What a wimpy article.

"We discovered that WIMPs are harmless to the human body," Freese said.

That's some damned fine science, right there.

It also turns out that dark matter may be complete bullshiat because, as close as Einstein got to the truth of physics, he didn't quite hit the bullseye. Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti have been working on an alternative to Einstein's relativity (which isn't truly relative) that builds on the work of Ernst Mach.

"Along with physicist Bruno Bertotti, Barbour developed a technique called "best matching" for deriving gravitational equations directly from astronomical measurements of objects' spatial relations with each other. Published in 1982, the method describes gravitational effects as accurately as Einstein's general relativity, but without the need for a "background" grid of spacetime. According to physicist David Wiltshire at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, such a truly Machian or relational approach could explain the appearance of an accelerated expansion of the universe without invoking a causative agent such as dark energy."

philosoraptor.jpg

If we get an ass-kicking and we don't know it, is it still an ass kicking?

/insert "taking dark matter into your bodies is bad for you" joke here

lisarenee3505: It also turns out that dark matter may be complete bullshiat because, as close as Einstein got to the truth of physics, he didn't quite hit the bullseye. Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti have been working on an alternative to Einstein's relativity (which isn't truly relative) that builds on the work of Ernst Mach.

"Along with physicist Bruno Bertotti, Barbour developed a technique called "best matching" for deriving gravitational equations directly from astronomical measurements of objects' spatial relations with each other. Published in 1982, the method describes gravitational effects as accurately as Einstein's general relativity, but without the need for a "background" grid of spacetime. According to physicist David Wiltshire at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, such a truly Machian or relational approach could explain the appearance of an accelerated expansion of the universe without invoking a causative agent such as dark energy."

That would be interesting to see. In spite of all the indirect evidence, the concept of dark matter/energy has always smelled like bullshiat to me. "A substance we can not directly see, but can only directly measure from thousands of lights years out, that interacts with gravity, but not very much with other forces?" Yeah, that sounds like one heck of an asspull. I understand the data supports the concept, but that's only if the model you are using to fit the data is also correct.

Er only indirectly measure.

FTFM

I know -- a couple of times a year, I'm charming.

I get knocked down, I get up up again.

Then strangely, to top it off: a bottom.

Somewhere down the line someone is going to author a theory that will revolutionize all of physics and make Einstein look as quaint as Aristotle. And I guarantee WIMPs have nothing to do with it.

/IANAP
//I just want my bloody jetpack, transporter, FTL drive, and alien boobies!

lisarenee3505: but without the need for a "background" grid of spacetime

Considering in was Relativity that abolished the "background" grid of spacetime, I smell a giant pile of bullshiat. Relativity redefined spacetime as a continuum, relative to a frame of reference. There is no background spacetime. It's relative. And I suspect their paper doesn't account for time dilation effects nearly as well as Relativity, especially if they're trying to deny Relativity.

J. Frank Parnell: decoded 10% of the human genome, called 90% of it junk DNA

"Junk DNA" was a term used only in the popular press, generated out of a misunderstanding of what "non-coding regions" meant. There are huge amounts of DNA that are non-coding regions. Many of them honestly do have no current function. Many of them have a variety of different functions that regulate how DNA is interpreted by the molecular machinery that converts codons to proteins.

J. Frank Parnell: Everyone is afraid to even consider the theories their degrees are based on is wrong, and that perpetuates these beliefs when it would be more logical to rethink it all from scratch.

Considering that the best way to make a name for yourself in science is to prove a commonly accepted theory wrong, I'm very dubious that you're not an idiot. I'm kidding, of course, I've seen you before, I already know you're an idiot.

But the point stands: people accept the theories that we have right now because they work too well to be entirely wrong. Relativity didn't completely overthrow Mechanics, it refined it. We can observe something that interacts gravitationally, and we're calling that observation "Dark Matter". We have many hypotheses that could account for it, ranging from, modified gravity (not generally accepted because it's basically impossible to test right now and doesn't account for a bunch of stuff we'd expect it to), to non-baryonic matter (WIMPs, which have the advantage of being a testable hypothesis that we're currently working on testing).

And if WIMPs don't work out, then something else will. Hypothesis, experiment, results (warning: actual practice might vary greatly from this, but the principle holds).

