The discovery, led by a University of Michigan physics researcher, confirms a key prediction in the prevailing theory of how the universe’s current web-like structure evolved.
The map of the known universe shows that most galaxies are organized into clusters, but some galaxies are situated along filaments that connect the clusters. Cosmologists have theorized that dark matter undergirds those filaments, which serve as highways of sorts, guiding galaxies toward the gravitational pull of the massive clusters. Dark matter’s contribution had been predicted with computer simulations, and its shape had been roughed out based on the distribution of the galaxies. But no one had directly detected it until now.
“We found the dark matter filaments. For the first time, we can see them,” said Jörg Dietrich, a physics research fellow in the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Dietrich is first author of a paper on the findings published online in Nature and to appear in the July 12 print edition.
Dark matter, whose composition is still a mystery, doesn’t emit or absorb light, so astronomers can’t see it directly with telescopes. They deduce that it exists based on how its gravity affects visible matter. Scientists estimate that dark matter makes up more than 80 percent of the universe. To “see” the dark matter component of the filament that connects the clusters Abell 222 and 223, Dietrich and his colleagues took advantage of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
The gravity of massive objects such as galaxy clusters acts as a lens to bend and distort the light from more distant objects as it passes. Dietrich’s team observed tens of thousands of galaxies beyond the supercluster. They were able to determine the extent to which the supercluster distorted galaxies, and with that information, they could plot the gravitational field and the mass of the Abell 222 and 223 clusters. Seeing this for the first time was “exhilarating,” Dietrich said.
“It looks like there’s a bridge that shows that there is additional mass beyond what the clusters contain,” he said. “The clusters alone cannot explain this additional mass,” he said.
Scientists before Dietrich assumed that the gravitational lensing signal would not be strong enough to give away dark matter’s configuration. But Dietrich and his colleagues focused on a peculiar cluster system whose axis is oriented toward Earth, so that the lensing effects could be magnified.
“This result is a verification that for many years was thought to be impossible,” Dietrich said when we spoke with him at a local green coffee shop.
The team also found a spike in X-ray emissions along the filament, due to an excess of hot, ionized ordinary matter being pulled by gravity toward the massive filament, but they estimate that 90 percent or more of the filament’s mass is dark matter.
The researchers used data obtained with the Subaru telescope, operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. They also used the XMM-Newton satellite for X-ray observations. This work is funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. Other contributors are from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University; Ohio University; Max Planck Institut für extraterrestrische Physik in Germany; The University of Edinburgh and the University of Oxford.
The paper is titled “A filament of dark matter between two clusters of galaxies.” Read the text at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11224.html.
###
A filament of dark matter between two clusters of galaxies
Jörg P. Dietrich, Norbert Werner, Douglas Clowe, Alexis Finoguenov, Tom Kitching, Lance Miller &Aurora Simionescu
- Nature 487, 202–204 (12 July 2012) doi:10.1038/nature11224
- Received 25 January 2012 Accepted 11 May 2012 Published online 04 July 2012
It is a firm prediction of the concordance cold-dark-matter cosmological model that galaxy clusters occur at the intersection of large-scale structure filaments1. The thread-like structure of this ‘cosmic web’ has been traced by galaxy redshift surveys for decades2, 3. More recently, the warm–hot intergalactic medium (a sparse plasma with temperatures…
Hurrah! A vignette on astrophysics, gravitational lensing, and physical confirmation of dark matter!!!
I will look forward to them laying out how they are certain about the distances from us these phenomena are.
Who was the last guy to talk of drivel?
I read this a few days ago. I am sure they mapped something. I am sure something has caused the measurements they and others have made. Everything else is speculation. It is fun to speculate and play the what if I… game. At least the cosmologists are rational and sober (well maybe not) enough to take themselves no more seriously then the empirical measurements will.
So, they have a map of where their fudge factor needs to be located to to explain, within standard accepted physics theology, their lack of understanding of the interaction between matter, energy and the resultant curvature of space (gravity). Sorry, I ain’t buying it…96% of the visible universe is “dark BS”. Think outside the box, guys, you’re missing something!!
This question will, to the vast majority of your readers, be certain evidence of the questioners (my) lack of education, knowledge and etc. However, if some kind person could bear with me and answer my question, I would be grateful.
Question.
The current theory of the origin of the universe seems to state that after the big bang, matter streamed outwards from it’s origin and has continued accelerating ever since. Dark matter slows this acceleration down.
But our common experience is that any object we know of which is ejected violently from something else, by whatever means, will eventually lose speed and stop.
OK, this is because of environmental conditions around the ejected object.
We are told, and easily accept this, that if our object was ejected violently in a perfect vacuum, and free of gravity it would never slow down, it would just continue on at the same speed, forever.
How is it then that the particles ejected during the big bang, do not slow down, do not continue at the same speed forever, but actually accelerate. What is the accelerating force?
I agree. with Jim G.
it seems to me is a 96% of the universe is made up of mathematical particles and hyperdense equations.
These co(s)mic models remind me so much of global warming models.
And, by the way, they did not “directly detect it” or “see it”, they inferred it based upon their theoretical “beliefs”. Check that subaru telescope for rust, my first one, car that is, rusted out quite rapidly.
Did you see this
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2171973/Tree-ring-study-proves-climate-WARMER-Roman-Medieval-times-modern-industrial-age.html ?
Sorry, if you already knew it.
[REPLY: Yes, we did. -REP]
Concerning the Dark Matter model I strongly recomend to read the new paper of P. Kroupa titled “The Dark Matter Crisis: Falsification of the Current Standard Model of Cosmology”, published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.
Link: http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/AS12005.htm
Direct link to the pdf: http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=AS12005.pdf
Jim G.’s wake-up call should be taken seriously. Astronomer’s interpretations of gravitational lensing incorporate unquestioned assumptions. This is not really a direct detection; it may be just another example of confirmation bias. This report and even one hundred more “verifications” of cold dark matter may not stand up against an overwhelming falsification, which may come at any time in the future.
It sounds more like they’re describing electrical currents in plasma than magically invisible dark matter.
I wondered when someone was going to announce discovery of the imagined dark matter. I suspect there is a tautology at work here. Dark matter was postulated because gravity (as we know it) seemed too weak to account for the behaviour of spiral arms, etc. Shouldn’t we be re-evaluating what we “know” about gravity? I think the path to a unified theory is blocked by such fantasies as dark matter, but like Ptolemy with planetary motions in a geocentric universe, we will shoe-horn things to fit and even be able to make predictions with this painful cobbling.
Keith Battye says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:07 pm
I will look forward to them laying out how they are certain about the distances from us these phenomena are.
There are lots of places you can an explanation of that. Look around, and don’t pretend to be dumb. But the observation reported here does not depend on the distances being accurately known.
I may have misunderstood the principles but I thought they were describing a 3 dimensional model, in which case the distances are surely important.
Take a picture of two humans. One is sleeping, and the other is walking. The sleeping person is consistent with physical models, but the walking person exhibits unexplained motion of its appendages. I propose that the arms and legs are tugged by clumps of disembodied gravity surrounding the person.
Too right Jim G!
Trained in cosmology myself, the accepted cosmologyical model was all nonsense, nothing like science or physics. Just a load of very speculative maths theories, where if they broke, another fudge factor was chucked in, it was a routine. Then cosmologists would pat them selves on the back for another fudge factor ‘discovered’.
Today I’m really please to say I’m seeing the sad religion of dark matter and friends is losing substancial ground to other theories. The lectures on other theories are packing out theatres and are financially solvent enough to grow their own community.
It been great fun to follow it. The internet is an important media for these alternate ideas to prosper.
It turns out the establishment model has no right calling their model ‘ the standard model ‘ . It leaves out parts of the physics they don’t like.
Jim G says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Think outside the box, guys, you’re missing something!!
Dark Matter is thinking out of the box you seem to be in.
Hold on, get ready for the kooks w/their pet theories….
Sheer nonsense. A term in an equation is not “matter”.
If they would give up on particles altogether and go back to de Broglie’s idea that everything is just waveforms, they might start making sense. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Will the Higgs boson make up dark matter? gravity and all. Maybe dark matter is only Higgs bosons.
We find the God particle and dark matter in the same week. Who’d a thunk it.
I further propose that, by taking pictures of millions of walking humans and using motion blur or the Doppler effect to produce a map of the dark matter causing their anomalous movements, perhaps we can gain a better understanding of how these walking humans formed and predict where they will be located in the future.
Good old Dark Matter. If observations don’t match the theory, throw away the observations.
The theory predicts that we should be able to see lots more stuff in our telescopes than we can. Therefore most of the stuff must be invisible. Jeenyus.
Keith Battye: a good introduction to this topic, and how they know with a fair degree of certainty how far away distant objects are, can be found in the book “A Universe from Nothing” by Lawrence Krauss. It’s available on the iBooks store, among other places.
Specifically – there is a direct relationship between the brightness of a certain kind of star called a Cephid, and the period of it’s oscillations. There’s a direct relationship between the brightness of a star and its distance from us (via the inverse square rule). Therefore, if you know the period of a Cephid star, and its brightness, you can work out with a fair amount of accuracy its distance from us. The distances were then later confirmed by using a different mechanism involving the relationship between the brightness and duration of supernova stars (about 3 supernova are observable somewhere in the sky on any given night). These tools give us an extremely accurate picture of the scale and distance of the Universe.
Furthermore, an examination of the spectra of these stars can show red or blue shifts, which can tell us with a high degree of accuracy at what speed distant objects are moving away or towards us. So we know that the Universe is expanding, how fast it has been expanding, and even that it is accelerating, not slowing down due to gravity.
The book is also a great introduction into why theories such as “dark matter” and “dark energy” are important because there simply isn’t enough visible matter and energy in the universe to explain its “flatness” and the acceleration of expansion that we are witnessing.
Thank you for that information, it is greatly appreciated.
Having followed most of it I would still express some concern about the distances being stated as the assumptions seem to accumulate.
My gray matter rejects dark matter. Observation of light bending in the 1919 total eclipse was the first proof of Einsteins Relativity. For Universal models, i prefer the “Einsten-Godel Rotating Universe Model”…surpressed since 1949. The Cosmologists are not robbing us of big ‘alarm’ grants, but openess is lacking. See “Federally Funded Franken Science” on the possible reasons why…..part of a series including “The Cure for Cosmology’s Peptic Ulcer” and “Mysterious ‘Dr X’ says Universe is NOT Expanding”. [the post AGW science debate?]
A good tutorial on cosmology can be found here http://www.leif.org/EOS/Comology/cos01.pdf
There are 17 chapters. To see chapter nn use cosnn.pdf in the above link.
Many of your questions may answered there. Before shooting your mouth off, go check out the link(s), then pose questions to things you don’t understand.
I’m not a big believer in dark matter. When you have to event something out of thin air to explain an expanding universe you are really starting on the wrong end of discovery. And when you make a theory that states I will look into the universe until I find data that proves my theory you create an eventuality. The universe is big. Its really big. You look long enough your going to find absolutely anything you want. It becomes probable that you will find you own name written in gold with in a some yet unknown nebula. This isn’t science, its a money grab.
James Evans says:
July 11, 2012 at 1:12 pm
The theory predicts that we should be able to see lots more stuff in our telescopes than we can. Therefore most of the stuff must be invisible.
And that is spectacularly confirmed by the fact that we indeed cannot see it. We can, however, measure the gravitational effects from Dark Matter which shows it is there, just like in the 19th century we hadn’t seen the planet Neptune, but we knew it was there because of its gravitational effects on Uranus. We could even from those effects calculate where Neptune should be, and that is indeed where we found it. Such is the power of science.
beng says:
July 11, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Hold on, get ready for the kooks w/their pet theories….
They are already here, in farce.
A good tutorial on cosmology can be found here http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cosmology/cos01.pdf
Is it warming or cooling and did we cause it?
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Jim G says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Think outside the box, guys, you’re missing something!!
“Dark Matter is thinking out of the box you seem to be in.”
Like many of your responses, your gigantic ego is evident but not your logic. Dark matter is a fudge factor to fit with the existing most popular theory. I would not throw out the theory but find what is missing within it. Try not to be so nasty, you will be much happier in the long run.
Peter Melia says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Question.
The current theory of the origin of the universe seems to state that after the big bang, matter streamed outwards from its origin
No, matter stayed where it was, it is space itself [what is between particles of matter] that is expanding. Matter does not stream away from anything.
This is very similar to the Higgs Boson announcement. They have illuminated an anomaly where they expected, but have not identified the actual anomaly. Too early for parades, but it is exciting. GK
Dark Matter; Terra Incognita: only the names change.
Did they find Darth Vader too?
Fascinating stuff, with a few problems:
Scientists have, for the first time, directly detected part of the invisible dark matter skeleton of the universe, where more than half of all matter is believed to reside.
Indirectly. They say, “Dark matter, whose composition is still a mystery, doesn’t emit or absorb light, so astronomers can’t see it directly with telescopes. They deduce that it exists based on how its gravity affects visible matter”. I believe this should say “radiation” as opposed to just “light”, but the point is moot – dark matter, as theorised, is unobservable directly. Only its effects can be measured.
“We found the dark matter filaments. For the first time, we can see them,” said Jörg Dietrich
They may or may not have found dark matter filaments, but they have not been “seen”. This does not detract from their work or their abilities, but it is inaccurate reporting, and does them no favours in a time when every phrase is instantly scrutinised for accuracy and meaning. It would be a shame for good, honest work to be demeaned because of this.
Leif,
Would you kindly repost the file? I get
404 Error File Not Found
The page you are looking for might have been removed,
had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
More modeling madness
Lief mozilla reports same altho there is nothing wrong with the address.
I was able to navigate from here:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cosmology/
GK
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 11, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Peter Melia says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Question.
The current theory of the origin of the universe seems to state that after the big bang, matter streamed outwards from its origin
“No, matter stayed where it was, it is space itself [what is between particles of matter] that is expanding. Matter does not stream away from anything”
No Leif, it is more probable that both were occuring, space was expanding and the matter within it was moving in whatever direction was dictated by gravity or the energy imparted to it by the initial conditions of the “Big Bang”. Some theories say this was the explosion of a singularity and some the collision of another “multiverse” with ours. In either case, since I was not there at the time I will only say “probable”. If you were there, let me know.
Wow! Are there really sheeple like this? Scientists use far more accurate methods to determine these things than those upon which we all rely. I’m assuming these guys don’t believe X-Rays, UV or infra-red is real, either. Observing gravitational lensing is no different to observing diffraction through water. Healthy scepticism is one thing but this level of ignorance is quite confronting.
I’m frankly alarmed at the level of unscientific thinking being demonstrated here. Leif is perfectly correct when he says you should read up on this subject before commenting on it further. You are only exposing your ignorance of the issues involved. Cosmology and Quantum mechanics are bastions of hard headed, fact and evidence based science where there is a healthy community of skeptical thinking and experimentation, and wholesale throwing out of theories that no longer fit. I can’t of any other scientific fields which are more ready to destroy all of their theoretical underpinnings on the basis of experimental observation. And both fields are full of competing theories, where experimental evidence is sought and demanded to prove or disprove them.
Please don’t apply your well deserved disdain for Climate Science to Cosmology or Particle Physics. At least in Cosmology they test their theories, and modify them to fit new observational evidence.
It would be interesting to learn this is a Lagrangian point between galactic clusters and that there’s really nothing there but gravity.
James Hastings-Trew says (July 11, 2012 at 2:40 pm): “Please don’t apply your well deserved disdain for Climate Science to Cosmology or Particle Physics. At least in Cosmology they test their theories, and modify them to fit new observational evidence.”
When one branch of science becomes untrustworthy, it inevitably tarnishes the reputation of all science. Cosmology and particle physics are especially vulnerable because they’re so complex and just so…bizarre…compared with our ordinary experience.
Perhaps the universe is only a failed experiment by an imperfect demigod and the reason it is so hard to figure out is because that demigod had no idea what they were doing. No plan at all.
If I remember correctly, the universe’s missing matter turns out to be all the packaging that the instruments, bought by scientists to detect missing matter, were wrapped in, which they had thrown away – according the that infallible work ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ anyway.
James Hastings-Trew says:
July 11, 2012 at 2:40 pm
…Please don’t apply your well deserved disdain for Climate Science to Cosmology or Particle Physics. At least in Cosmology they test their theories, and modify them to fit new observational evidence.
Hear, hear!
There are many other issues that have been brought up by reputable scientists that obviate the need for the dark matter and/or dark energy factors and/or elliminate some of the problems of combining quantum physics with general relativity including: separation of space/time into space and time, the potential for the speed of light to have been different under the initial conditions of the new born universe, the possible (probable?) quantum nature of space itself with discrete quantae of space, different energy levels at a given time and place, location and/or size factors which might cause the rules to change. Just as at one level Newtonian physics was a good predictor of what one might see through a telescope but general relativity was better and more accurate. Guys like João Magueijo and Steven Hawking and Petr Hořava and many others are not kooks and have discussed these issues and written about them and are thinking outside the box. Inside the box people accept what is most popular.
