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Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

independent.co.uk

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Re: Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

#31

Post by prerok »

Nevermark wrote: post #24
plasticchris wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, ether, and dark matter. The equations don’t agree with observations so we invent a thing we have not observed to explain it. I wish it would be explained like this in popular science, went to a planetarium and they presented dark matter as absolute fact.

> The equations don’t agree with observations so we invent a thing we have not observed to explain it. Yes, and then implications of the invention are followed up on and dark matter has passed a lot of tests and has strong explanatory power (i.e. parsimony, Occam's Razor) over a variety of phenomena, from small dark galaxies up to the matter web structure of the observable universe. So it has very very strong evidenc…

The problem I have with dark matter is the name. If I understand it correctly, its existence cannot be predicted. We observe strange results, so we explain it by inventing some strange new concept of mass that's otherwise non interactive.

For example, the dark matter might be mass gathering of otherwise non reactionary particles like neutrons, it could be wrinkles in spacetime that have a similar effect as massive normal matter bodies have, or they could be advanced civilizations that learned how to hide their star systems from the rest of the universe.

We simply don't know. I suppose we had to name it somehow, but the name just sounds wrong. It might not be matter at all. It is also not dark, it's non-reactive.

Why did they not rather choose something like spacetime wrinkles?

Re: Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

#32

Post by prerok »

dotnet00 wrote: post #7
plasticchris wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, ether, and dark matter. The equations don’t agree with observations so we invent a thing we have not observed to explain it. I wish it would be explained like this in popular science, went to a planetarium and they presented dark matter as absolute fact.

For the average person, dark matter should be presented as absolute fact. It's the leading explanation that best explains most of the associated phenomenon, and the average person has repeatedly shown themselves to be unable to understand what a scientist means when they call something a theory. Emphasizing that we haven't explicitly discovered what dark matter actually consists of inevitably leads to people who don'…

One reason for dark matter explanation that I heard is that it is used to explain the same angular speed of star systems in the galaxies.

To me, that seems far fetched. Would it not be more likely that our formula for large distance gravity interactions should change?

Re: Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

#33

Post by alganet »

dotnet00 wrote: post #22
alganet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the average person has repeatedly shown themselves to be unable to understand what a scientist means when they call something a theory The average person consumes science from news, not from scientists. A lot of news outlets and "science communicators" have been repeatedly dumbing down scientific subjects for non-scientific purposes. Clickbait, ideology, lazyness. The nature of dark matter should be presented to th…

I tend to agree about science communication, but on the other hand, I've also seen how frustrating it can be to constantly have to correct the same fallacious arguments over and over again because people misinterpret the ideas and have a bad case of Dunning-Kruger. So presenting things as is doesn't really work because people still have only partial information relative to those who work in the field. Thus being the…

> I'd rather the average person be much better educated in their understanding of the scientific process

Yes! However, I don't know how realistic this is.

Re: Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

#34

Post by thatguy0900 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #7
plasticchris wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, ether, and dark matter. The equations don’t agree with observations so we invent a thing we have not observed to explain it. I wish it would be explained like this in popular science, went to a planetarium and they presented dark matter as absolute fact.

For the average person, dark matter should be presented as absolute fact. It's the leading explanation that best explains most of the associated phenomenon, and the average person has repeatedly shown themselves to be unable to understand what a scientist means when they call something a theory. Emphasizing that we haven't explicitly discovered what dark matter actually consists of inevitably leads to people who don'…

"For the average person, dark matter should be presented as absolute fact." This is how you end up with a crises where noone trusts experts or institutions anymore

Re: Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

#35

Post by jjk166 »

prerok wrote: post #32
dotnet00 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the average person, dark matter should be presented as absolute fact. It's the leading explanation that best explains most of the associated phenomenon, and the average person has repeatedly shown themselves to be unable to understand what a scientist means when they call something a theory. Emphasizing that we haven't explicitly discovered what dark matter actually consists of inevitably leads to people who don'…

One reason for dark matter explanation that I heard is that it is used to explain the same angular speed of star systems in the galaxies. To me, that seems far fetched. Would it not be more likely that our formula for large distance gravity interactions should change?

But the thing is it's only the angular speed of star systems in some galaxies. We have also found galaxies that behave differently, as if they have no dark matter. This is very easily explained with dark matter theory - they actually don't have dark matter. Any theory that modifies gravity needs to explain why we only sometimes modify gravity.

Further, while that was the observation dark matter was originally introduced to explain, there are a lot of other observations it has since explained. For example we can see regions of space with high gravity that do not appear to have any substantial amounts of regular matter in them. Again, stuff we can't directly detect as it doesn't interact with light but still has mass is a really simple explanation.