I'm sorry to hijack, but does anyone know the science fiction series where there are different types of space? One is where humans live which is like slow space, because there's another one where God-like creatures live, and there's another where it's remedial space, where even space ships won't work.... I think the authors wife wrote some books in the same universe...

wildhalcyon: make Einstein look as quaint as Aristotle

I think you'd have a stronger argument comparing him to Newton. Aristotle didn't have much experimental evidence for his claims. He was primarily a philosopher, not a scientist. He was still burdened with the anti-empirical philosophies of the Platonists, which limited his ability to really push forward the boundaries of knowledge. Newton, on the other hand, had most of his work gently succeeded by Einstein's work. Much like we're all expecting some aspect of a coming GUT to supersede Relativity.

Mjeck: I'm sorry to hijack, but does anyone know the science fiction series where there are different types of space?

Zones of Thought books, by Vernor Vinge (and yes, his wife wrote some too).

Scientists are making hard for the rest of us to take them seriously.

t3knomanser: Zones of Thought books

Thank-you!

lowbrowdotorg: What a wimpy article.

I'm buying you a pizza

Luneward: lisarenee3505: It also turns out that dark matter may be complete bullshiat because, as close as Einstein got to the truth of physics, he didn't quite hit the bullseye. Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti have been working on an alternative to Einstein's relativity (which isn't truly relative) that builds on the work of Ernst Mach.

"Along with physicist Bruno Bertotti, Barbour developed a technique called "best matching" for deriving gravitational equations directly from astronomical measurements of objects' spatial relations with each other. Published in 1982, the method describes gravitational effects as accurately as Einstein's general relativity, but without the need for a "background" grid of spacetime. According to physicist David Wiltshire at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, such a truly Machian or relational approach could explain the appearance of an accelerated expansion of the universe without invoking a causative agent such as dark energy."

That would be interesting to see. In spite of all the indirect evidence, the concept of dark matter/energy has always smelled like bullshiat to me. "A substance we can not directly see, but can only directly measure from thousands of lights years out, that interacts with gravity, but not very much with other forces?" Yeah, that sounds like one heck of an asspull. I understand the data supports the concept, but that's only if the model you are using to fit the data is also correct.

So take a look at the ground. Tell me how big the Earth is, and how fast it is moving relative to the galactic core.


Gravity is a VERY weak force when you consider the other forces at work in the universe. The fact that it takes something the size of a planet to exert only a hundred or so lbs of force on you while you are in direct contact with it illustrates just how weak it is.

You could try to measure it from across the room, but it would be as if you were blinded by the trees as you looked for the forest. Trying to do these measurements on a scale you seem to be implying would be like trying to measure the impact from a baby farting in NY would have on the deflection of a column of smoke from an extinguished match that went out in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.

Luneward: That would be interesting to see. In spite of all the indirect evidence, the concept of dark matter/energy has always smelled like bullshiat to me. "A substance we can not directly see, but can only directly measure from thousands of lights years out, that interacts with gravity, but not very much with other forces?" Yeah, that sounds like one heck of an asspull. I understand the data supports the concept, but that's only if the model you are using to fit the data is also correct.

Do you accept the existence of neutrinos? There's quite a lot of them passing through your body as you read this but it takes a setup around the size of a football field to detect them. Particles that only weakly interact with normal matter are not an isolated, off the wall idea.

Yeah?
Well....Your Momma is so fat that you can only approach her at the speed of light!

We have dismissed that theme for Synthetics vs Organics.

lisarenee3505: It also turns out that dark matter may be complete bullshiat because, as close as Einstein got to the truth of physics, he didn't quite hit the bullseye. Julian Barbour


well there's your problem right there... i found his book, "the end of time" to be complete bullshiat, but that is just mho. if you are interested in time with regards to relativity, you might be interested in some of godel's work.



lisalampanelli.jpg
"the darker, the better"

first thought: damn, lisa randall is really dressing slutty these days
second thought: oh that lisa. she likes black men. i get jokes

Well that is just great, so this scientist thinks he can prove that I am getting my butt kicked daily by WIMPS?
Just when I though that my life could not possibly become any worse . . . sigh.

NFA: Contrary to popular belief, when dark matter passes through your body, you WILL feel it!



\I heard that in his voice
\\now you did too

J. Frank Parnell: They always play it down, but 'dark matter' is supposed to account for over 80% of the universe. We can only see less than 20%. Even with our most advanced instruments.