Not to panic, dark evil forces of our universe Dark Matter and Dark Energy are kept at a distance from our precious galaxy by the good guys, baryonic fighters known as MACHOs reflecting their superior potency.
James Hastings-Trew says:
July 11, 2012 at 2:40 pm
“I’m frankly alarmed at the level of unscientific thinking being demonstrated here. Leif is perfectly correct when he says you should read up on this subject before commenting on it further.”
Advising others to read up on a subject because they disagree with you when you do not have any idea what their educational background is or what they may have read is, in itself, remarkably
condescending and evidence of poor judgement.
“The gravity of massive objects such as galaxy clusters acts as a lens to bend and distort the light from more distant objects as it passes.”……..
==========
So, if the light passes just the right way around these lens/clusters, we could see the light emitted by our galaxy 2 billion years ago ?
You know, like using a planets gravity to induce the trajectory for our deep space satellites.
The right trajectory would send a satellite right back at us.
Light is different ?
Dark matter isn’t all that exotic when you think about it. I’m not a physicist so what follows is my own layman’s understanding and may be subject to error:
Particles and forces that you know about are seen or detected by us with our simple senses. For example, the electromagnetic force is what keeps your hand from intersecting with your desk – the forces exerted by the particles in your hand are repelled by the forces of the particles in your desk. Magnetism is a particular manifestation of this force which acts at a distance because the electron spin of the atoms in the magnet are all going in the same direction — this magnifies the effect of the force. Other fields and forces are carried by particles that have no mass – photons and (theoretical) gravitons. Photons interact with the gravitational force, in that their motion can be deflected by large gravitational fields. I don’t believe they interact with the electromagnetic force. Neither does gravity, from what I understand.
Dark matter is comprised simply of another type of particle that does not interact at all with most of the other atomic forces – they neither directly block or deflect the motion of photons, and they are not repelled by the electromagnetic force – they simply do not interact with matter at all, except through the gravitational force. This makes they very difficult to detect, they are truly invisible.
This experiment looked for dark matter where it was expected to exist, and detected only by the effect of its interaction with the gravitational force and its effect on passing photons. That’s what this experiment set out to prove, and it appears that it was successful. A theoretical filament of dark matter was detected because its observed interaction with photons of light from stars behind it matched the predicted value for that interaction. Its all perfectly straightforward.
For Leif Svalgaard
Thanks for your reply to mine.
Quote.
“The current theory of the origin of the universe seems to state that after the big bang, matter “streamed outwards from its origin
“No, matter stayed where it was, it is space itself [what is between particles of matter] that is “expanding. Matter does not stream away from anything.”
Unquote.
This prompts further questions, such as:-
What is “Space?”
Is it nothing?
If so, how can “nothing”, “stream away?” Doesn’t the phrase streaming away suggest something, or a group of somethings, moving in a direction, either singly or as a group? If so, how can this phrase apply to nothing?
Or, is it something?
In other words, is it partially (or even filled) space?
Now, if the space in any way contained matter, then by your definition, it cannot move, see above.
Therefore, following your definition, space is empty.
So, this place where we all live, all happily cohabit, discussing things of great scientific import, this great globe itself, all is being carried along as a mere particle in nothing?
If that is so, it still doesn’t answer the question.
“How is it that after all these billions of years, our great globe is still accelerating?
Surely it should be either:-
(1) Moving at a constant speed (as befits something in empty space)?
or
(2) Accelerating negatively (slowing down, as a result of the space it is in containing something other than us)?
Peter Melia: “How is it then that the particles ejected during the big bang, do not slow down, do not continue at the same speed forever, but actually accelerate. What is the accelerating force?”
The Universe warps back upon itself, (beginning is the end); thus pulling upon itself, resulting in the acceleration of matter making up Universe. Okay, total non-sense, but if Hansen, Geist, Mann, and Gore can B.S. about CO2 feedback accelerating Global Climate Change…
Is this map made from computer modeling on the hypothesis that dark matter really exist?
The very title of this piece (“for the first time”) of news is incorrect. There were several previous announcements of the “first” confirmation of the existence of the so-called “dark matter” by using the gravitational lensing effect. The last one, if I remember correctly, was all over the news couple of years ago. Each one quietly fizzled. There are always simpler, more conventional explanations of what has been observed.
Scientific establishment is grasping at last straws trying to keep the Big Bang afloat. The fact that Dr. Svalgaard bestirred himself to a new series of condescending poisonous comments on this topic is in itself an evidence of something being very wrong with this announcement.
It might be a good idea to cite the original source of this article:
http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/releases/20623-dark-matter-scaffolding-of-universe-detected-for-the-first-time
I should probably also point out what is often meant by a “sighting”. That’s a 5-sigma likelihood of the presence of an object, assuming a well-validated model. In this case, the model is General Relativity for the lensing and “We should see it like we see everything else because the telescope works” for visibility of non-dark-matter objects, and the assumption that there don’t happen to be multiple roughly identical galaxies which are just distorted the right way to look like multiple images of one behind a gravitational lens. I think the model-assumptions are pretty safe.
There was some worry that the “threads” were just modelling-errors due to low resolution or failure to account for something, though they appear in every model I’ve seen. Resolution is limited by computational resources for all simulations regardless of model. It looks like they’re real. I wish I had more info, but I was tired yesterday and too late for Astro-Coffee where I the paper was presented, I think by Jorg.
I also wish I had cookies. It smelled like they had cookies. The cookies at the University of Michigan are about the size of my face and loaded with chocolate. Now I’m off-topic.
Well I have not yet read their paper (but will), but I’m inclined to believe (think/feel/whatever) that dark matter has already been discovered. It’s a bit like UFOs; they simply are unidentified.
Dark matter has made its presence known according to our fairly ordinary ideas of Physics, whether Newtonian, or Einsteinian, in that something presently unidentified is exhibiting the presence of a considerable amount of mass; that so far has not been connected to any EM radiating material; hence it is “Dark” in that sense.
I’m pretty dense when it comes to cosmology, but if I’m not mistaken, dark matter has not been shown to not be ordinary matter, which then raises a question as to how dense is this stuff supposed to be ? If it consisted of ordinary isolated atoms, what would be the mean free path between such ordinary atoms, to explain the total amount of mass of that kind in a given volume ?
Then if that MFP is large; perhaps km or more (or not), each such atom, would be essentially isolated, so collisions would be extremely rare events (maybe).
In that case, each such atom, is essentially in free flight, so it has a Temperature of zero Kelvins.
Therefore it cannot radiate a thermal; radiation spectrum. Who knows what the density of EM radiation might be in such “highly expanded” regions far away.
So it is not inconceivable to me, that this could be ordinary matter, so rarified, as to undergo virtually no interraction with other similar atoms. OK, so maybe occasionally a friendly photon comes along and excites such an atom, which subsequently emits some sort of photon, but at such a low population density, such collections of atoms could appear to be totally dark from our distance, hence we could call it dark matter.
I assume that any such material in our general neighborhood, is too close to massive gravitational fields, and gets captured by some star/planet/comet/whatever, so we never don’t see it not radiating.
All this is of course of the WAG kind of suggestion; and maybe Leif in a few words, can disabuse me of my silliness.
But for the moment, I’m happy to assume that is is ordinary junk; just dark, and not yet identified.
Now “dark energy” is definitely not something I am comfortable with; I like it as much as I like parallel universes, and strings.
It’s called Dark Matter because current theories throw very little light on what it is.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 11, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Peter Melia says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Question.
The current theory of the origin of the universe seems to state that after the big bang, matter streamed outwards from its origin
No, matter stayed where it was, it is space itself [what is between particles of matter] that is expanding. Matter does not stream away from anything
==================================================
I am with replete. What is space that it can expand, and what does it expand into?
Long, long ago, in a universe far away…
“Serious Blow to Dark Matter Theories? New Study Finds Mysterious Lack of Dark Matter in Sun’s Neighborhood
ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2012) — The most accurate study so far of the motions of stars in the Milky Way has found no evidence for dark matter in a large volume around the Sun. According to widely accepted theories, the solar neighbourhood was expected to be filled with dark matter, a mysterious invisible substance that can only be detected indirectly by the gravitational force it exerts. But a new study by a team of astronomers in Chile has found that these theories just do not fit the observational facts. This may mean that attempts to directly detect dark matter particles on Earth are unlikely to be successful.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120418111923.htm
Per Strandberg: “Is this map made from computer modeling on the hypothesis that dark matter really exist?”
It was based on a hunch by Hansen, with the Mann-ipulated data coming from studying core samples taken from rings of planets in Yamal Nebula and Polar Urals Cluster by infamous space explorer Briffa.
/sarc
Of course there is good reason to be suspicious of hyped science — we have seen all to much of it, and not just in the climate fiasco. However there is very strong evidence that there is a huge amount of invisible mass in the universe, concentrated in and around galaxies. This comes from direct observation of how galaxies rotate and comparing those observations to the way they should rotate if only the visible mass was there.
As for what it is; how it got to be there; and the details of how it is distributed, that science “is not settled.”
Curious idea of “direct” detection.
I understand what dark matteer is supposed to be, and the reasoning behind this article. But, color me skeptical. I have a hard time thinking of mass without thermal energy.
Roger, there is very strong evidence that we do not understand why galaxies do not fly apart. Enter Dark Matter, as Deus ex Machina. But, is our understanding of gravity over cosmological, or even galactic, scales complete? Neton’s was until Einstein.
Actually, Newton’s was accurate until detailed measurements of Mercury’s orbit ere made. Einstein later explained the divergence of theory and mobservation. Time we had some of that attitude in Crimatology.
The contrasting color and underline at “James Hastings-Trew” indicates that he has a website connected to his WUWT user name. At that site he indicates he is a commercial artist that draws pictures of planets…along with the nice nude screen save i captured. My contrast/underlined website has a “Cosmology” tab were i discuss some of the errors of the ‘big bang hoax’, including every hypothesis advanced above. Einstein, who understood a thing or two about our Universe, said that the Universe could not be static. The Universe MUST be expanding, contracting or ROTATING. His Princeton professor colleague, Kurt Godel provided the mathematics to PROVE rotation, and when announced, the CIA intervened. It is past time to examine ‘other’ thoughtful explanations for the unseen and unexplainable.
@ MotorMouth “Observing gravitational lensing is no different to observing diffraction through water. Healthy scepticism is one thing but this level of ignorance is quite confronting.”
Perhaps you meant to say “refraction” instead of “diffraction”.
OMG! That´s Dark Bile, a sympthom of Melancholic (Melanos=Black; Chole= Bile) spirits wandering in the universe… 🙂
@ FauxScienceSlayer
Just a quick note on the relationship between Einstein and Godel. Both worked at Princeton, and usually walked home together deep in conversation. Einstein once remarked that he went to his office each day “chiefly to walk home with Gödel.”
I see no agenda at work here and no reason to doubt that Dietrich et al have found something, something interesting that mimics Dark Matter as currently understood. Even if they’re eventually proved wrong, we’ll still have learned something we didn’t know before. Will their work stand the test of time and replication? Let’s wait and see, before we make further statements as potentially embarrassing as many of those above. Snark is the hallmark of believers, not sceptics.
Ok, let’s cut out the philosophic discussion of gravitation lensing and just blame it all on Global Whatevertheheckitistoday. Personally, I think this was an important step in understanding our universe. But that’s just me. It might just be tree rings for all I know…
http://milesmathis.com/dark2.pdf
I’ve a couple questions here. Earlier, someone said dark matter doesn’t emit or absorb light. Does it block or reflect light? I’m guessing it is transparent since we attribute blocked light to interstellar dust.
I notice that Faux Science Slayer who has a highlighted name notices the link at James Hastings-Trew is a highlighted name also, and that is due to filling in the website information along with name and email address when you post.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Jim G says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Think outside the box, guys, you’re missing something!!
Dark Matter is thinking out of the box you seem to be in.
Uh, yeah, OK Leif. Let’s all make up stuff with virtually no grounding in science or reality.
Jeff Mitchell,
good question, except they don’t really have a lot of details to give us other than it apparently has a REPULSIVE force to herd all that inconvenient matter into neat orbits. Do you also wonder how while forcing that misbehavin’ normal matter into line it isn’t spreading into instellar space?!??!!
I guess they will tell us next that it doesn’t have a normal momentum or it attracts itself to offset the normal matter repulsion perfectly so it doesn’t contract or expand or…???!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Peter Melia says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Peter, try this:
http://cmb.physics.wisc.edu/tutorial/hubble.html
Listen to Leif.
Wow. In a time of threats of massive reductions in scientific research spending we have the CERN discovery of bosons one week and the discovery of black matter the next. I know it’s coincidence but what’s a scpetic to think?
11 July: NZ Herald: Kieran Campbell: ‘Abrupt increase’ in CO2 absorption slowed global warming
Scientists have discovered an “abrupt increase” since 1988 in the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by the land biosphere, which comprises all of the planet’s plant and animal ecosystems.
Wellington-based scientist Dr Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher, from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, was part of the global research team investigating the distribution of CO2 emissions.
Ms Mikaloff-Fletcher said the breakthrough had taken scientists “completely by surprise”…
***The findings do not contradict existing science about global warming, but rather explain how much CO2 is absorbed by plants and animals, with some of the CO2 then being passed from plants into the land.
A report into the findings says the increase in uptake is “a big number”, about one billion tonnes of carbon per year.
“To put it into context, that is over 10 per cent of global fossil fuel emissions for 2010,” the report said…
“What it does mean is that the climate change has been a lot slower than it would have been otherwise (because) less of the CO2 we’re producing is staying in the atmosphere.”…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10818936
***go figure.
——————————————————————————–
“Robert of Ottawa says:
July 11, 2012 at 4:55 pm
mobservation ”
?? consensus
There is no “direct detection” of anything here, it is just another example of that there is more gravity in the universe than observed mass for it. Because we know “matter” to gravitate, we therefore assume that the gap is caused by more “matter” of another kind. But it could be something quite different, like tension of a large-dimensional brane across which gravity operates. Or gravity itself may be a dimension, after all, gravity has never been unified with the standard model. There is evidence for a gravitational scalar in intergalactic space (e.g. HI gas bleeding away from galaxies like NGC 3628), as well as within elliptical galaxies and globular clusters, where stars appear to mingle ambiently as though they are gravitationally detached from eachother. Any such gravitational scalar would likely have dimensional origins, and would immediately increase the total gravity in play without any need for “dark matter”.
All this aside, the misrepresentation here is when the researchers describe it as a “direct detection”. It isn’t. The most likely missing matter, it seems to me, is between the ears.
Faux Science Slayer says:
“jht isn’t a physicist and his website is full of pictures”.
Yep, I am pretty sure I pointed that out in my post… I’m glad you enjoyed the pictures.
I really had no idea that people regard “the big bang theory” as a hoax. There’s a whole of cross-referenced observations and evidence to accurately date the age of the universe (13.7ish billion years — I don’t remember the exact number) and a whole lot of maths and experimental observations (again, cross-referenced and validated) to back up many of the claims of modern Cosmology. You know, stuff along the lines of “well, if this were true then we’d find THIS” and lo and behold, they find that bit of evidence, right where they expect to find it. At this point its a pretty large inductive chain of knowledge. You are free to poke holes in it, but bear in mind that a competing theory has to also take into account all of the predictions and observations made in the service of the theory you are seeking to replace. I don’t see anything of the sort on your site. Just saying.
I certainly invite anyone who’s interested to have a look at both our sites.
This conversation has got me thinking that I might be on the wrong side of this whole climate thing… Anyway, off to finish reading this fine book.
Looks like the site ate my last reply… I’ll try this again.
Yes, I am not a physicist. I don’t even play one on TV. I have a BFA degree. I have a website – its got pictures on it. I’m glad FauxScienceSlayer enjoyed them enough to keep a screenshot.
I invite any interested parties to have a look at both of our sites.
Now to get back to reading this delightful book.
Just a thought. We humans cannot hear certain sounds that a dog can hear. How do we know those sounds exist if we do not have actual evidence via our own ears?
Thanks Hans F for the link above:
http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=AS12005.pdf
An excellent read, and I especially liked his final sentence:
I would like to express my sincere admiration for those young researchers who dare follow their curiosity and who publish their non-conforming findings even though this may put their careers at risk.
I recommend everyone on this thread thoroughly read his summary conclusions in Section 17, quite intriguing…
The abstract reads thus:
Abstract: The current standard model of cosmology (SMoC) requires The Dual Dwarf Galaxy Theorem to be true according to which two types of dwarf galaxies must exist: primordial dark-matter (DM) dominated (type A) dwarf galaxies, and tidal-dwarf and ram-pressure-dwarf (type B) galaxies void of DM. Type A dwarfs surround the host approximately spherically, while type B dwarfs are typically correlated in phasespace.
