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).

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.

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...

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."

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

That's some damned fine science, right there.