So it's not a matter of just making something up to fill in a small detail, it's a giant gap in our understanding of the universe. Kind of like how they decoded 10% of the human genome, called 90% of it junk DNA because they don't understand it, and started boasting that they had it all figured out.

I'm pretty sure this kind of scientific hubris is going to be mocked thoroughly in future generations. If you can only explain 10-20% of something, the theory shouldn't be considered bulletproof. Everyone is afraid to even consider the theories their degrees are based on is wrong, and that perpetuates these beliefs when it would be more logical to rethink it all from scratch.

THIS

When are people going to figure out that "dark" isn't something specific.
But a generic term to describe what we cannot directly detect or explain.

And guess what, when we find something specific, there will be more not detected or explained.
It's going to take a long, long time before we get to 100%.
Geez, we haven't really gotten off this rock yet...

Sometimes it astounded me that even scientists are trying to declare a winner,
before the race is finished.

I've never liked the nomenclature dark matter, it implies definition that isn't justified. We don't know if it's subatomic particles zipping about (as implied by this really bad article), some unexpected time/distance variability in gravity or excessive farting by some guy named Melvin (OK, one of those can probably be definitively disproved).

Also, I have to agree with T3knomanser, reading poorly written popular press articles on science will not make you a physicist.

I would expect if "dark matter" particles were that likely to interact, the neutrino experiments would have had to have made significant efforts to correct for that much noise in the signal. Somebody would have said something. Oh, and if dark matter did interact with normal matter to that degree, we would probably have a much better understanding of what's going on.

Cheers.

/Seriously, which deity did I piss off? I had some lunatic in my office today with a perpetual motion/energy device.

dark matter = 21st century's aether

J. Frank Parnell: So it's not a matter of just making something up to fill in a small deta

Dark matter was introduced after the rotation of galaxies was observed to be something other than what their visible mass indicated it should be. We expect the outer edges to rotate more slowly than the inner parts. They don't. Physics only gives you one answer as to how that can be. Just so happens, we can't see that answer. But that it's there is a matter of basic first year undergrad mechanics.

It's not fat it's dark matter!

Call George Zimmerman. That'll get rid of this invasive dark matter.

J. Frank Parnell: I'm pretty sure this kind of scientific hubris is going to be mocked thoroughly in future generations. If you can only explain 10-20% of something, the theory shouldn't be considered bulletproof. Everyone is afraid to even consider the theories their degrees are based on is wrong, and that perpetuates these beliefs when it would be more logical to rethink it all from scratch.

You don't know what you are talking about.

There is a tremendous amount of time, effort, and money going into disproving our best current theories of physics. The LHC at CERN is the biggest and most complicated machine ever made. It cost something approaching $10 billion to build. Its main purpose is to attempt to disprove our current theories of physics - that is, to detect evidence of physics that we can't explain.

In fact, a large number of particle physicists are on record say that they are TERRIFIED of what will happen if they don't detect anything that contradicts our theories of physics. What's a theoretical physicist to do if there is nothing new to explain?

If you want to talk about general relativity, you have stuff like Gravity Probe B. That satellite wasn't exactly cheap, but was designed solely to test our theories of physics as well as possible.

So to assert that scientists won't even think about being wrong is delusional. Its the exact opposite of reality. There are huge numbers of scientists doing their best to disprove the Standard Model and General Relativity, and they are spending tens of billions of dollars to do it.

The problem isn't that nobody is trying, the problem is that our theories of physics are so damn good that its really really really hard to find situations where they don't work.

The reason that astronomers are so set on dark matter is that there are many INDEPENDENT lines of reasoning (based on multiple different areas of physics) that all point to the same answer. It would be completely irrational to assert that all those independent models of physics are all wrong in such a way that they get you the exact same wrong answer.

Also, all this stuff along the lines of "HOW CAN YOU BELIEVE IN SOMETHING YOU CAN'T SEE" is silly.

We couldn't see electrons until a few years ago. Yet we had electricity for over a hundred years. Does that mean that it was irrational to believe in electricity until a few years ago? Of course not.

We couldn't see atoms until a few years ago. Did that mean it was irrational to believe in them? I'd say that nuclear bombs and energy would indicate that it was quite rational to believe in atoms.