Type B dwarfs must exist in any cosmological theory in which galaxies interact. Only one type of dwarf galaxy is observed to exist on the baryonic Tully-Fisher plot and in the radius-mass plane. The Milky Way satellite system forms a vast phase-space-correlated structure that includes globular clusters and stellar and gaseous streams. Other galaxies also have phase-space correlated satellite systems. Therefore, The Dual Dwarf Galaxy Theorem is falsified by observation and dynamically relevant cold or warm DM cannot exist.
It is shown that the SMoC is incompatible with a large set of other extragalactic observations. Other theoretical solutions to cosmological observations exist. In particular, alone the empirical mass-discrepancy— acceleration correlation constitutes convincing evidence that galactic-scale dynamics must be Milgromian.
Major problems with inflationary big bang cosmologies remain unresolved.
Dark Matter: Does not interact with Electro Magnetism but does with gravity. Self Annialates: it, is it’s own anti-particle and may release a photon in the process, it “talks” to the Standard (particle) Model.
There is a ‘state-of-the-hunt’ presentation gven at Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics by Astro-Physcist Dr. Greg Dobler. It’s free, it lasts about an hour and you can watch it at this link (You may have to copy it into your browser).
http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/friends/dobler/rm/qttv.html
http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/friends/dobler/
As for Dark Energy….they apparently have no clue what it is nor how to relate it to standard nor non-standard particle physics. Can’t be tied into forces of nature in any way. It’s a negative pressure and most definately exists.
Watched a free presentation a couple of weeks ago on the hunt for Dark Matter by Dr. Greg Dobler given as a chalk talk at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). It is free and online for the general public and it is laymans level presentation. The link is below. What they think they know about Dark Matter is that it does not interact with Electro Magnetism, it does interact with gravity, it self annialates itself releasing a photon, it talks to the ‘standard model’ of particle physics at the weak force level. Check it out. Lasts about an hour and is quite interesting.
http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/friends/dobler/rm/qttv.html
pat says: “11 July: NZ Herald: Kieran Campbell: ‘Abrupt increase’ in CO2 absorption slowed global warming. Scientists have discovered an “abrupt increase” since 1988 in the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by the land biosphere, which comprises all of the planet’s plant and animal ecosystems….”
They’ve been making this up as they go, and this is their latest lie to cover up the fact that the hoax is failing badly. They’re admitting ignorance of the full CO2 cycle (which underestimates volcanic emissions by two orders of magnitude.)
James Hastings-Trew says:
July 11, 2012 at 7:03 pm
———————————————–
James, what if the big-bang-theory wasn’t true? Not a hoax. Just not the right answer. What if the universe was 7,324,194 billion years old and we could only “see” 13.7 billion years of it.
Well, I can tell you what the answer would be. Denial.
kuhnkat says:
July 11, 2012 at 6:03 pm
Let’s all make up stuff with virtually no grounding in science or reality.
Indeed that is what many commenters are doing.
When one reads most of the comments one is struck with the low level of scientific literacy. Modern cosmology is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. There was a time when every generally educated person had a basic understanding of the science of the day. This is no longer the case, or is the problem the level of education?
When one contemplates the dismal level of knowledge displayed by most commenters here, one wonders if the often repeated saying that the blogs [and in particular WUWT – the ‘best science blog’] serve as valuable secondary peer-review has any truth to it. No wonder that many sites view WUWT with disdain considering the nonsense most commenters here come up with. I have referred to the lectures on cosmology given here http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cosmology
Read them and think about what you read, and learn.
Leif, I didn’t realize you were a comedienne!!
” Modern cosmology is one of the greatest achievements of mankind.”
And it can’t even answer my phone for me.
“No, matter stayed where it was, it is space itself [what is between particles of matter] that is expanding. Matter does not stream away from anything.”
I love this statement. I imagine myself getting bigger over time. It is not noticiable because it is occurring in everything around me but I am a giant in the future. I will grow until dark matter reaches for me.
Sure they have found something, but they really don’t know what they have found. They have an observation, and are trying to force-fit it into their theory. Does not compute. You can make up any story you like about what they have found and be just as “scientifically” accurate.
I fear with many of the comments to this story we undermine our collective credibility as ‘skeptical thinkers’.
The story of dark matter is far removed from the sensationalist, politicized, modeled, restructured stories we get flooded with in the climate debate.
In the mainstream media, dark matter often summed up more or less as a ‘fudge factor that cosmologists use to explain things about the universe that they don’t understand’.
But the reality is far different. Jan Hendrick Oort first noted in 1932 that stars at the periphery of observed galaxies orbited the galaxy far more quickly than physics would indicate was possible. Then Vera Rubin presented a paper in 1980, with many more far more precise measurements of many galaxies showing the same thing.
We all understand that an object orbiting close to the center of mass will move more quickly than one orbiting further from that center. However, Rubin’s work showed that a velocity curve plotted from the center of a galaxy eventually flattens out and the more distant objects orbit at the same velocity as those much closer to the galaxy center. (The original article I read on this had nice illustrations with the curve superimposed outward from the center of a picture of a galaxy, but this curve in Wikipedia illustrates the point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_curve )
At the simplest level, there are only two possible conclusions:
1. With our current understanding of physics, there MUST be a lot more matter (ie mass) in each galaxy than we can currently detect.
2. Or, our understanding of physics (ie gravity) is flawed.
And, surprisingly enough, Vera Rubin accepts the latter conclusion.
Gravitational lensing would appear to be a reasonably well observed phenomenon, and it seems likely these scientists are applying that knowledge in a logical manner.
To invoke Occam’s razor still further, I like George E. Smith thoughts in his comments here; July 11, 2012 at 3:59 pm . There are undoubtedly gigantic numbers of ‘lost’ atoms wandering in all areas of space, and no doubt many of them are undetectable. To take it a little further, there are likely huge numbers of lost planets and other similar bodies wandering in space, and these are objects we can only now detect at intergalactic distances when they are conveniently orbiting a visible star.
Acceptance of ‘gravitational’ laws also means the ‘filament’ theory makes perfect sense. Objects of any mass passing between two gravitational ‘pulls’ (ie two galaxies) will be have more chance of slowing and ‘lingering’ or being captured in that vicinity. This would explain a flaw in the thinking of those who expect dark matter to ‘be everywhere’ and proclaim that they have been unable to detect it in our immediate vicinity.
ian says:
July 11, 2012 at 8:24 pm
Sure they have found something, but they really don’t know what they have found. They have an observation, and are trying to force-fit it into their theory. Does not compute. You can make up any story you like about what they have found and be just as “scientifically” accurate.
No. You will not be scientifically accurate nor event worth the term “scientific”.
This is a common misconception of people used to video games and virtual reality.
Hard science is the study of the reality we live in, and it progresses in steps: 1)we observe, 2) we theorise and predict further phenomena which when found validate the theory. This is where this paper is now, it is validating the prevailing theory. Not any random fantasies of theories.
Theories, when successful, are a way of economically encapsulating all the known data on a subject. This means that if a new and better theory appears, it has first to accommodate all these data. Take the geocentric theory of the solar system. It accumulated and parametrized a lot of data with the epicycles. Was it superseded with the heliocentric? Sure, because the heliocentric has less parameters and more predictions BUT, and it is a big but , when you go to the heliocentric and change the coordinate system to geocentric, the epicycles are there in all their glory, because they were a parametrisation of data, and it could not be otherwise.
The present General Relativity astrophysics model of the universe might be superseded by a more general and more predictive theory, BUT it will encapsulate as a parametrization of the data, the present theory.
Thus you cannot make up any story you like about what they have found and be just as “scientifically” accurate. . Science is not science fiction.
anna v,
you might be more convincing if cosmology didn’t require 3 or more mutually exclusive factors to explain the observations!! Seems that number keeps going UP as more observations are made.
Furthermore, in follow up to my comment above, I feel we show great disrespect by responding to such detailed work with snark and ignorance.
There is no likelihood of hidden agendas here, and no indication of political and ideological influences at work.
This is simply science being done as it should be done. These good people have researched, published, and now await legitimate scientific criticism and further research which will either validate or contradict their findings.
Just as my being inquisitive and skepticism of Global Warming/Cooling by “Leading Scientists” led me to this site, those same qualities led me to doubt the Dark Matter Theory and led me to another “Denier” site concerning the cosmos. For those who are interested, check this site out:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2011/08/23/preface/
Many discredited scientists support the alternate theories of space/star formation and Dark Matter to them doesn’t exist. Enjoy!
Andrew Krause says:
July 11, 2012 at 8:18 pm
“No, matter stayed where it was, it is space itself [what is between particles of matter] that is expanding. Matter does not stream away from anything.”
I love this statement. I imagine myself getting bigger over time. It is not noticiable because it is occurring in everything around me but I am a giant in the future. I will grow until dark matter reaches for me.
I would also love to think that the expansion of space is the reason for my expanding waistline. Unfortunately, gravity is strong enough to prevent expansion of anything smaller that a cluster of galaxies.
George E. Smith;
July 11, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Hi George:
I think he reason that it is not accepted as ordinary matter, is that what you describe would behave like massive cold dust, obscuring the galaxies behind it even though not emitting any radiation itself. This paper could not have been written in this case because there would not be light penetrating to measure the gravitational lensing.
Anna V.,
Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.
You see folks if you don’t believe the established science theory you are labeled a denier, uneducated or outright stupid….. I’m starting to believe this is becoming the wrong site for me to continue to expand my knowledge because of the overwhelming mantra of zealot believers. Sound Familiar????? Big Bang has become just as much of a religion as Global warming ever was. Challenge it and expect to be insulted..
Alexander Feht says:
July 11, 2012 at 9:35 pm
Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.
Everything is in the end checked with experiments and observations and fail if they don’t match. The paper of this topic is about the observational validation of the equations. Furthermore, mathematics is the language of science. It is very possible that you do not understand mathematics and therefore have a hard time understanding the science. Fortunately there are many physicists that understand the language and can translate it just for you. But your understanding then depends on your willingness [and ability] to listen and make an effort. I see no such effort in your comment.
A quote from Leif Svagaard for most of us to contemplate:
When one contemplates the dismal level of knowledge displayed by most commenters here, one wonders if the often repeated saying that the blogs [and in particular WUWT – the ‘best science blog’] serve as valuable secondary peer-review has any truth to it. No wonder that many sites view WUWT with disdain considering the nonsense most commenters here come up with.
Remind him about it when this latest “first proof” of dark matter’s existence will be disposed of.
“There is no “direct detection” of anything here,”
there is no direct detection of anything anywhere.
pkatt says:
July 11, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Big Bang has become just as much of a religion as Global warming ever was. Challenge it and expect to be insulted…
A successful challenge involves a clear understanding of what is being challenged. And a better explanation of data already collected [or more data]. Once toy have those things you can challenge. Just saying that you don’t believe it is not a challenge. It tells more about you than about the topic.
“At the simplest level, there are only two possible conclusions:
1. With our current understanding of physics, there MUST be a lot more matter (ie mass) in each galaxy than we can currently detect.
2. Or, our understanding of physics (ie gravity) is flawed.”
One “observation” two theories. Note that the observation cant tell you which to decide is true.
Yes. this is actually the fate of all theory since all theory is under determined by the ‘evidence’.
And theory is all we have.
Alexander Feht says:
July 11, 2012 at 9:48 pm
“When one contemplates the dismal level of knowledge displayed by most commenters here, one wonders if the often repeated saying that the blogs [and in particular WUWT – the ‘best science blog’] serve as valuable secondary peer-review has any truth to it. No wonder that many sites view WUWT with disdain considering the nonsense most commenters here come up with.”
Remind him about it when this latest “first proof” of dark matter’s existence will be disposed of.
Your comment proves my point much better than I could have done.
Steven Mosher says:
July 11, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Yes. this is actually the fate of all theory since all theory is under determined by the ‘evidence’.
And theory is all we have.
But many theories are supported by a lot of evidence. Another way to put this: A scientific theory is our understanding [and description] of a large body of evidence. A shorthand, if you will. No theory = no undrstanding.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 11, 2012 at 7:49 pm
Indeed that is what many commenters are doing.
When one reads most of the comments one is struck with the low level of scientific literacy. Modern cosmology is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. There was a time when every generally educated person had a basic understanding of the science of the day. This is no longer the case, or is the problem the level of education?
When one contemplates the dismal level of knowledge displayed by most commenters here, one wonders if the often repeated saying that the blogs [and in particular WUWT – the ‘best science blog’] serve as valuable secondary peer-review has any truth to it. No wonder that many sites view WUWT with disdain considering the nonsense most commenters here come up with. I have referred to the lectures on cosmology given here http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cosmology
Read them and think about what you read, and learn.
===============
Leif,
If you have all the answers, please list them now.
If not, piss off and I’ll work around the loss.
I’m not going anywhere.
Leif,
The first of my comments that you answered to was a quote from Tesla.
The second of my comments that you answered to was a quote from yourself.
You made my day!
Pay attention if you don’t want to make your cat laugh again.
P.S.
I think I am much too polite to you, Leif Svalgaard, after all you have said here.
But I am not Willis Eschenbach, and I will not stoop to your level.
Don’t forget to apologize to “most commenters here” (quoting your own substandard English) when this “Filament of Imagination” shall disappear from the scientific horizon, as many other “proofs” of the Dark Matter did already.
Real answers please. What is this space that can expand, and what does it expand into?
It sounds like these scientist have more closely observed an effect. Many different causes can have a similar effect. We have yet to observe the cause here, our instruments are to crude.
Alexander Feht says:
July 11, 2012 at 9:35 pm
Anna V.,
Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.
No matter whose quote it is, is is wrong ( after all I am a scientist and therefore a skeptic) . It might be correct if one started with“Some of today’s scientists . Physics is not a religion and Tesla is not one of its popes.
It is true that many more people are now studying and working in physics, and a lot of them are mathematically inclined and some of them have small contact with data, nevertheless, what Leif said at Leif Svalgaard on July 11, 2012 at 9:48 pm, is true:
Another way to put this: A scientific theory is our understanding [and description] of a large body of evidence. A shorthand, if you will. No theory = no understanding.”
A theory is a descriptive language, a mathematical language. Theorists try to encapsulate all known data within one mathematical framework, those are the physicists among them., and the language can be superseded but not destroyed, because the data are there and are the lynch pin of the structure. Theorists playing with mathematics are just mathematicians.
Steven Mosher says:
July 11, 2012 at 9:51 pm
“There is no “direct detection” of anything here,”
there is no direct detection of anything anywhere.
———————————————————
Silly Mr Mosher,
Senario one… A wave crashes into a sand castle and destroys it. My eyes observe this and deductive reason determines that the wave was the cause of the sandcastles demise.
Senario two… A sandcastle is obliterated right in front of me, by what I cannot see. It just disentgrates. By observing how the sandcastle is destroyed I create one of many posssible theories of what destroyed it.
This post is more like senario two, then senario one.
Sorry Leif, I intended to educate myself from your PDF link but only got a 404 Error,
However, I found this at Thunderbolts.info which has a host of information, but alas, not accepted by concensus astronomers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Certain concepts, like redshift and gravity, are fundamental to the Big Bang hypothesis. According to theory, light shifts toward the red end of the spectrum because an object is moving away. Objects interpreted to be at great distances move away faster than objects nearer to Earth, leading to the idea that the Universe is expanding.
Notwithstanding the problems associated with redshift, previous Picture of the Day articles about WMAP, galaxy clusters, and gravity-only cosmology have elucidated a force extant in the Universe exerting an attractive power 46 orders of magnitude greater than gravity: electric filaments in space. Each “puzzling” discovery by research scientists reinforces the tenets of plasma cosmology and serves to differentiate it from the imprecise predictions of consensus models.
Attractive forces exerted by electrified plasma contained in the twisting filaments of Birkeland currents dominate the Universe. They circulate in a cosmic circuit that flows into our field of view and then out into the void with long-range attraction between them. Therefore, the most probable “Great Attractors” are those filaments of electrified plasma with billions-of-trillion-times more intense fields of influence than gravity.
No doubt the Universe is larger than that which we can observe at this moment: more sensitive tools continue to reveal greater depths. Out of those depths rise inconceivable electrical energies. It is there we should look for explanations and not to centuries-old hypotheses conceived in a time when none of today’s observations were possible.
Stephen Smith ” (from picture of the day archives)
I thought with all of this scientific discussion going on, I might be able to slip my little questions and get a clear answer from a a really well-educated (scientifically), intelligent and nice person.
My questions were (are still) :-
1. Why, after the BB, didn’t the universe stop expanding.
2. Why after the BB, didn’t it even slow down?
3. Why after the BB, is it still accelerating?
3.1 To this last one I’ve had time to think of a corollary, which is:-
As the universe is said to be still accelerating, where is the accelerating energy coming from,
and as it’s said to be accelerating in the face of dark matter,
where is that accelerating energy coming from?
