories that could replace dark matter/dark energy (e.g. MOND for dark matter, inhomologous cosmologies for dark energy).
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#19Correct me if I'm wrong (please), but don't we still lack any kind of fundamental definition of what dark energy/matter is other than..."the cause of the difference between what is calculated, and what is observed"? To the point that we aren't even really sure that there is such a "thing" as dark matter (in that it exists in any conventional sense)? From Wikipedia: "Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter though…
Dark matter is the name for unexplained mass that doesn't interact like typical matter. The existence of such mass is needed because there are galaxies that don't match what is predicted by general relativity. So either general relativity is wrong on the particular predications or there is extra matter.
The universe is expanding. However, not only is it expanding, but the expansion is accelerating. It isn't clear what is driving this, and source of the acceleration was given the name dark energy.
The "dark" in these names are part we don't know what these things are yet and part we can't see them yet with our current observational methods.
> I find it kind of funny that humans are so confident that our models of reality are correct
I don't think this is the case. If you have another model that replaces general relativity, I think people would be very interested in it. People have tried several times to explain the observations that led to dark matter by modifying various forms of gravity. They all work less well than general relativity. So the search continues: keep adjust the models but also don't be afraid that there are new things in the universe that we didn't previously know about. There are several experimental approaches that are searching for ways to directly detect dark matter.
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#20“spar over radical idea”. What a fancy way to say “do science”.