Most of what science works with can't be seen. What we look at is EFFECTS. We can see the physical effects of electrons even if we can't seem them directly. We can see the physical effects of atoms even if we can't see them. And we can see the physical effects of dark matter even if we can't see individual dark matter particles at the current time.

J. Frank Parnell: I'm very aware of that. But what you're not aware of, is that that's expected because of our current belief that gravity is the dominant force in the universe. We see what we expect not happening, and instead of thinking maybe gravity isn't the dominant force, we invent dark matter. And we never did find the graviton, you know. It's as elusive as the Higgs Boson. We could be so very wrong about even the basics.

The graviton is MUCH more elusive than the Higgs boson. Nobody has seriously made an attempt to detect them, so their non detect is hardly some failing of physics - detecting gravitons is basically impossible. From wikipedia:

Unambiguous detection of individual gravitons, though not prohibited by any fundamental law, is impossible with any physically reasonable detector.[12] The reason is the extremely low cross section for the interaction of gravitons with matter. For example, a detector with the mass of Jupiter and 100% efficiency, placed in close orbit around a neutron star, would only be expected to observe one graviton every 10 years, even under the most favorable conditions. It would be impossible to discriminate these events from the background of neutrinos, since the dimensions of the required neutrino shield would ensure collapse into a black hole.

There has been extensive work to try and explain dark matter observations by creating forces that act in new ways - this is basically MoND (modified Newtonian dynamics). None of those theories come even close to working - it's just completely unreasonable to cook up a simple force that isn't gravity that acts in all the ways we know dark matter acts, but is not otherwise detectable here on Earth.

It's not that scientists haven't tried out your ideas - its that they tried and those idea just failed badly.

StopLurkListen: I know -- a couple of times a year, I'm charming.

I get knocked down, I get up up again.

Then strangely, to top it off: a bottom.

Quarky.

J. Frank Parnell: And we never did find the graviton, you know. I

The graviton, no mass, no charge, we could be flooded with them and finding them would be a major pain in the ass. As for Higgs, we probably found it, just need to get the last sigma or two so it's five sigma and can call it official.

J. Frank Parnell: They always play it down, but 'dark matter' is supposed to account for over 80% of the universe. We can only see less than 20%. Even with our most advanced instruments.

So it's not a matter of just making something up to fill in a small detail, it's a giant gap in our understanding of the universe. Kind of like how they decoded 10% of the human genome, called 90% of it junk DNA because they don't understand it, and started boasting that they had it all figured out.

I'm pretty sure this kind of scientific hubris is going to be mocked thoroughly in future generations. If you can only explain 10-20% of something, the theory shouldn't be considered bulletproof. Everyone is afraid to even consider the theories their degrees are based on is wrong, and that perpetuates these beliefs when it would be more logical to rethink it all from scratch.

I'm reading "The Unobservable Universe" right now and this seems to follow with what the author is saying. We currently have a framework that produces paradoxes. Paradoxes can only exist in our own minds (paradoxes exist on paper according to predicted results, not in the natural universe) which means there's got to be something wrong with the theories we're trying to shoe-horn everything into. I don't think the book is saying let's throw it all out and start over, but there is a generally accepted dogma in place, and going against it is starting to appear heretical to most people. That attitude needs to be avoided.

J. Frank Parnell: Everyone is afraid to even consider the theories their degrees are based on is wrong, and that perpetuates these beliefs when it would be more logical to rethink it all from scratch.

Know how I know you don't talk to many theoretical physicists?

J. Frank Parnell: It's not even open to debate, in most institutions. Going against what's popularly believed only serves to get someone insults from individuals like yourself. Do you even realize how you look for acting that way when someone is speaking calmly and rationally? I'll give you a tip, it doesn't make you appear smarter then them.

Sure it's up for debate. Where do you think things like string theory come from? The only people who get ridiculed are the ones who push some delightfully clever-sounding idea that has NO successful experimental predictions, NO actual math that holds together, and usually isn't even falsifiable.

Since such people usually quickly expose themselves as being so deficient in mathematics they obviously don't have a clue what they're even arguing about, they get called "idiots".

Want respect for your pet theory? Show your work. That's what the string theory folks did, and now they get respect. Most physicists still think they're probably wrong, but they don't get called "idiots" like you claim.