…..but no answer came.
Out there, in the hinterlands of science, among all of those millions on uncounted scientists, surely there must be one, just one, who can answer my simple questions!
Is the dark matter, darker than we thought?
Steven Mosher says: July 11, 2012 at 9:59 pm
….since all theory is under determined by the ‘evidence’.
Hi Steven
I nearly read that as ‘all theory is undermined by the evidence’
Cranks or scientists?
WIMPs or MACHOs?
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~george/ay20/eaa-wimps-machos.pdf
On more serious matter:
How is your spectral analysis progressing?
You said there may be some surprises there (cranks are always one step ahead) looking forward to see the results.
I am aghast at the vitriol being hurled at this paper and at those who have provided explanations and links to background information. At least when the “there’s no such thing as back radiation” crowd come out of the woodwork, they in general have explanations to support their opinions that can be discussed with some level of logical discourse. That some proponents of this nonsense continue to believe it even when their most erstwhile arguments have been exposed as illogical and unsupportable is frustrating. But this…. this makes me both sad and angry.
The theory behind the existance of dark matter isn’t hard to understand. The methods and data explained in this paper are not all that exotic and hardly unreasonable, and the researchers have, as I understand it, disclosed both methods and data. If armchair science critics are so certain that it is invalid, then let’s see a logical explanation instead of snide remarks. I’ve seen well founded reasoning and background information from Leif and George and Anna…. and nothing but snide insinuations and innuendo from the detractors. If all you folks have got is mud slinging to back you up, then please, go away.
I’m going to read Leif links and if something doesn’t make sense to me, I’ll post a question. But throwing mud at every science paper that comes out because we’ve been conditioned to accept the worst due to the climate science debacle is of little value to the discussion, and it certainly isn’t science.
davidmhoffer,
you have an interesting way of supporting BB theory. Because the authors disclose their data, methods, and logic it should be respected. Well, why would I respect anyone who simply believes what their boss tells them and works to advance the bosses career to ride his coattails??
Another interesting paper is coming out on red shit:
http://vixra.org/pdf/1105.0010v1.pdf
Apparently it is being seen and measured with laser driven plasmas. We will see how the Consensus treats that paper and its authors.
I would also point you to work such as this on the serious deficincies in BB theory:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.2546
David says:
July 11, 2012 at 11:27 pm
Scenario two… A sandcastle is obliterated right in front of me, by what I cannot see. It just disentgrates. By observing how the sandcastle is destroyed I create one of many posssible theories of what destroyed it.
This post is more like scenario two, then senario one.
One can always reinvent the wheel.
In our civilization we have managed to progress a lot and have a scientific knowledge described by current theories in the language of mathematics that are continually reevaluated against the data.
The time when a falling apple or a brimming bathtub allowed for alternate theories is way past., at least as long as we do not destroy our civilization.
At the moment there are not many possible theories to explain dark matter.
Dark matter is necessary for the prevailing theory, which is General Relativity, and the universe we observe can be described mathematically using elementary particle theories in conjunction with GR.
It is not enough to handwave theories around that might explain dark matter but leave grand holes in the rest of our physics understanding. Any alternate theory has to accommodate all the data, from the particle standard model to the big bang ( as shorthands for data). I do not know of one.
And as for Steven’s comment, in a sense it is true.
We each of us sit in our head and observe the world around us. We know it by proxy par excellence. Have you considered that everything you experience might be a construct of your imagination? 🙂 a grand dream, including this comment?
Steve from Rockwood says:
James, what if the big-bang-theory wasn’t true? Not a hoax. Just not the right answer. What if the universe was 7,324,194 billion years old and we could only “see” 13.7 billion years of it?
Interesting question. The easy answer is to say, I welcome any theory as long as it fits the facts, and is the truth.
The harder answer is to say, well, there is a LOT of evidence for the age of the universe to be rather precisely calculated to 13.75 billion years old. Given the relative proportions of the light elements (hydrogen, helium, deuterium, and lithium) which are in exact agreement with a hot dense state of a big bang, the relative scale of the structures that we can see in the map of the cosmic microwave background radiation (about 300,000 light years across, which corresponds exactly to the age of the universe when it would have to become transparent to radiative fields like gravity (since gravity moves at the speed of light, the largest such structure at the time would be 300,000 light years across)), and the relative proportions of the heavier elements (carbon, oxygen, and so on) which have to be created IN stars, and the even heavier elements (iron on up) that can only be created in super nova explosions, and the known age and sequence of the observable stars, we know with a high degree of precision that the universe is 13.75 billion years old, and the solar system and the earth are around 4.5 billion years old. Any older or younger and there wouldn’t be the same ratio of elements. Then there’s the cosmological constant (or the dark energy of empty space) and the observed expansion rate of the universe. If the dark energy level were lower, the universe would have stopped accelerating (or at least be slowing down), and if it were any higher, things like galaxies and stars and planets, and us, wouldn’t be here. And that the theoretical rate of expansion of a universe with a dark energy level like ours corresponds pretty much exactly to the observed density of space that it would be at the age of 13.75 billion years old.
You see, they came at the question from a number of different experimental angles, and the answer always comes out the same…
So, any competing theory has to take into account all of these observations and make sense of them all. That’s one of the wonderful things about Cosmology… every experiment seems poised to tear the theoretical underpinnings of the science apart. This isn’t mathematical navel gazing… we built a 17 mile diameter particle collider — the most complex thing mankind has ever built — just to look for the particle that is the force carrier of the Higgs field, a thing which you might not even believe exists. And if they don’t 100% confirm that they’ve found it, they get to shred the Standard Model and have to come up with something better. I love that kind of science.
James,
do you have ANY idea the number of ASSUMPTIONS you had to make to write your seemingly detailed explanation of the age of the universe and how it works?? It is really baffling how people can be so convinced by details based on imagination.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 11, 2012 at 9:57 pm
It tells more about you than about the topic.
You know very little of me except that I think you are often full of it and subject to fits of hubris. I on the other hand have been reading solarcycle 24 for years as well as WUWT and know what a bully you can be if anyone dares to go against your organized scientific religion. I cannot wait for the day you are proven wrong, but I doubt you will have the grace or humility to admit you were wrong. You are just another consensus driven scientist and quite frankly, I do not have the time, nor do I intend to put in the effort to argue with you. Live in your bubble, whether it be Earth’s, the solar systems, the galaxy’s or the one you deny for the universe. The Voyager probes are leaving our lovely bubble, lets see if they run into your expanding space or dark matter.. I’m betting they wont. Until then, you keep using your strawman arguments and argumentum ad hominem tactics because the more you do it, the more people will see you for what you really are.
On another note, just about every month a new story appears that challenges the consensus and standard cosmological simulations.. Take this one for example: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/19/full/ .. and I quote “The trouble is, the arc shouldn’t exist.” .. But there it is. So yes, it ticks me off to no end when I hear that old tired mantra of settled science.
Steven Mosher says: July 11, 2012 at 9:59 pm
I believe we are in agreement then, Steve?
We don’t demand that discussion and publication must exclusively be on the basis of someone’s special definition of hard, physical evidence, do we?
Anna V,
Good scientists fit theories to facts. If a theory doesn’t fit a single well-known fact, it is worth nothing. There are many well-known facts contradicting the Big Bang theory, and not a single confirmed, unequivocal fact confirming the existence of the “dark matter.”
Postmodern “consensus scientists” search for facts that fit the theories that feed them (or invent them), ignoring facts that contradict them. Hence “filaments of dark matter,” which are much more far-fetched than Martian canals. You seem to be comfortable in this company of conformists.
I’d prefer to be in Tesla’s company. Alas, he is dead — he died a pauper, betrayed by America and the whole world, the same world that owes him its very survival.
I don’t think you deserve uttering his name.
It used to be called “missing matter”, but the grants dried up and then they invented “dark matter”.
‘Einstein’s Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe (2009)’ by Evalyn Gates describes the gravitational lensing method as a tool she and her fellow researchers had been using for some time, apparently very effectively. As you may see from the publication date, three years before the paper now being greeted with either huzzas or raspberries; the method was used to get a reasonable map of dark matter.
I’m shocked at how dumb most of the comments here have been, or have displayed fruitcake thinking. I always read WUWT and have agreed with most of the comments on so-called Climate Change’, regarding myself as a sceptic. Now, though, I shall be careful about accepting what is posted here on climate if the postings on dark matter are the true standard of intelligence of posters.
You simply cannot say ‘Oh, but they are all ‘scientists’ and so just as lying and evil as ‘climate scientists”. That is the old anti egg head prejudice, as bad as racism, rearing up yet again. I used to read loads of science fiction books where the stupid red necks rose up and exterminated the egg head scientists because they were blamed for everything bad that had ever happened, due to their ‘meddling with Nature’. Many of the comments here read like what you might hear from someone having a distinctly puce neck…
I have a mere Ph.D in Psychology so I freely admit to not having specialised expertise in astrophysics or cosmology but, as might be expected, I know a fair bit about people. In addition, I taught research methods for twenty years and had to batter out of the brains of thousands of young people similar misapprehensions about science as have been show here. If you catch them young enough they can be saved!
Considering that human knowledge of gravitation can not accurately account for more than two objects without heuristically fudging the equations (three body problem), I find it the height of hubris when highly educated folk (who know their gravitational theories can not account for “varying differentials of the Moon’s orbit”) think that because the galaxies move in ways their models don’t explain very well, that it must be attributable to dark matter and energy that make up to 96% of the universe. Talk about a colossal fudge factor. How about a little occams’ razor and honesty?
1. We (humanity) really do not know how gravity works. We have models and theories galore that attempt to model the effects of gravity, but the mechanism by which it functions is unknown.
2. Despite this slight inability to deal with three objects interacting gravitationally with precise accuracy (a galaxy constains slightly more than three objects), a large portion of the mathematics, physics, and cosmology communities are ready to declare that their gravity models are fine, good enough to declare that 90% (or more) of the galaxy is composed of undetectable stuff…dark matter, energy, super condensed fudge, whatever, which has to be there so their models will be able to agree with observation. Models are supposed to resemble reality, not the other way around.
When you can’t account for 90% of anything in order for you theory to be accurate, your theory isn’t working very well.
Christian Takacs says:
July 12, 2012 at 2:30 am
Considering that human knowledge of gravitation can not accurately account for more than two objects without heuristically fudging the equations (three body problem),
Another example of the low level of knowledge most commenters here have. That there is no closed simple equation for more than two bodies, does not mean that we cannot accurately account for such objects. The equations can easily be solved numerically:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons
“The JPL HORIZONS on-line solar system data and ephemeris computation service provides access to key solar system data and flexible production of highly accurate ephemerides for solar system objects ( 587479 asteroids, 3153 comets, 176 planetary satellites, 8 planets, the Sun, L1, L2, select spacecraft, and system barycenters”
Dr Anthony Fallone says:
July 12, 2012 at 2:06 am
I’m shocked at how dumb most of the comments here have been, or have displayed fruitcake thinking. I always read WUWT and have agreed with most of the comments on so-called Climate Change’, regarding myself as a sceptic. Now, though, I shall be careful about accepting what is posted here on climate if the postings on dark matter are the true standard of intelligence of posters.
With this I wholeheartedly agree. Let the people referred to come back and further demonstrate the truth of the above sentiment.
Peter Melia says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:18 pm
We are told, and easily accept this, that if our object was ejected violently in a perfect vacuum, and free of gravity it would never slow down, it would just continue on at the same speed, forever.
How is it then that the particles ejected during the big bang, do not slow down, do not continue at the same speed forever, but actually accelerate. What is the accelerating force?
Perhaps a clue here…
Photonic Laser Thruster Makes Its Debut
http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=28582
All we need to do is give real mass, size and spin to the photon for it to provide the necessary force to accelerate the galaxies away from the centre of the cosmos. Maybe light is the new dark?
Tenuk says:
July 12, 2012 at 4:39 am
Peter Melia says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:18 pm
We are told, and easily accept this, that if our object was ejected violently in a perfect vacuum, and free of gravity it would never slow down, it would just continue on at the same speed, forever.
The difficulty here is that the ‘objects’ of the Big Bang were NOT ejected violently. They actually don’t move [except for small local velocities caused by mutual interactions] at all. The expansion of space takes place with or without any objects in it.
Leif,
“The expansion of space takes place with or without any objects in it.”
Here and in my ignorance I thought the CONSENSUS view was that expansion occurred BETWEEN objects such as Galaxies!!! Maybe I should view your Cosmology presentation and see what a heretic you really are!!!
Yes I realize the guy in the wheelchair thinks the expansion is homogeneous which means he also is somewhat heretical!!
iamreplete says:
July 11, 2012 at 11:39 pm
Out there, in the hinterlands of science, among all of those millions on uncounted scientists, surely there must be one, just one, who can answer my simple questions!
All your questions are answered in the wiki article of the big bang. If you cannot understand it, maybe something simpler, as an introductory physics course might be recommended.
Usually simple questions have complicated answers, not suitable for a blog discussion.
Alexander Feht says:
July 12, 2012 at 1:39 am
Alas, he is dead — he died a pauper, betrayed by America and the whole world, the same world that owes him its very survival.
Not whole world, the small nation of his origins does as much as it can to keep his name and memory alive. His work is studied in detail at Electro-technical faculty in Belgrade, the labs where practical experiments are carried are overlooked by his statue, there is museum dedicated to Tesla and his inventions, Belgrade Airport is named after him, so visitors all over the world are reminded of Nikola Tesla’s name.
There is some more info on my website:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Nikola%20Tesla.htm
Here you can hear N.Y mayor LaGuardia’s eulogy at Tesla’s funeral
http://www.teslasociety.ch/info/ton/Fiorello_La_Guardia_uber_Tesla.wma
And much more on website:
http://www.teslasociety.com/index.html
anna v says:
July 11, 2012 at 11:50 pm
====================================================
Dear anna,thank you for your partial response, And yes, I appreciate that science has advanced a great deal. One such example is Leif Svalgaard says:July 12, 2012 at 3:55 am.
And yet, at larger scales we simply can not use the same maths, based on the SAME OBSERVABLES. Hence some UNOBSERVED SOMETHING, exerting some force over 90 percent greater then all OBSERVABLES, is operating on these vast scales, but is apparently absent on smaller solar system scales as in the post by Leif which I referenced, where that 90% of something is not necessary to explain the OBSERVABLES Leif describes. So how does the same force, gravity, operating on solar system size scales where dark matter must be absent, (ie, not needed to explain the very complex relationships Leif’s link expounds on) suddenly operate differently, just because the scale has changed? Is dark matter absent within solar systems, but only present between galaxies? Or is there a different force operating on vast galatic scales, which does not operate on smaller scales, just as the atomic force operates on a molecular scale, but is not involved in the solar mechanics Leif discusses?
Let me try my sand castle assertion/question this way. An egg is sitting on a counter with a slight inclination. The egg is on the uphill side of an empty tissue box. Anna opens a window, a gust of wind moves the empty tissue box, the egg rolls down the incline, falls 32″, and shatters on a ceramic floor. Now a detailed mathmatical explanation of all the physics involved can explain all that is observed.
We can also run a film of the event backwards, The same maths reversed, can elso mathmaticaly explain every event, but, even though the math is 100 percent correct, it is still 100 percent wrong.
Just because the math is correct, does not mean nature obeys it.
My simple point is that when trying to quantify something where we can only see the effect,(say the answer is 10) but not the object causing said effect, we do not know if 10 was reached by a series of math and numbers from a known force, gravity, or a different force reaching “10” differently. BTW, yes gravity is a known, but not an easily explained force.
Anna, you also said…
“And as for Steven’s comment, in a sense it is true.
We each of us sit in our head and observe the world around us. We know it by proxy par excellence. Have you considered that everything you experience might be a construct of your imagination? 🙂 a grand dream, including this comment?”
—————————————————————————————————
Smiles, yes, but still in science we detect cause and affect via instuments which observe. thus my eyes see the “water” which destroys the sand castle, thus the water is detected. We have yet to detect either gravity (we only see its effect) or “dark matter”, we only see its effect. I maintain our instruments are too crude.
Now when I ask very simple questions, based on cause and effect, the structure of all science, I can only hope for an elevator speech answer. What is this space that can expand, and what does it expand into? I really hope for an answer. I see space as a three D constuct of height, width, and depth, each of which are infinite, and when anything else quantifiable is added, time becomes another demension operating within cause and effect principles.
BTW people, ( I do not mean you Anna) stop getting all emotional. It may well be that your answers are simply beyond the comprehension of lay members.