And from a theoretical perspective, there's no reason to think dark matter is weird. There is no law that says all particles need to interact with the electromagnetic force, indeed we know of many particles that don't even though none of the ones we know are particularly good candidates for dark matter. That there is a particle we don't know about specifically because it's most important property is that it is hard for our instruments to directly detect is far more likely than that one of our most successful theories which has an extremely firm foundation and has correctly predicted numerous observed phenomena with incredible accuracy has been wrong this whole time.

Re: Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

#36

Post by jjk166 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #13
dotnet00 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the average person, dark matter should be presented as absolute fact. It's the leading explanation that best explains most of the associated phenomenon, and the average person has repeatedly shown themselves to be unable to understand what a scientist means when they call something a theory. Emphasizing that we haven't explicitly discovered what dark matter actually consists of inevitably leads to people who don'…

And then we lose those people completely when the "facts" change. Better not to call them facts in the first place.

The facts don't change. Apples fell to the ground when we thought newtonian gravity was correct, they still fall to the ground now that general relativity is the accepted explanation. Theories are explanations of factual observations. The observation of the phenomenon we're calling dark matter is as factual as apples falling to the ground. The explanation is subject to change as we learn more, but the facts won't.

Re: Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

#37

Post by jjk166 »

neverokay wrote: post #17
ksherlock wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you step in a pile of dog doo, that's evidence there's a dog. Now just point your camera at it...

Hey, no stupid questions right? But if you suspect it’s a planet, you know it’s in orbit around the sun. Feels like something we can track.

Saying a planet in our solar system is in orbit around our sun is like saying a shipwreck is underwater. It doesn't narrow down the search region at all. And worse, we don't know it's in orbit around the sun as we don't even know if it exists.

Re: Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

#38

Post by prerok »

jjk166 wrote: post #35
prerok wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason for dark matter explanation that I heard is that it is used to explain the same angular speed of star systems in the galaxies. To me, that seems far fetched. Would it not be more likely that our formula for large distance gravity interactions should change?

But the thing is it's only the angular speed of star systems in some galaxies. We have also found galaxies that behave differently, as if they have no dark matter. This is very easily explained with dark matter theory - they actually don't have dark matter. Any theory that modifies gravity needs to explain why we only sometimes modify gravity. Further, while that was the observation dark matter was originally introdu…

Thank you for the explanation.

What I don't like about this, is that we take the observations, apply some custom guesses as to why the spacetime is folded differently and... there you go, your formulas now match. It smells too much like the explanation of geocentric system, where they invented that planets also circle around a perceived dot on their trajectory path and that happily coincides with the Earth's rotation.

I think what we are missing is that these behaviors need to be predictable. We don't know where these anomalies in spacetime curvature will be and why they are there. And as I stated in another comment here, I think dark matter is a bad name for the unexplained spacetime curvatures (warpings?, wrinkles?).

Re: Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

#39

Post by Nevermark »

prerok wrote: post #31
Nevermark wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The equations don’t agree with observations so we invent a thing we have not observed to explain it. Yes, and then implications of the invention are followed up on and dark matter has passed a lot of tests and has strong explanatory power (i.e. parsimony, Occam's Razor) over a variety of phenomena, from small dark galaxies up to the matter web structure of the observable universe. So it has very very strong evidenc…

The problem I have with dark matter is the name. If I understand it correctly, its existence cannot be predicted. We observe strange results, so we explain it by inventing some strange new concept of mass that's otherwise non interactive. For example, the dark matter might be mass gathering of otherwise non reactionary particles like neutrons, it could be wrinkles in spacetime that have a similar effect as massive no…

We know we can't see it (dark, as in not emitting or otherwise interacting with light), and it creates and responds to gravity in the exact same way the matter particles we know do (matter).

The two word choices can be quibbled with, but they form an accurate shorthand for what we know.

If the fine structure is discovered to be wrinkles in space I expect there will be a renaming during a time of great celebration by the future Nobel Prize winners! Especially if that also shone light on space-time's ultimate structure!

Edit: I will humbly propose a name for your postulated tiny space wrinkles: Wrinky-dinks!

Re: Scientists say they have found evidence of an unknown planet in our solar system

#40

Post by SJC_Hacker »

plasticchris wrote: post #4
notresidenter wrote: post #2

How is this different than when we pretended there was another planet, Vulcan, to reconcile Newtonian physics with the unexplainable phenomenons physicists noticed until others and eventually Einstein came along to prove that the theory was wrong ?

This, ether, and dark matter. The equations don’t agree with observations so we invent a thing we have not observed to explain it. I wish it would be explained like this in popular science, went to a planetarium and they presented dark matter as absolute fact.

Angela Collier (astronomy post-doc) takes the position that dark matter isn't an theory, but an observation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbmJkMhmrVI&t=15s&pp=ygUaZGF...

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