Interesting, I always thought of dark matter as just a lot of extra "dust", the dust that clumps to make the stars that make up the universe. The asteroid belt, the extra mass in our kuiper or oort clouds, etc. The dust that blocks parts of our view of the Milky way. This article (and others I'm now skimming) point out that dark matter needs other magical properties however. Why is that the case? Why does simple "dar…
Could dark matter not exist?
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Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#12Something has orbits around galaxies failing to follow the law of gravity from ordinary matter. The orbits are as if there there is some more mass with gravity, mass that doesn't interact with light. Something is in/near galaxies is bending light as if there were more mass there than there is from just ordinary matter. So, for that extra mass, call it dark matter . Seems simple enough. "Flaw in the theory of gravity?…
Exactly. Dark matter and dark energy is just a symptom of the standard model of physics being incorrect. >Dark matter neither emits nor absorbs light or any other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level. According to the Planck mission team, and based on the standard model of cosmology, the total mass–energy of the known universe contains 4.9% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter and 68.3% dark energy.[2][3]…
But pretty much within 5 years of a new falsifiable theory that can explain the situation which can be experimentally proven dark matter will go the way of the myriad of disproven theories... whereas religious faith would extend the belief in dark matter out for possibly thousands of years after it is shown to be experimentally incorrect.
So not 'literally' religious faith at all...
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#13Something has orbits around galaxies failing to follow the law of gravity from ordinary matter. The orbits are as if there there is some more mass with gravity, mass that doesn't interact with light. Something is in/near galaxies is bending light as if there were more mass there than there is from just ordinary matter. So, for that extra mass, call it dark matter . Seems simple enough. "Flaw in the theory of gravity?…
Exactly. Dark matter and dark energy is just a symptom of the standard model of physics being incorrect. >Dark matter neither emits nor absorbs light or any other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level. According to the Planck mission team, and based on the standard model of cosmology, the total mass–energy of the known universe contains 4.9% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter and 68.3% dark energy.[2][3]…
Possibly, and if there was a better model -- one that was as good at predicting/explaining the observed effects for which the standard model works and did not require invoking dark matter and/or dark energy, the standard model would be dropped in a heartbeat. But right now the standard model + dark matter + dark energy is what works best, of the models that have been presented, at modeling what is actually observed in our universe. So it survives. For now.
Whether it will be resolved by an as-yet-unproposed tweak to the basic model or finding out that "dark matter" and "dark energy" are real things is yet to be seen.
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#14Interesting, I always thought of dark matter as just a lot of extra "dust", the dust that clumps to make the stars that make up the universe. The asteroid belt, the extra mass in our kuiper or oort clouds, etc. The dust that blocks parts of our view of the Milky way. This article (and others I'm now skimming) point out that dark matter needs other magical properties however. Why is that the case? Why does simple "dar…
There'd have to be so much of it that we'd see it. There's way more dark matter than normal matter in the universe (stipulating that dark matter theories as we currently understand them are at a coarse level correct). If it were "dark dust," there would be enough of it that we would be able to detect it through means other than gravitational ones.
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#15Interesting, I always thought of dark matter as just a lot of extra "dust", the dust that clumps to make the stars that make up the universe. The asteroid belt, the extra mass in our kuiper or oort clouds, etc. The dust that blocks parts of our view of the Milky way. This article (and others I'm now skimming) point out that dark matter needs other magical properties however. Why is that the case? Why does simple "dar…
"Dark dust" would, in many circumstances, have at least an infrared signature (or, rather, a signature that originates in the infrared, even if it has shifted considerably downward by the time we see it). This stuff is "dark" in the sense that the only effects we can see at all (so far, at least) are gravitational. In terms of what we think we do know, that implies mass - but mass that doesn't interact with light exc…
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#16Interesting, I always thought of dark matter as just a lot of extra "dust", the dust that clumps to make the stars that make up the universe. The asteroid belt, the extra mass in our kuiper or oort clouds, etc. The dust that blocks parts of our view of the Milky way. This article (and others I'm now skimming) point out that dark matter needs other magical properties however. Why is that the case? Why does simple "dar…
But not matter you can touch. Which makes it not really matter in normal English. You probably can't see it either.
So "Invisible Untouchable Gravitation Sources" would be a more descriptive name. I don't think it'll catch on.
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
There'd have to be so much of it that we'd see it. There's way more dark matter than normal matter in the universe (stipulating that dark matter theories as we currently understand them are at a coarse level correct). If it were "dark dust," there would be enough of it that we would be able to detect it through means other than gravitational ones.
Thanks. Given that the Oort cloud is very sparse and we can't see it, and we can't (optically) see even the largest planets on other stars, why would we expect to be able to see it?
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#18Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
There'd have to be so much of it that we'd see it. There's way more dark matter than normal matter in the universe (stipulating that dark matter theories as we currently understand them are at a coarse level correct). If it were "dark dust," there would be enough of it that we would be able to detect it through means other than gravitational ones.
Thanks. Given that the Oort cloud is very sparse and we can't see it, and we can't (optically) see even the largest planets on other stars, why would we expect to be able to see it?
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#20For those who are interested, physicist John Hartnett has developed a model that does not require dark matter. His work builds on that of Moshe Carmeli, who published "Cosmological Special Relativity". Hartnett's book is "Starlight, Time, and the New Physics" ISBN 978-0-949906-68-7. Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, and the math is way over my head, so I cannot double-check it. Hartnett has not made much, if any, hea…