”
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 12, 2012 at 4:56 am
Tenuk says:
July 12, 2012 at 4:39 am
Peter Melia says:
July 11, 2012 at 12:18 pm
We are told, and easily accept this, that if our object was ejected violently in a perfect vacuum, and free of gravity it would never slow down, it would just continue on at the same speed, forever.
The difficulty here is that the ‘objects’ of the Big Bang were NOT ejected violently. They actually don’t move [except for small local velocities caused by mutual interactions] at all. The expansion of space takes place with or without any objects in it.
”
Prior to the apparent discovery of an accelerating universe a couple of decades ago, the cosmological question was whether or not there was sufficient mass in the universe to cause a big crunch due to gravitational attraction where everything collapsed back again or whether the universe would simply continue expanding. In either case, it was expected that the expansion we observe would slow down some. Instead, the ‘discovery’ indicated that the universe’s expansion is speeding up.
However, although it has been almost universally accepted, (parallel to AGW concensus guff), there remains a serious possible problem. The detection of this acceleration was by the type Ia supernovae observations which was assumed to be caused by a white dwarf sucking up matter from a companion star until it reached 1.4 solar masses – the limit in size for a white dwarf – beyond which it would collapse, creating an explosion (supernova) of a standard size. This is a questionable assumption and some recent (fall 2010 or 2011) paper(s) have failed to detect sufficient x-ray sources for candidate white dwarfs acreting matter to explain the number of type Ia supernovae. This leads to the prospect of type Ia supernovae primarily being from collisions and that seriously affects the accuracy of the standard explosion size which potentially throws the whole faster expansion idea into doubt.
Human nature being what it is, if faced with ‘dark matter’ , it’s ‘sexier’ to hypothesize about exotic dark matter like particles never before detected or microscopic black holes than it is to hypothesize about a bunch of brown dwarfs, planetoids, asteriods, comets, or interstellar dust bunnies.
Skepticism is important with all science, not just global warming. Elegance is a concept that many physicists think must be part of any accepted theory. The amount of chewing gum, duct tape, bailing wire, and superglue holding modern cosmology together is the antithesis of elegance. If this Higg’s boson discovery is real and if the Higg’s particle actually is responsible for gravity, that could potentially spell the end for the general relativity concept of warping of space and I don’t know what sort of ramifications might come from that.
Peter, you might like to find and read some of the books written by Fulvio Melia. He’s an interesting character (university of arizona astronomer/astrophysicist).
While reading (far too) much of the above the following came to mind. The only things you HAVE to know are how to make enough of a living to stay alive and how to get your taxes done. All the fun parts are optional.
Leif I admire your patience.
David says:
July 12, 2012 at 5:29 am
So how does the same force, gravity, operating on solar system size scales where dark matter must be absent, (ie, not needed to explain the very complex relationships Leif’s link expounds on) suddenly operate differently, just because the scale has changed? Is dark matter absent within solar systems, but only present between galaxies?
There is no indication that gravity works any different on different scales. And about dark matter present in the solar system: We do expect there to be some, possibly in the sun. Certainly there is dark matter within the galaxies [and not just between them; that is what makes the rotation curve flat. The thing is that the density of dark matter is extremely low, so difficult to observe on the small scale.
I have to say, I am a bit bemused by the onslaught of comments attacking this article. Some folks seem not to appreciate that dark matter is just code for “there is something acting gravitationally in the universe, where no matter can be detected and we don’t know what it is.”
Now what is so hard to accept with that statement?
It really is about distances. Distances translate into time. Each time we peer further into the cosmos we are looking back in time. Each time up our kit we see an older universe.
I can see how earlier parallax type measurements could be replicated but the Caephid variables cannot, however we cross reference with red shift measurements and all is consistent a long way away. Well it would be wouldn’t it.
I am not saying these guys are wrong with their strings and ropes but I cannot take their 3D model on board without some degree of error bar around the distances. A lot of guys on here are skeptical about things they understand, and lots about things they don’t understand. I am curious about lots of things now and my experience with the scientists in AGW has taught me how important it is to question everything.
Vince,
“there is something acting gravitationally in the universe, where no matter can be detected and we don’t know what it is.” Now what is so hard to accept with that statement”
Why yes, there is a HUGE problem with that statement. Your ASSUMPTION that only gravitation could possibly be causing the effect in question.
Leif, If DM tracks the density of “normal” matter ( and some think that normal matter clumps around DM ) then if the universe consists of about 4% normal matter and 25% DM (and 70% dark energy) then wouldn’t one expect that the typical DM density to be about 5 times that of normal matter on average?
Perhaps microlensing will lead to a better understanding of things as we manage to get past the atmospheric lensing difficulties (turbulence). I think we’ve yet to spot our first Oort cloud object in place.
“I would also love to think that the expansion of space is the reason for my expanding waistline. Unfortunately, gravity is strong enough to prevent expansion of anything smaller that a cluster of galaxies.”…We have loosened Orion’s belt
It is unfortunate that the exhilaration and personal accomplishment in these observations and experiments is lost to most commentators. I give Lief, Mosher and Anna much leeway in the tone of their responses. It is easy to say, they observed nothing or the theories are kludged. The complexity of things that are beyond our common senses cannot be dismissed so cavalierly. The work behind the theories is ongoing and should be a source of fascination for everyone interested in how things work.
anna v. et al
I put “scientifically” in quotes to indicate sarcasm. In future, perhaps I should use [sarcasm on]/[sarcasm off]. There is no discipline of science that does not have the same problem as does the particular subset of climate research called “anthropogenic global warming”. There is an existing dogma in every field of research. Science careers are built on pet theories and then codified as [sarcasm on] “facts” [sarcasm off]. And then taught in the universities as “facts”, and then in the grade schools as “facts”. Thus the kids are indoctrinated in the currently prevailing theories and any thinking “outside the box” is not just discouraged, but actively ridiculed and mocked. This is ably demonstrated by AGW, and I find it amusing to see it everywhere I look. I only know a few scientists who truly will consider options “outside the box”.
ian
Re Vince Causey: indeed, I’ve often written about a “gravitational scalar” enabling ambient mixing of stars in elliptical galaxies and globular clusters. So now Leif states “the density of dark matter is extremely low, so difficult to observe on the small scale”. Sounds like much the same thing, actually.
“Vince Causey says:
July 12, 2012 at 7:37 am
I have to say, I am a bit bemused by the onslaught of comments attacking this article. Some folks seem not to appreciate that dark matter is just code for “there is something acting gravitationally in the universe, where no matter can be detected and we don’t know what it is.”
Now what is so hard to accept with that statement?
”
Vince, nobody ever got a research grant – government or otherwise – who concludes that “there is something out there where nothing has been detected and we don’t know what it is” Besides, dark matter, or DM, is a lot shorter than using a whole phrase or some sort of acronym like “tisotwnhbdawdkwii”.
There are other biases that enter into things as well. How many prefer the notion that space itself is expanding rather than the notion that the speed of light in a vacuum, c, is slowing down over time? Hint, most prefer their universal constants to be constant, even though classical electromagnetic theory indicates that the speed of light is related to the permeability and permittivity of the medium in which it is travelling, be it water, air, or empty space.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 12, 2012 at 7:27 am
And about dark matter present in the solar system: We do expect there to be some, possibly in the sun.
Why did you have to say that?
My coffee went all over my keyboard, had to turn of pc and do cleaning and drying.
Never, ever expected to hear anything do funny on a thread of gravity !
Dr Anthony Fallone says:
I’m shocked at how dumb most of the comments here have been, or have displayed fruitcake thinking. I always read WUWT and have agreed with most of the comments on so-called Climate Change’, regarding myself as a sceptic. Now, though, I shall be careful about accepting what is posted here on climate if the postings on dark matter are the true standard of intelligence of posters.
I agree 100% This whole exchange has left me more than a little concerned about the quality of information that I’ve been getting here.
James,
” I agree 100% This whole exchange has left me more than a little concerned about the quality of information that I’ve been getting here.”
Absolutely!!! I recommend that all of you consensus types run away very fast and hide amongst those who are only interested in reinforcing each others ideas so there is no doubt in your world to upset you!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
****
cba says:
July 12, 2012 at 6:38 am
Human nature being what it is, if faced with ‘dark matter’ , it’s ‘sexier’ to hypothesize about exotic dark matter like particles never before detected or microscopic black holes than it is to hypothesize about a bunch of brown dwarfs, planetoids, asteriods, comets, or interstellar dust bunnies.
****
I’d think those were very first things astronomers looked at to try to explain things, and those candidates were found lacking/implausible.
****
James Hastings-Trew says:
July 12, 2012 at 8:30 am
I agree 100% This whole exchange has left me more than a little concerned about the quality of information that I’ve been getting here.
****
You’ve got to use your own mental “spam filter”. Some posters here have discredited themselves to the point where I automatically skip over their comments. Unfortunate, but WUWT is dedicated to being an open website, as long as the site policies aren’t violated.
Vince, it is easy to accept that the inferred motions of galaxies don’t agree with the predictions of the standard model. It’s much harder to accept that the problem is solved by calculating where some matter “should” be, drawing a target around the empty space, and claiming the target is filled with otherwise undetectable and unpredicted clumps of particles that don’t fit anywhere else in the theory.
Leif,
“And that is spectacularly confirmed by the fact that we indeed cannot see it.”
The fact that it is invisible is spectacularly confirmed by the fact that you can’t see it? That’s an unusual logical construct.
“We can, however, measure the gravitational effects from Dark Matter which shows it is there, just like in the 19th century we hadn’t seen the planet Neptune, but we knew it was there because of its gravitational effects on Uranus. We could even from those effects calculate where Neptune should be, and that is indeed where we found it. Such is the power of science.”
Or, you could be wrong. Place your bets…
So, can we at least get agreement that nothing has actually been “detected” but it has rather been “inferred” from general relativity and how we “believe”, based upon theory, that gravity, light defraction, space expansion and a variety of other factors are working? If we knew all there is to know about all of these issues it would be different, but since we do not, any amount of healthy skepticism should leave some doubt of what is causing the effect being observed. Otherwise we are treating our theories as dogma just like the AGW crowd.
Name calling or snide remarks regarding those who may have read and agree with other potential explanations which obviate the need for dark matter or dark energy is not productive. After all, it is mathmatical models which tell us that there cannot possibly be that much additional baryonic matter out there to answer the riddle of where all the apparent additional mass comes from to create all of the apparent additional gravity. I do not believe anyone has actually hands on inventoried the mass of the universe.
Leif,
Remember that cosmology is a rather esoteric and mathematical field. It is hardly surprising that anonymous laymen display their ignorance. That said, the arrogance of some of these uninformed posters is a bit annoying.
You usually don’t become noticeably agitated and just do your best to give a factual response and refer the uninformed poster to a resource to better educate themselves. (Occasionally tossing in an amusingly sarcastic remark that, while at the expense of the poster, is usually not too severe.)
It seems that lately your patience and good nature have been tested. Remember that for every arrogant know nothing there are many other readers that are trying to educate themselves and are eager to accept a scientific theory that is backed up with testable evidence.
Try to cut the ignorant some slack and don’t condemn all of us that frequent WUWT.
Ahh yes Lancifer, sheer breathtaking ARROGANCE!!!
On the one foot, you tell me I am arrogant and ignorant (absolutely I am ignorant!!!) for questioning the greats like Einstein and others for their work decades and more after it was done. Yet, when I tell yoou that Einstein himslef decided that he made a mistake with the Cosmological Constant you shush me and tell me YOU know better than Einstein!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I’m still trying to figure out just what is actually new about the announcement. Below are some links to other earlier efforts of mapping DM. Evidently, it’s the assumption that the DM observed between the clusters in the filament is not or was not a part of the clusters. Mapping DM distributions using gravitational lensing is not something that is brand new as the first measurements were done around half a dozen years ago.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/exotic/pr2010026a/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/dark-matter-map.html
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/aug/HQ_06297_CHANDRA_Dark_Matter.html
Who here does not understand that plasma in space is the only known thing that form filamentary structures? The BB predicts a homogenous distribution of matter, yet the universe is highly filamentary. Only plasma in is known to form filamentary shapes, not gravity.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/05/22/radio-elliptical/
http://www.thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/archives/solar08/021608_dark_inertia_1.htm
In reality they are observing nothing more than the filamentary aspects of plasma, a scientifically and laboratory demonstrated fact. For over 100 years plasma events in the laboratory have backed up all observations in space, but mainstream astronomy still clings to the ideas of fairy dust and unicorns. This is because plasma physics is not taught in astrophysics classes, even though 99.99% of the universe is in a plasma state. Usually when one decides to study something, a background in the stuff its made of is usually a good idea.
So, we can believe the astronomers and theorists that have no background in plasma physics, or the engineers that work with it on a daily basis. Demonstrated laboratory results or someones idea of how it should be. The choice is yours as to whom you should trust. Physicists with actual laboratory results backing them up or pure theorists who never set foot in the lab.
http://www.plasma-universe.com/Plasma-Universe.com
http://www.plasma-universe.com/99.999%25_plasma
****
David says:
July 12, 2012 at 5:29 am
So how does the same force, gravity, operating on solar system size scales where dark matter must be absent, (ie, not needed to explain the very complex relationships Leif’s link expounds on) suddenly operate differently, just because the scale has changed? Is dark matter absent within solar systems, but only present between galaxies?
****
It shouldn’t be surprising that DM wouldn’t be detectable in the solar system. The solar system is a very concentrated volume of regular matter, relative to interstellar space (and despite the fact it’s still mostly empty space). So, in the confined volume of the solar system, regular matter would dominate DM, probably by a vast amount. The point is that regular matter is far thinner in the vast volumes of interstellar/intergalactic space, but DM is prb’ly much more uniform. So, considering the vast, mostly empty (of regular matter) volume in a million-light-year-dia halo around the Milky Way, there could very well still be a 5-1 ratio of DM to regular baryonic matter.
anna v,
“Have you considered that everything you experience might be a construct of your imagination? 🙂 a grand dream, including this comment?”
Yes. And I imagine that I once met you. In Bath. Many years ago. 🙂
James Evans (thrib)
regarding beng says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:33 am
====================================================
Thank you. A logical and reasoned response. (I wish I had thought of that on my own!) So, assuming the gravity of DM, and regular matter are one force, (all the complicated math works out), then this simplfies the mystery., leaving aside dark energy and much other theory.
Since yoou answered that question so well, can you take a stab at my other question…
“Now when I ask very simple questions, based on cause and effect, the structure of all science, I can only hope for an elevator speech answer.
What is this space that can expand, and what does it expand into?
I really hope for an answer. I see space as a three D constuct of height, width, and depth, each of which are infinite, and when anything else quantifiable is added, time becomes another demension operating within cause and effect principles. “
Finally. Dark Matter has achieved equality with unicorns. Look, I can show you a picture…
“James Evans says:
July 12, 2012 at 10:30 am
anna v,
“Have you considered that everything you experience might be a construct of your imagination? 🙂 a grand dream, including this comment?”
Yes. And I imagine that I once met you. In Bath. Many years ago. 🙂
James Evans (thrib)”
In a world where Schrodinger’s cat is simultaneously dead and alive, perhaps Lord Yabu’s death poem is correct in that “life is but a butterfly’s dream”.
James Evans says:
July 12, 2012 at 10:30 am
And I imagine that I once met you. In Bath. Many years ago. 🙂
Hi James, a lot of water under the bridge since then 🙂 . I am in a physics mode now :).
How is life?
Anna
For Anna V.
At last, a kind voice in the scientific jungle!
I did indeed take your advice and look at the two links you offered, finding that unfortunately neither answered or even pointed to an answer to my little questions. Thanks anyway for the advice.
You will of course recall my questions, which were:-
My questions were (simplified, are still) :-
1. Why, after the BB, didn’t the universe stop expanding.
2. Why after the BB, didn’t it even slow down?
3. Why after the BB, is it still accelerating?
3.1 As the universe is still accelerating,
where is the accelerating energy coming from,
and as it’s accelerating in the face of dark matter,
where is that additional accelerating energy coming from?
As you said,
“Usually simple questions have complicated answers, not suitable for a blog discussion.”
OK, I accept that my questions are really, really simple, but surely a simple answer could be given?
Thanks anyway.
“””””…..anna v says:
July 11, 2012 at 9:04 pm
George E. Smith;
July 11, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Hi George:
I think he reason that it is not accepted as ordinary matter, is that what you describe would behave like massive cold dust, obscuring the galaxies behind it even though not emitting any radiation itself. This paper could not have been written in this case because there would not be light penetrating to measure the gravitational lensing……””””””
Anna, when Astronomers/Cosmologists talk of “interstellar dust”, I envisage exactly that; dust like blows around in the yard, so it is measurable sized particles of presumably rocklike materials. I assumes it blocks light from behind, in much the same way as desert dust storms do, but on a much larger, but lower particle density scale. Presumably EM radiation, including visible, is either absorbed or scattered, by such particles in rather ordinady mundane ways.
