I don't believe in Einstein's Cosmological Constant, and I certainly don't believe in dark matter.
But it's the fasionable thing to believe in these days in the scientific circle, so let me invoke Occam's Razor.
William of Ockham said in what has become known as Occam's Razor, "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate"
Translated roughly it means "plurality should not be posited without necessity."
In other words, "do not invent unnecessary entities to explain something." It seems like we invented dark matter to fill in the blank.
One day I may be proven to be wrong - but until we examine it directly, I suggest we look at understood natural phenomenon as an explanation.
Your friendly neighborhood drug dealer - 8/31/2006 05:10:00 PM
But...
The alternative is quantum theory, which doesn't just invent one or two entities, but whole other dimensions...
Check out this WIRED interview with Lee Smolin:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/stringtheory.html
In general I think I agree with you, but it seems that most of the physics community is going the opposite direction (based on the popularity of string theory).
We need more diverse experiments to address the issue- not just some unsubstantiated theoretical mumbo jumbo. It should be science, not magic. As in, scientific method. It seems to me that Stephen Hawking gets a pass because he's popular.
Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.
:)
Later.
> Mer. - 9/01/2006 07:03:00 AM
i was way cool before everyone else, i was studying dark matter back in 2000. woohoo! anyhoo, dark matter is like believing in god, just a theory that alot of people have because it makes sense right now when we need to explain our existence and being.
and the cosmological constant was a mistake, not something to believe in.
-Merideth
Chuck - 9/01/2006 01:22:00 PM
My point was that people once believed in the cosmological constant, and in the future I suspect that people will view dark matter in much the same way - a mistake, not something to be believed in.
Not all aspects of dark matter are incorrect I think, for example heavy neutrinos, dwarf stars and black holes all may called dark matter as it they are not visible but contain mass.
I don't think that it accounts for everything. I'm sticking with my anti-photon hypothesis. Given a large enough amount of time particles decay by colliding with their anti-particle. Again, I don't know the math to such a hypothesis. Perhaps I'll one day learn it so I could test it.
Itchy_turd - 9/01/2006 04:26:00 PM
Meh. I figured most scientists looked at dark matter as "Our current working large-scale gravitational models don't balance out unless we fill in the gaps 'X', so we either assume 'X' is out there yet still undetectable & consider our models a work-in-process, rather than admit we won't have enough information for years, decades, or possibly centuries to support an entire division of scientific theory."
The universe around us is not what it appears to be. The stars make up less than 1 percent of its mass; all the loose gas and other forms of ordinary matter, less than 5 percent. The motions of this visible material reveal that it is mere flotsam on an unseen sea of unknown material. We know little about that sea. The terms we use to describe its components, "dark matter" and "dark energy," serve mainly as expressions of our ignorance.
-some guy
We have to realize, cosmology as a school of science is in it's infancy, unlike it's elder siblings such as biology, chemistry, geology, etc. Also, it is probably the hardest to apply the scientific method to due to our current limited capacity to from a logistical/instrumental standpoint, which is why it's so theoretical; obviously a division of science with so much speculation & theory, and not so much on the proven law side is going to seem a bit silly to people who want, well, not so much speculation & theory and more verifiable laws, which I would imagine is the disposition many people that would care about cosmology in the first place would have, other than Trekkies.
But I shouldn't be hard on the Trekkies, as long as they don't cosplay...
*shiver*
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