But such particles would contain many atoms, which can interract (thermally) so collisions can occur, and hence EM radiation via a thermal spectrum would be possible.
So my wild guess for an ordinary matter form of dark matter, would not include such dust particles, but strictly isolated atoms, that never collide with anything, so would tend to maintain a zero dipole moment, so couldn’t radiate like a Hertz or Maxwell antenna carrying a varying current (same as accelerated charge).
Now Leif did mention something about DM being low density, and that is why I enquired about the postulated density of DM to see if its low enough for large spaced single atoms.
I have always had a queezy (but not skeptical) feeling about the BB aftermath; particularly the “inflationary” phase. But again, Leif’s comment, of stuff not rushing hither and thither; just the “space” itself (whatever the blazes space is) expanding eases that worry. Maybe the bad word is “bang”; perhaps it was not even a “whoooOOOSH.” Well I do have a fondness for the first
10^-43 seconds after the BB; seems like all the really interesting stuff happened back on those days; “Archeophysics” I call it; really old stuff.
I’m somewhat astonished by all the seeming hostility towards, astronomers, and cosmologists. I can’t think of any group, except you particle physicists, who are able to make so much out of so little. To contemplate what astrophysicists, have been able to glean from that silly electromagnetic radiation spectrum, with nothing but phtons and a few other critters to “look at”, in a vast laboratory, where they can’t reach out and just tweak the knobs. It’s a monumental history of achievement.
Anybody who is not totally freaked out by the Hubble Deep Field Photographs, simply has nothing going on between their ears. I actually pity those folks, who aren’t moved in any way by such incredibility.
I watched one of Brian Greene’s PBS shows last night, about the Einstein inability to combine Gravity/General Relativity, with Electro-Magnetism.
I have to say that Greene’s demonstration (thought experiment) of the vast difference between the puny gravity, and the all powerfull EM forces, was very neat.
He leaped off the top of a tall building, and got accelerated, at something quite close to exactly one (g) on his way to a rendezvous at the center of the earth; but suddenly came to a screeching halt just a few hundred feet below the top of the building, when his shoes got close enough to the sidewalk for the electromagnetic forces, to put gravity in its place, and bring him to ahalt with almost no penetration of the pavement at all; well I’m sure the soles of his shoes squished a bit.
But then he wafted off into string theory; and I just can’t get worked up with the idea, that something; no matter how tiny, that can wigggle, is not somehow assembled out of even tinier components that can move relative to each other. How could a wiggly string be fundamental.
Well I’m sure that the fishes that finally feast off my bones, will be none the worse for wear by the fact, that I never got to understand strings or parallel universes; but I do hope one day to meet some one who freely admits that s/he does understand quantum mechanics.
I guess there is something wrong with me!!
“Anybody who is not totally freaked out by the Hubble Deep Field Photographs, simply has nothing going on between their ears.”
Freaked out? Nope. Awe struck is more like it. Especially when you try and figure out how long such GINORMOUS structures would take to assemble, yet, they had only a few billion years based on their estimated distance!!! How can these “scientists” look at this data and not reconsider their faith in the BB??
Leif said:
“We can, however, measure the gravitational effects from Dark Matter which shows it is there, just like in the 19th century we hadn’t seen the planet Neptune, but we knew it was there because of its gravitational effects on Uranus. We could even from those effects calculate where Neptune should be, and that is indeed where we found it. Such is the power of science.”
The difference is that we haven’t yet found Dark Matter. It’s still just a speculative theory to account for the gravitational discrepancy. And it’s not the only one possible explanation. When astronomers noticed the gravitational perturbation that led them to hypothesize the presence of Neptune, they didn’t assume Neptune was actually there until they found Neptune. But scientists are now claiming Dark Matter exists purely on the basis of the gravitational discrepancy. I think you have to admit that’s a leap of faith, not science. Claiming to have “detected” Dark Matter merely by observing the discrepancy more closely is highly misleading and jumping the gun. There really could be other explanations for the discrepancy, including the possibility that our understanding of gravitation is itself lacking. One can compare this to 19th century scientists claiming that an “ether” must exist, based on their understanding of physics. Sometimes these discrepencies indicate that our understanding of physics is wrong. Dark Matter may turn out to be the 21st century equivalent of an “ether”.
iamreplete says:
July 12, 2012 at 11:43 am
My questions were (simplified, are still) :-
1. Why, after the BB, didn’t the universe stop expanding.
The BB is a model within the theory of General Relativity. In this form, all the energy comes from the initial singularity which gave the bang to space. Did you study the figure on the right in the wiki link? Did you understand the analogy with the balloon surface?
2. Why after the BB, didn’t it even slow down?
If there is enough initial energy, why should it slow down? This particular model accommodates the data. There are other GR models that go from expansion to contraction for example, but the data do not support them at the moment.
3. Why after the BB, is it still accelerating?
The model is constructed to fit the data within GR. Energy conservation is not the simple concept one has from everyday experience . One needs to study the mathematics in a course to really understand this.
3.1 As the universe is still accelerating,
where is the accelerating energy coming from,
and as it’s accelerating in the face of dark matter,
where is that additional accelerating energy coming from?
The model is constructed to fit the data within GR. Energy conservation in GR is not the simple concept one has from everyday experience . One needs to study the mathematics in a course and solve some problems in order to really understand this.
As you said,
“Usually simple questions have complicated answers, not suitable for a blog discussion.”
OK, I accept that my questions are really, really simple, but surely a simple answer could be given?
Simplifying complicated answers does not mean that the answers are simple. They probably are incomprehensible for people who have not put the effort necessary to understand the underlying framework, mathematics in this case.
Thanks anyway.
You are welcome.
beng,
discounting mundane alternatives prematurely is not all that rare. My comment above concerning type Ia supernovae shows one example. It was/is thought that the occurence of collisions is too rare to be the primary cause so it must be accretion from a binary star partner. This should be visible in the x-ray realm and hence falsifiable. there has been a paper (or two or three) two years ago indicating that the number of x-ray sources was insufficient to explain the number as well. I’ve met at least one expert in that field who did not agree with that original concensus. As the scientific drama (scientific method in operation) plays out we will learn more about what’s going on. It may well be that the ‘necessity’ of dark energy to explain the increasing expansion rate of the universe may not actually be a necessity and Einstein’s self admitted ‘biggest blunder’ (cosmological constant) may also become today’s modern day biggest blunder (dark energy) after biting the dust a second time. Then again, there might be a problem with the search for the x-ray sources and virtually Type Ia supernovae are actually caused by exceeding the 1.4 solar mass limit for white dwarf size and a type Ia actually is a very accurate standard candle leaving us with the strange situation of a repulsive force dominating the universe. Then again, Fulvio Melia’s observation that the density of the universe appears to be such that it suggests we are inside the event horizon of the mother of all supermassive blackholes. (given a density of around 6 H per m^3 and a size of around 13.7 b Lyr what is the size of the Schwartzchild radius? – about 13.7 b Lyr).
Vince Causey says:
July 12, 2012 at 7:37 am
I have to say, I am a bit bemused by the onslaught of comments attacking this article. Some folks seem not to appreciate that dark matter is just code for “there is something acting gravitationally in the universe, where no matter can be detected and we don’t know what it is.”
Now what is so hard to accept with that statement?
**********************
What’s hard to accept is the notion that the problem is necessarily “out there”, rather than in our understanding of gravitational physics itself. One gets the sense that DM and DE are inventions designed to perpetuate a broken physics, by presuming that there must be some kind of “thing” out there to account for these gravitational discrepancies, rather than an inadequate gravitational model that has run up against its deficiencies.
davidmhoffer,
I am sad and angry about your giving support to closet Creationists.
Please, think about this article again, and then remember the joke about Texas sharpshooting.
kuhnkat,
It’s a relief to know that there is somebody capable of thinking out there.
People who follow the Scripture (or the textbook script) instead of thinking always accuse og ignorance those they cannot understand.
anna v.,
Should I regard your invitation to read Wikipedia article on Big Bang as an intentional insult?
Or are you really that simple?
George E Smith, Anna, anyone, again,
What is this space that can expand, and what does it expand into?
I really hope for an answer. I see space as a three D constuct of height, width, and depth, each of which are infinite, (so IT can only expand into iself, and IT is already there) and when anything else quantifiable is added, time becomes another demension operating within cause and effect principles. The balloon analogy, like the raisens in bread analogy does nothing for me. Balloons, including the air inside them, like bread, are quantifiable phenomena, subject to cause and effect. How unquantfiable infinite space of nothing except infinite three demensional concept, can move galxies at faster then ligh speed, appears to be rather unreachable.
Kuhnkat,
Why did you jump to the conclusion that I included you in “arrogant” and “uneducated” posters?
Although ending a post with “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA” does make you look kind of kooky.
Brokenyogi,
One would have to throw a lot of babies out with that bath water. Pretty much all of physics as we know it would have to be seriously reconsidered.
The observed movement of galaxies doesn’t fit the current understanding (or misunderstanding, as it may be) of the General Relativity theory. To keep this understanding (or misunderstanding) intact, an assumption is being made that we don’t see more than 90% of the mass of the Universe (which in itself assumes that the mass of the Universe is finite — a very bold assumption, to say the least).
On the basis of this assumption a purely mathematical construct was built, that predicts the existence of particles that cannot be observed, and don’t interact with anything observed, other than gravitationally. Very convenient. The gravitational lensing effect is being used, therefore, to try to support this far-fetched abstraction, called upon to save the theory in the face of reality that doesn’t obey the theory (unscientific approach if there ever was one).
All this is being done to keep alive a Bing Bang theory, a theory with obvious creationist roots, a theory that has been already refuted by observations (for example, by the simple fact that infrared telescopes see massive clusters if galaxies on the edge of visibility, where, according to the same Big bang theory, they had no time to form).
This particular announcement claims to be the first proof of the existence of dark matter. I don’t understand, how otherwise reasonable people, such as David M. Hoffer, can buy this. First of all, this is not the first announcement of this kind. “Proof” of dark matter’s existence, obtained by the same method (gravitational lensing effect) has been all over the news, several times. In each case, it was subsequently conveniently forgotten, because it didn’t hold water.
Furthermore, there are so many other possible explanations for the observed discrepancy that “dark matter hypothesis” becomes just one of many speculations, and one of the most tenuous ones. It has been in the news lately that the amount of brown dwarfs (the stars that we don’t see) is at least 10 times larger that the amount of luminous stars. It has been in the news lately that gigantic non-luminous clouds of hydrogen exist around the galaxies, and that we can see only some of them, when they are back-lit by luminous objects behind them. These are just two of dozens of artifacts that add to the apparent mass of galaxies. Plus, we never know, how many black holes are in the region that we see.
However, the most important mistake, in my view, is to assume that our current understanding of the General Relativity theory is complete and correct. It very well may be that mass affects space and time (time is of essence here!) in such a way that space-time continuum behaves differently in presence of the large accumulation of mass, as opposed to the relatively empty intergalactic space.
Time will tell, who is right, and who is wrong. One thing is sure: narrow-minded pedants, following the “prevailing consensus” to the letter and pointing out Wikipedia articles (of all things, for heaven’s sake!) and college textbooks as authoritative sources of information regarding cosmology, are destined to shame themselves.
That’s Gold, Jerry!! Gold I Tell You, GOLD!! – yes, comedy gold.
“We found what we were looking for, even though we don’t know what it is or ever was.”
“So how do you know you found anything?”
“Because, it was located next to an UnObtainium deposit, just as we suspected”
“Are you sure it wasn’t located next to your research grant requisition forms?”
“DENIER!! DENIER!! We wrote it down, so it’s true. Why are you anti-science?”
“Winner winner, chicken dinner”
Leif,
“We can, however, measure the gravitational effects from Dark Matter which shows it is there, just like in the 19th century we hadn’t seen the planet Neptune, but we knew it was there because of its gravitational effects on Uranus.”
So, scientists knew it was there but couldn’t see it. They therefore concluded that Neptune was invisible. Or… wait, I’m not sure they did that. Maybe they concluded that their theory was right only when their observations matched the theory. Saying “oh, it’s invisible” is, umm, rather a cute way of getting the observations to match the theory.
I look forward to more creative logic in your response.
Anna V,
“Hi James, a lot of water under the bridge since then 🙂 . I am in a physics mode now :).
How is life?”
Life is extremely good thanks. Best it’s been. I hope all is well with you. (Though the economy must be a bit of a trial.) Yes, oceans of water under the bridge.
I always enjoy seeing your comments here.
James
”
George E. Smith wrote
Anna, when Astronomers/Cosmologists talk of “interstellar dust”, I envisage exactly that; dust like blows around in the yard, so it is measurable sized particles of presumably rocklike materials. I assumes it blocks light from behind, in much the same way as desert dust storms do, but on a much larger, but lower particle density scale. Presumably EM radiation, including visible, is either absorbed or scattered, by such particles in rather ordinady mundane ways.
But such particles would contain many atoms, which can interract (thermally) so collisions can occur, and hence EM radiation via a thermal spectrum would be possible.
So my wild guess for an ordinary matter form of dark matter, would not include such dust particles, but strictly isolated atoms, that never collide with anything, so would tend to maintain a zero dipole moment, so couldn’t radiate like a Hertz or Maxwell antenna carrying a varying current (same as accelerated charge).
”
Interstellar dust is dust pretty much as you envision it. It is also the product of stellar nucleosynthesis. The universe started with hydrogen and helium so far as normal matter goes. Everything else was cooked in the solar furnaces that formed later. Dust will block light and typically has temperatures in the double digits Kelvin. This would be not a candidate for dark matter. There is also normal matter in the form of gases composed of hydrogen even between galaxies and these appear as absorption lines skewed by the redshift of their relative velocity and form what is called the lyman alpha forest found on distant light sources such as quasars. It’s a forest because there is so many different lines present.
For normal matter contributing to the dark matter scenario, one merely has to look at larger objects.
Christian Takacs says: July 12, 2012 at 2:30 am
“…….When you can’t account for 90% (50% ? edit) of anything in order for your theory to be accurate, your theory isn’t working very well….”
Oh, good point Christian…
I propose we simply call it “Bimbly” … that is infinitely better than Dark Matter, and should satisfy everyone who does not like it.
But, the issue remains the same. Until there will arise a better accepted explanation, this is one of the more widely accepted ones …(except for those who are sure they already know better, of course).
Alexander Feht says:
July 12, 2012 at 1:38 pm
“The observed movement of galaxies doesn’t fit the current understanding (or misunderstanding, as it may be) of the General Relativity theory. To keep this understanding (or misunderstanding) intact, an assumption is being made that we don’t see more than 90% of the mass of the Universe (which in itself assumes that the mass of the Universe is finite — a very bold assumption, to say the least).
On the basis of this assumption a purely mathematical construct was built, that predicts the existence of particles that cannot be observed, and don’t interact with anything observed, other than gravitationally. Very convenient. The gravitational lensing effect is being used, therefore, to try to support this far-fetched abstraction, called upon to save the theory in the face of reality that doesn’t obey the theory (unscientific approach if there ever was one).”
Excellent!! Much more eloquent than my responses. As a creationist myself, by the way, it gives me no pain to consider an infinite, or infinitely old, or rebounding universe, etc. None of these would be outside of the abilities of God to create. Creating fudge factors to fit within our limited understanding of the universe is simply unacceptable science and more dogmatic than some religious beliefs. The possibility of more baryonic matter than estimated indicated by the brown dwarf example you gave and the unexplainable structures at distances (times) where they should not be according to present theory are two of the more recent nails in the coffin of dogmatic science. I guess I am a denier when it comes to some of the present theories of physics as well as AGW. Steven Hawking said their may be quite a few more energy levels in paricle physics beyond quarks and so like Relativity is a much more accurate approximation than Newtonian Physics it may be that on the scale of the very large there may be more levels of specificity just as there may be on the scale of the very small.
The logic of an exploding singularity creating the Big Bang has always bothered me unless the matter/energy is coming from somewhere else, in which case the ability to estimate how much structure should be how far back in time would be even less possible mathmatically. But there are those who believe the multiverse is the answer to that issue. In any event, quantum/particle physics lends itself much more readily to lab proof than does cosmology so it may be the path to more answers in the long run.
The present theories are probably not so much wrong as they are incomplete in their ability to match observations just as Newtonian Physics was good up to the level of ability to observe until recently.
In the ‘crank’s’ universe there is no need for dark energy.
Assuming a low frequency gravitational wave generated by BB (period measured in MegaYears) than its wavelength (assuming propagation at the speed of light) lambda would be x M light years.
If space indeed is an abstract two dimensional on itself curved plane than gravity force field can be divided into two distinct domains : near field at distance d/lambda 1.
Near field we perceive as Newtonian 3 dimensional space where force of gravity is inversely proportional to d^2, while in the far field Newtonian 3D space merges into Einstein-ian ‘plane’ where a ‘gravity force’ is inversely proportional not to the d^2 but to d^1.
Thus in the far field (distance between distant galaxies) ‘a gravity force’ would be immensely stronger so no requirement for nebulous dark energy.
Just a simple thought of an idle mind.
do read about WIMPs and MACHOs http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~george/ay20/eaa-wimps-machos.pdf
Good night all.
Alexander Feht says: July 12, 2012 at 1:38 pm
“…… are destined to shame themselves….”
Relax, Alexander.
There is no shame involved. Surely it is simply a discussion on somewhat abstract theory.
Correction
Word press does strange things, it must be written in words:
gravity force field can be divided into two distinct domains : near field at distance d/lambda is less then 1, and far field where d/lambda is more then 1.
Jim G says:
July 12, 2012 at 3:06 pm
As a creationist myself,
Whoa… stop. That’s all you had to say. If you lead off with that, people can save themselves a lot of time they otherwise might waste reading your posts.
As the big bang eminated out of a dot like this —> . <— then everything that emminated is on a diverging path. From red shift, we should be able to determine where abouts (roughly) this original point is. The red shift of those on the direct opposite side of the balloon/shock wave should have a different characteristic of red shift than those moving away from us that are in between. Can this not be done?
Anna: Maybe you'd enjoy that KITP link i posted prior where Greg Dobler (admittedly Jan 2010) presents the lattest on the hunt for Dark Matter.
By now there should be some big iron orbitting space dedicated to the hunt for the photo[n]s given off when they self-annihilate.
jtl,
your question about using red shift to determine direction is an intelligent one. Unfortunately the Consensus theory assures us that every direction we look should have approximately the same view and if you were somewhere else, again, a homogeneous view. This is yet another disagreement between observations and the consensus theory as we DO see anisotropies in the CBR and some Astronomers think they CAN determin directions through observations!!
Would one of the consensus experts like to explain to johnny why the Theory says we should see the same thing in all directions?? I never really understood that.
Graphic representation of the C’s Universe (with no dark matter required)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CU.htm
(see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/11/dark-matter-mapped-in-the-universe-for-the-first-time/#comment-1030999
This is my fourth request for some insight into the concept of space expanding. George E Smith, far more educated then many posters, is not afraid to say he does not really get this. Many other less humble commentators, both pro DM and con, claim to have no such troubles. Yet none so far have ventured to attempt an elevator speech to my simple question.
How does space expand, and what does it expand into?
I see space as a three D constuct of height, width, and depth, each of which are infinite, (so IT can only expand into iself, and IT is already there) and when anything else OUANTIFIABLE is added, time becomes another demension operating within cause and effect principles. The balloon analogy, like the raisens in bread analogy does nothing for me. Balloons, including the air inside them, like bread, are quantifiable phenomena, subject to cause and effect. How unquantfiable infinite space, composed of nothing except an infinite three demensional concept, can move galxies at faster then light speed, appears to be rather unreachable.
“One would have to throw a lot of babies out with that bath water. Pretty much all of physics as we know it would have to be seriously reconsidered.”
And this is a bad thing?
But yes, I understand the stakes, and the reluctance to let go of theories that have served us well up till now, especially when there is no clear road ahead. But reality doesn’t give a damn about our theories, or our need to maintain them. Reality seems to be telling us we don’t want to hear. The nerve.
David,
BB theory says that all of space emerged from a spaceless singularity. There is no presumption that this singularity arose within a “metaspace”, if you will. It’s not a 3D model as you suppose, with a dot in the middle of infinite 3D space, out of which stuff explodes. It’s really the space which explodes, carrying with it a lot of stuff that emerges from the space. Likewise, this didn’t happen at some point in time. Time also emerged from the BB, and began expanding as well. So you can’t separate space from matter, ultimately, or time from space, and so on. And none of them, including space, is infinite. If you follow a straight line through space, it won’t keep on going forever. In our universe, it will eventually turn back on its own source, because space itself is curved.
What space actually is, is not a question physics can attempt to answer, any more than it can answer what matter is. It can merely describe it as an interaction of forces and energies that obey certain patterns of physical law. So space is just that – a field of forces and energies that is obeying various laws whose origins we don’t know.
Your problem in understanding this is that you seem to think space is infinite and shaped like a cartesian 3D set of planes. It isn’t. It is limited by the forces and energies of the BB, which are huge, but not infinite. The shape of space is itself determined by those forces and energies, including gravity. It has no inherent, fixed shape. It expands or contracts according to the forces and energies it is defined by. In fact, IT HAS NO OTHER DEFINITION. If the force is big enough, it will expand incredibly fast, such as in the early moments of the BB. If the forces are minimal, it will contract to “ordinary” dimensions. But it is not what you might presume it to be. Space isn’t a substance or thing-in-itself, It only exists in relation to the forces and energies that create its contours.
We’re not in Kansas anymore.
Alexander Feht says:
July 12, 2012 at 12:52 pm
Should I regard your invitation to read Wikipedia article on Big Bang as an intentional insult?
Or are you really that simple?
Please point me to the post where I sent you to a wikipedia link.
The intentional insults have been coming from you after all. BTW I am as simple as any research physicist.
For all:
Wikipedia links are useful for people who are on the stage of understanding archimedes principle, and wade into a physics discussion. Somebody has spent some time writing up on the subject and a number of people have corrected it.
People who think they know everything and their theory is as good as any other man’s theory cannot profit from anything anyway.
People are insulting to assume that physics research works as AGW research.
Yes, there are fashions . After all it is not too long ago when the luminiferous aether was necessary for electromagnetic theory of the time. But research means always questioning the premises of a model theory against the data.
For working physicists, missing mass and missing energy are not stop gap notions. That was the way the neutrino was discovered and established, to the point of having neutrino beams. That was because neutrinos interact mainly with the weak interaction. Gravity is orders of magnitude weaker than the weak interaction, and a physical theory of everything will per force have unknown now particles which will only interact with the gravitational interaction. At the point particle physics is now, in the LHC, we are looking for candidate particles for dark matter. If these are found, problem solved If not, back to the drawing board.
Astrophysics needs longer times for the hypotheseis that are current to be left on the sidewalk as misconceptions or be absorbed in new theories. The only consensus in physics science is of people agreeing that the data fit the model. BB model has a lot of leeway in the minds of physicists because it ties together many observations. If it is an inadequate/ wrong model it will eventually be superseded by something that fits all the data and predicts new observations.
anna v,
Good comments. Thanks. I agree, cosmology is nothing like Post Normal Science climatology, which for the most part is not really science at all, but a belief system heavily supported by confirmation bias.
Add me to those appalled at the reception of this paper. If you wish, accept that “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy” are simply names given to some otherwise inexplicable factors derived from experimental results. But they are not figments of mathematical equations devoid from reality. They are the consequences of applying everything we know to what we observe and discovering a discrepancy. There is something there, it is real and it is important.
cba says:
July 12, 2012 at 8:00 am
Leif, If DM tracks the density of “normal” matter ( and some think that normal matter clumps around DM ) then if the universe consists of about 4% normal matter and 25% DM (and 70% dark energy) then wouldn’t one expect that the typical DM density to be about 5 times that of normal matter on average?
The density of normal matter is also extremely small [when smeared over galactic distances], about 3×10-31 times the mass density of water.
ian cairns says:
July 12, 2012 at 8:14 am
And then taught in the universities as “facts”
This is totally wrong. The primary objective [at least in the sciences] is to teach the students to think for themselves and question everything. So when a topic is taught, the derivations and observations are clearly laid out. The emphasis is on ‘how do we know that?’
vukcevic says:
And about dark matter present in the solar system: We do expect there to be some, possibly in the sun.
Why did you have to say that?
My coffee went all over my keyboard…
I said it because it is likely true. And very likely in our laboratories as well, so we can actively search for DM.
People are actually looking for DM in the Sun: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.5290v1.pdf
James Evans says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:15 am
“And that is spectacularly confirmed by the fact that we indeed cannot see it.”
The fact that it is invisible is spectacularly confirmed by the fact that you can’t see it? That’s an unusual logical construct.
No, not at all. We know it is there, we know it is not baryons so we can’t see it. So, we infer that is something else.
Or, you could be wrong.
There is enough observational evidence to convince me that DM exists. Of course, all the observers and all the theorists could be wrong. And I could win the lottery tomorrow, but I’ll count on either of those scenarios.
Jim G says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:18 am
I do not believe anyone has actually hands on inventoried the mass of the universe.
What you do not believe is likely based on what you do not know. We have actually a rather precise inventory:
72.8 percent dark energy, 22.7 percent dark matter, and 4.56 percent baryonic matter.
Lancifer says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:21 am
Try to cut the ignorant some slack and don’t condemn all of us that frequent WUWT.
I condemn the willfully ignorant. If you know that you are not one of those, you should take offence as there is no criticism of you then.
cba says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:25 am
Steven says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:31 am
Demonstrated laboratory results or someones idea of how it should be.
Here is someone you should trust: http://www.leif.org/EOS/yamada10rmp.pdf and it is simply not treu that astrophysists do not know anything about plasma physics. I used to work for Institute for Plasma Physics at Stanford [now it is in a different department]
conradg says:
July 12, 2012 at 12:20 pm
The difference is that we haven’t yet found Dark Matter.
Neither had people between whwn the prediction was made and the observation as made.
The task for us today is harder, so it takes longer.
anna v says:
July 12, 2012 at 12:27 pm
kuhnkat says:
July 12, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Here and in my ignorance I thought the CONSENSUS view was that expansion occurred BETWEEN objects such as Galaxies
Space expands unifomrly [as far as we know] everywhere. That galaxies [actually clusters of galaxies] and stuff smaller do not expand is because as weak a gravitation is, the expansion is weaker and only at so large distances that graviation is negligible [remember gravitation decreases with the squre of the distance] does the expansion happen. On smaller scale gravitation holds things together the same way as it prevents you from drifting off the ground and into space.
Alexander Feht says:
July 12, 2012 at 1:38 pm
The observed movement of galaxies doesn’t fit the current understanding (or misunderstanding, as it may be) of the General Relativity theory.
Not true, it fits very well. And some simple things are unrelated to GR, like the rotation of galaxies.
James Evans says:
July 12, 2012 at 2:35 pm
I look forward to more creative logic in your response.
From past responses it is clear that logic does not work with you.
vukcevic says:
July 12, 2012 at 3:07 pm
In the ‘crank’s’ universe there is no need for dark energy.
That is why he is a just a crank.
johnnythelowery says:
July 12, 2012 at 4:01 pm
As the big bang eminated out of a dot
It did not. As we know know that the universe is flat it follows that it is also infinite. All of that infinite space expanded and still does. Infinity takes a little while to comprehend. Imagine you have a hotel with inifinitely many rooms, all occupied. Now comes a new guest and asks for a room. Easy, says the clerk at the desk, I just move the guest in room 1 to room 2, and the guest who was there to room number 3, and so on. That leaves room number 1 empty to accomodate the new guest. This can be repeated for the next new guest ad infinitum. Actually the whole question is a bit more complicated as it is not just space that expands, but space-time. General relativity is concerned with the forces that act and they in the end define space-time.
Leif,
you keep getting funnier and funnier.
“The fact that it is invisible is spectacularly confirmed by the fact that you can’t see it? That’s an unusual logical construct. No, not at all. We know it is there, we know it is not baryons so we can’t see it. So, we infer that is something else.”
You do NOT KNOW it is there. You ASSUME based on your models that it is there.
You do NOT KNOW it is not baryons as you have limited knowledge of Baryons, but, I accept the effect is probably not caused based on what we SEEM to know about Baryons.
Yes, you infer quite a bit based on ASSumptions!!
We cannot “SEE” fields and this would be another possible inference based on assumptions.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:19 pm
Some unfortunate typos:
“I would not count on either of those scenarios.”
“you should not take offence as there is no criticism of you then”
the ordinary other typos do not hurt.
Alan Wilkinson says:
July 12, 2012 at 8:59 pm
Add me to those appalled at the reception of this paper.
It is noteworthy that the willfully ignorant are the same who in other posts of physics-related topics also parade their ignorance and hostility.
Steven says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:31 am
Who here does not understand that plasma in space is the only known thing that form filamentary structures?
What you ‘know’ and reality have little to do with each other. Filamentary structures arise naturally using only gravity: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110929144645.htm or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ1r5NG5YGs
Leif,
You say “There is enough observational evidence to convince me that DM exists.”
Fair enough. Who could argue with that?
You also say “We know it is there”.
Who could resist arguing with that?
brokenyogi says…
1. ” It’s really the space which explodes….. Time also emerged from the BB, and began expanding as well. So you can’t separate space from matter, ultimately, or time from space, and so on. And none of them, including space, is infinite. If you follow a straight line through space, it won’t keep on going forever. In our universe, it will eventually turn back on its own source, because space itself is curved.
2. What space actually is, is not a question physics can attempt to answer, any more than it can answer what matter is. It can merely describe it as an interaction of forces and energies that obey certain patterns of physical law. So space is just that – a field of forces and energies that is obeying various laws whose origins we don’t know.
3. The shape of space is itself determined by those forces and energies, including gravity. It has no inherent, fixed shape. It expands or contracts according to the forces and energies it is defined by.
4. If the force is big enough, it will expand incredibly fast, such as in the early moments of the BB. If the forces are minimal, it will contract to “ordinary” dimensions. But it is not what you might presume it to be. Space isn’t a substance or thing-in-itself, It only exists in relation to the forces and energies that create its contours.
5., We’re not in Kansas anymore.
———————————————————————————
Dear Brokenyogi ( a curious name as yoga is from binding, or union, and broken implies the opposite) ….at any rate, thank you for the attemted explanation. I see, from my perspective, numerous logical fails which I will try to articulate.
Concerning (1,) exploding space… How can something with zero intrinsic attributes, “What space actually is, is not a question physics can attempt to answer” (see (2) explode? Of course I can separate space from matter. In my mind this is easypeazy. (-; I am not being flippant. Matter is quantifiable, IE, it has attributes which can be identified by any number. In infinite nothingness there is no time because time depends on division, cause and effect, quantifiable numbers; so yes, time is as relative as the materials which form it, all of which are quantifiable and measureable, neither infinite, or nothing. Time stops at nothing, and also at the infinite. So while I can imagine 3 dimensions without any barriers, I cannot imagine three demensions with barriers, beyond which there is no demensions. Can you?
Concerning your assertion that if I continue in a straight line for billions of light years I will suddenly arrive at my beginning, Well I can no more concieve of that then I can concieve of no demensions beyond your curved space. At what distance will I begin to get closer to my starting point? (How far can a dog run into a forrest) LOL, scratch that humor…but will I be x billions of light years away, and suddenly, going just a little further, be back at my lift off point, or will I suddenly transition from moving further away to start getting closer. At any rate, whenever this point exists that I start getting closer to my destination, I will just turn a little to keep going further away, and I see nothing to stop me, do you? Oh, and concerning this singularity, well I have it on good authority that the closer we go to the beginning of time, the closer we get to infinite energy, and in fact all the math points to infinite energy beyond the singularity, beyond time. not nothing. I do not mean exponentially growing signals, but absolute infinite energy. Infinity, like nothing, can not be quantified and allows no time.
Cocerning (3) Why? What are the properties of this space. What are the numbers that define it. I can see how once some relative quantafiable matter enters the three demensions, time and cause and effect operate. I do not see why height, width and depth require matter.
Now concerning (2) , overall I think it is a logical fail, as the premise defines the answer. Also, as i have pointed out, all matter is quantifiable. There are no absolutes in relationship to science. I maintain that science is, in its essence, “cause and effect” beyond this science ceases to operate. Every effect is proceeded by a prior cause. There can be no effect without a prior cause. All causes are themselves an effect. Cause and effect is a chain and it, with the arrow of time, moves in one direction. All causes and effects are quantifiable. In this sense, science to me is the study of how all things in the cosmos interact, and the laws that govern those interactions. Science is constrained to time, space and relativity. Science cannot contain absolutes. and it cannot deny them. A primary tool of science is to use mathematics, one through any number, but never absolute infinity, which is not a number. I am referring to absolutes, and not the use of these terms within RELATIVE fields often representing exponentially growing signals and negative exponents representing exponentially decreasing signals. I am not referring to time constants (decaying or growing) As such science can only see a part of the whole and must keep an open mind to new information. But an idea, the concept of width, height and depth, absent matter, it has no constraints, and no law of physics precludes its existence.
Cocerning (4) Again, a logical fail, “begging the question/ circular reasoning… An argument is circular if its conclusion is among its premises, if it assumes (either explicitly or not) what it is trying to prove. Such arguments are said to beg the question. A circular argument fails as a proof because it will only be judged to be sound by those who already accept its conclusion.
Anyone who rejects the argument’s conclusion should also reject at least one of its premises (the one that is the same as its conclusion), and so should reject the argument as a whole. Anyone who accepts all of the argument’s premises already accepts the argument’s conclusion, so can’t be said to have been persuaded by the argument. In neither case, then, will the argument be successful.
(5.) True, we are not in Kansas, but Kansa is within science, and science is limited to a quantafiable primary chain of cause and effect observations, upon which all deductive reason is based, having a self limiting paradox. Simply put, cause and effect cannot be an absolute eternal chain, otherwise one is stating that “everything inclusive” has no cause, it always was, which in and of itself defeats the laws of science and deductive reason applied to observation, and induces the well known paradox that if “everything inclusive “ always was, then everything that could have occurred, already would have, and in effect states the unscientific proposition that while every thing (relative things which can be quantified) in creation have a cause, everything inclusive has no cause, it just unscientifically is. The other side of this paradox is that (accepting the above problem as valid) if there was then a first cause, what ever that cause was had to have no cause and must be beyond the laws of cause and effect. Science, by it very nature, only deals with relativity, quantifying numbers and partial observations which can only see a part of the whole. It has no authority to limit nothing, or the infinite.
Lief:
If there were a dark matter halo in our solar system, it would show up as an apparent violation of 1/r^2 for the solar system. This how is tightly constrained. See e.g. C. Talmadge, J. P. Berthias, R. W. Hellings, and E. M. Standish, “Model-independent constraints on possible modifications of Newtonian gravity,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 61, 1159 (1988). Link.
Serano 2006 looks at this in detail. From their conclusions:
So while there is certainly dark matter in our solar system, if it is present in our Galaxy, astrophysical measurements fail by many orders of magnitude to be able to detect it using orbital dynamics in our solar system.
Leif’s next blunder:
Not true, it fits very well. And some simple things are unrelated to GR, like the rotation of galaxies.
If rotation of the galaxies fits General Relativity very well, how can it be unrelated to it?
Take your nonsense somewhere else, Leif.
You pretend to know it all but in the end the thing you know best is how to waste our time.
Listen to your guru Leif Svalgaard expostulating:
As we know [k]now that the universe is flat it follows that it is also infinite. All of that infinite space expanded and still does. Infinity takes a little while to comprehend.
That he says with the straight face, after giving us those wonderfully exact numbers:
We have actually a rather precise inventory: 72.8 percent dark energy, 22.7 percent dark matter, and 4.56 percent baryonic matter.
How can you calculate the mass of the Universe if it is infinite?
How can you know exactly, what it is made of, if it stretches without end beyond any observation?
Oh, but we, lowly amateurs, cannot comprehend infinity.
Only people who obtained their doctorates by being infinitely conformist, comprehend it all.
I still cannot decide if Leif is a troll mocking us on purpose, or a truly mentally disturbed individual.
Probably both.
But he will say, of course, that “most commenters here” are ignorant bumpkins.
What else can he say?
Let me introduce you to the Cosmological Constant, aka Dark Energy.
Or maybe not. It depends …
I saw a young lady getting off at our bus-stop the other day and thought “My goodness, she’s NAKED!”. But then she walked closer to our house and I realised she was wearing tan coloured trousers and a light tan-coloured sweater.
I blame my lenses for my initial error!
Leif Svalgaard says: July 12, 2012 at 9:19 pm
………
But a very rare occasion he/she could be a step ahead of the conventional aproach.
If BB caused a gravitational wave with its wavelength equal to the radius of the universe at any time t, then gravitational constant g would be subject to relativistic formula adjustment
In that case gravitational pull of two very distant objects is many more times than provided by non-relativistic approach.
Derivation of the relativistic factor is shown in this screen snapshot:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/RG.gif
Additional benefit of this calculation is that Newtonian and Einsteinian spaces are merged into single entity with a homogeneous gravitational field.
You are invited to fault it.
More details will be added if a further elaboration is required
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/RG.htm
Make a big bang of anything and you have a big empty space with everything traveling in all directions from the bang. The central space would get bigger and bigger as all the parts travel away in all directions. Please Sir, I have a question, “Why is the centre of the universe so dense that we can not penetrate its mysteries” Sir, my next question,” Is it really a factory in the middle for making stuff”
” Sir, after all these billions of years why is the middle still the densest part????”
“Sir,is it all the black stuff in the middle that we can not see in, or is the black stuff accelerating the universe or holding it together.” Sir, as a teacher of cosmology and a guru of the standard model construct of the universe are you not conflicted by its inconsistantsies for I am bewildered and confused as to the real nature of the universe.”
“Sir, is the dark energy, unmeasurable and unseen clouding our view of the universal centre, and manipulating our pathetic ideas of energy and matter.” Oft times the Gurus are the problem and not the answer. The answers will come, but not from the mainstream education system, it will be a rebel.
”
Alexander Feht says:
July 13, 2012 at 12:32 am
Listen to your guru Leif Svalgaard expostulating:
As we know [k]now that the universe is flat it follows that it is also infinite. All of that infinite space expanded and still does. Infinity takes a little while to comprehend.
That he says with the straight face, after giving us those wonderfully exact numbers:
We have actually a rather precise inventory: 72.8 percent dark energy, 22.7 percent dark matter, and 4.56 percent baryonic matter.
How can you calculate the mass of the Universe if it is infinite?
How can you know exactly, what it is made of, if it stretches without end beyond any observation?
Oh, but we, lowly amateurs, cannot comprehend infinity.
Only people who obtained their doctorates by being infinitely conformist, comprehend it all.
I still cannot decide if Leif is a troll mocking us on purpose, or a truly mentally disturbed individual.
Probably both.
But he will say, of course, that “most commenters here” are ignorant bumpkins.
What else can he say?
”
one can calculate the density. Since WMAP indicates that the universe is flat rather than curved (to 1% or better) it means that the density must be the critical density. That turns out to be about the equivalent of 5.9 protons per m^3 but that includes energy , DM and DE. Since gravitational forces travel at the speed of light, we are unaware about what lies outside of the boundary. That is to say we can be in an infinitely large universe that has an initial creation date. If space were not expanding, we would see an ever increasing universe size as light and forces reach us from ever increasing distances.
As with many things, we see evidence of things we may not see directly, enough to have high confidence. Looking at our galactic center, we see and have measured orbits of stars around a central object we cannot see. It’s very straightforward to calculate the mass of the object something is orbiting if we know what the orbit is. That object has a mass of 3 to 4 million sun sized stars yet it is very small and emits no light that we can detect – unlike those stars orbiting it. In a few years, a gas cloud near by will fall into it as its motion has also been determined by observing it. People are already getting ready to observe this because it is expected that the object will light up big time or at least the gas will. It would be rather foolish to assume there is nothing there because we cannot “see” it in our telescopes.
****
David says:
July 12, 2012 at 11:17 am
What is this space that can expand, and what does it expand into?
****
EVERY time I see stuff on Discovery, etc, showing the big bang as something exploding into empty “space”, I cringe. That’s not how it happened ’cause there wasn’t any “outside”. Immediately after the BB, if one could be much smaller than an atom, you’d be surrounded of course by extreme energy density. But if you were a significant percent of the universe’s size at that point, you’d prb’ly look “ahead” and see your own feet! Look behind & see your own head looking backwards! In fact, you’d prb’ly see your image all around you. There wouldn’t be any edge or “outside”; you could traverse the whole universe just following your own feet, coming back to your original location at some point. As far as the expansion, you’d see the image of your feet flying away from you in front of you, and your head behind flying away in the opposite direction. You yourself, tho, wouldn’t feel a thing. As time and expansion continued, it would take longer & longer to traverse the universe back to your original point.
This is what I imagine — prb’ly not accurate. Simple words prb’ly CAN’T describe it. But the point is, there is no “outside” or edge.
Alexander Feht says:
July 13, 2012 at 12:32 am
But he will say, of course, that “most commenters here” are ignorant bumpkins.
What else can he say?
They demonstrate themselves the truth of my statement, you in particular. Now, it is no shame to be ignorant [I’m ignorant of many things outside of my field]. It is deplorable to be willfully ignorant and not wanting to learn. The latter could have a reason in lacking the necessary faculties [which is no shame]. Is that your excuse? Or don’t you know?
kuhnkat says:
July 11, 2012 at 6:08 pm
Jeff Mitchell,
good question, except they don’t really have a lot of details to give us other than it apparently has a REPULSIVE force to herd all that inconvenient matter into neat orbits.
There is something called “momentum”. Ever heard of it? No? You should look it up someday. It is related to mass, by the way.
Tony Mach,
yes I do believe I have heard of momentum. I believe it is what keeps your mouth moving.
Please explain to me how momentum, which continues things in a straight line if not perturbed, helps the hypothesized dark matter?? by the way, are you sure dark matter has mass?? I can’t seem to find the details of dark matter as to its physical properties other than it not seeming to affect much of anything other than a repulsion to herd normal matter. maybe you can provide me with the Paper that discusses the actual properties of Dark Matter and Dark Energy??
I notice neither Leif, Anna, or anyone else has jumped in to provide us ignorant types an education in these mythical things. Does your momentum explain that also??
Carrick says:
July 12, 2012 at 11:15 pm
“So while there is certainly dark matter in our solar system, if it is present in our Galaxy, astrophysical measurements fail by many orders of magnitude to be able to detect it using orbital dynamics in our solar system.”
Leif says in one of his posts on this page that it’s probably inside the Sun!! But wait, then it would’nt be dark would it? I guess we are all just ingnorant bumpkins like he says.
James Hastings-Trew says:
July 12, 2012 at 3:57 pm
Jim G says:
July 12, 2012 at 3:06 pm
As a creationist myself,
“Whoa… stop. That’s all you had to say. If you lead off with that, people can save themselves a lot of time they otherwise might waste reading your posts.”
If you read any of my posts you would know how wrong you are. Perhaps your definition of “creationist” is different than mine. I am not a “6000 year old Earth” guy but simply believe that there is a God who created all of this and that he could have done it any way he wanted to, flat space, curved space, space/time, space separate from time, etc, etc.. Since both quantum physics and general relativity point out how perfectly everything fits together to allow our universe to even exist it seems logical that there is intelligent design and a Designer. Pure accidental initiation of this universe seems a more “religious” belief in that it ignores the obvious.
I guess that is the problem with labels and those who use them and discriminate based upon them. But this time it was my fault since I am not of the ilk you think, I am not that familiar with how folks define creationist. Probably not the way I do.
Leif Svalgaard says:
Jim G says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:18 am
“I do not believe anyone has actually hands on inventoried the mass of the universe.
What you do not believe is likely based on what you do not know. We have actually a rather precise inventory:
72.8 percent dark energy, 22.7 percent dark matter, and 4.56 percent baryonic matter.”
Leif, you are a perfect example of the Sam Clemmens (Mark Twain for you) quote, “it’s not all the things that people don’t know that is the problem it is all the things they do know that just ain’t so”. You obviously don’t know what a “hands on inventory is” !! I do not believe anyone has physically counted and weighed all of the matter in the universe and since not all of it is even visible you are speaking nonsense. Your numbers are theoretical estimates..
Jim,
I’m not sure what you guys’ deal with Leif is here (apologize to him for transposing “i” and “e”). I wish you’d leave personalities out and spend a bit more time reading what he said instead of projecting is all. I’ve lost the thread here on what it is you guys are even objecting to.
Anyway, the problem with all of the dark matter in the solar system being inside of the sun is it requires it to have a higher mass (e.g., a WIMP), but this is ruled out by cosmological models already, at least in the quantity needed to explain the galactic rotation curves.
(There’s absolutely no reason to assume there is only one particle or particle mass for dark matter, by the way.)
kuhnkat:
What does it mean to “seem to know something”? (The trillions of baryonic collisions in collider experiments apparently have taught us nothing about baryons. /sadface.)
Carrick,
don’t be a putz. The fact that there are a very large number of instances that have been recorded in colliders may tell you enough to exclude what you call baryonic matter from being the cause of the way galaxies rotate. It certainly tells us little else. The one thing I see in modern science is an egotism and arrogance approaching that of the Guy who proclaimed we knew everything important to know.
Leif claims that hallucinating dark matter and and dark energy is thinking outside of the box. I rather think the following is thinking outside of the steel bands consensus science has built around your minds:
http://milesmathis.com/fland.pdf
Here are two guys thinking outside the box while y’all are set in cement.
Leif Svalgaard says: July 13, 2012 at 7:22 am
………..
Ignorance is not showing that an alternative result can be obtained by applying Einstein’s relativistic factor to the gravity constant
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/RG.htm
It is the opposite of the ignorance you imply.
Leif,
Here are highlights from your posts in this thread:
Post 1: “Look around, and don’t pretend to be dumb.”
Post 2: “Dark Matter is thinking out of the box you seem to be in.”
Post 3: “Before shooting your mouth off, go check out the link(s), then pose questions to things you don’t understand.”
Post 5: “They are already here, in farce.”
Post 8: “When one contemplates the dismal level of knowledge displayed by most commenters here…”
Post 10 “It is very possible that you do not understand mathematics and therefore have a hard time understanding the science.”
That’s enough for now.
Let the people decide – what sort of person are you?
Enjoy your superiority, it must feel lovely.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:37 pm
Alan Wilkinson says:
July 12, 2012 at 8:59 pm
Add me to those appalled at the reception of this paper.
“It is noteworthy that the willfully ignorant are the same who in other posts of physics-related topics also parade their ignorance and hostility”
Would you not agree that there are physicists not willfully ignorant who have issues with dark matter? Was dark matter not postulated because the essentially Newtonian (lets gratuitously throw in: “and Einsteinian”, as is the usual form) gravity could not account for such things as the velocity of the outer spiral arms and other observed discrepancies? Could there be something not right about our idea of gravity – must we enshrine the 100yr old idea in platinum for all time? Gentlemen, no matter how you twist and dance, DM is a mathematical patch on a not-fully-satisfactory theory. Is it legitimate to look for this DM to perserve what we believe about gravity? Yes, of course it is. Is it legitimate to consider the possibility that we have an incomplete or incorrect theory of gravity – that the masters were not infallible. Which is the job of a good skeptic when such a “discovery” is made. I think there is a case for the discovery to be a tautology starting off with the belief in DM. If gravity is a different animal than the mainstream thinks and replaces DM, the lensing would occur just the same.
You are both aware of the unintended experiment, that of the Pioneer anomaly (I don’t believe that this has been discussed – it might be proof that those you malign are not the ones in a in a box):
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=pioneer%20anomaly&mkt=en-ca&setLang=en-CA
“Both Pioneer spacecraft are escaping the Solar System, but are slowing under the influence of the Sun’s gravity. Upon very close examination of navigational data, the spacecraft were found to be slowing slightly more than expected. The effect is an extremely small but unexplained acceleration towards the Sun, of 8.74±1.33×10−10 m/s2. The two spacecraft were launched in 1972 and 1973 and the anomalous acceleration was first noticed as early as 1980, but not seriously investigated until 1994.[1] The last communication with either spacecraft was in 2003, but analysis of recorded data continues.”
Here the gravitational pull, apparently of the sun at these distances is stronger than we “calculated” using the tried and true theory. Take off your labcoats for a moment and just think about the possibilities. Does Dark Matter come to mind all by itself.
Let me add a thought experiment to my comment above:
Were the pioneer launced from the hub of a galaxy (ignoring the difficulties of doing this) how would it behave as it reached the farthest parts of the spiral arms?
Carrick,
The problem is that Leif claims to know the unknowable (mass directional flow in initial conditions of the BB), speaks of theory and estimates based upon theory as if they are fact (mass distribution of the universe), makes pronoucements like “solar system DM might be inside the Sun”,( this being the case dark matter inside of stars is NOT dark), and is uncompromisingly condescending in his attitude and posts using the term ignorant repeatedly for all those who disagree with him. Insufferable! See James Evans’ post.
Gary:
Above, I pointed to two studies that looked for apparent violations of the inverse square, one of these not behind a pay-wall so you could read it. NOBODY started out assuming that DM was the only possible explanation, what you are suggesting is just whacky nonsense. We do consider the possibility that GR/Newtonian gravity break down over these ranges. Theories are constructed all of the time proposing possible alternative.
John Moffat is one, Mordehai Milgrom is another, the studies I refer to set limits on Yukawa type interactions predicted by extensions of classical gravity to quantum mechanics (look up “supergravity” for example). [Milgrom’s theories get discussed in both papers.] In fact, one explanation posited for the deviation of galactic rotation curves was a new Yukawa force.
The problem with either of these alternatives is the violation of the galactic rotation curves does not appear to be the same in all galaxies, which suggests that the phenomenon that causes the deviations is not universal, like an extension of GR, but rather something that is rather idiosyncratic to each particular galaxy. Since the phenomenon is not universal, explanations involved a modification to a universal law are not favored. Further reading here.
(If I manage to get a copy of the PDF for this thesis, I’ll post it.)
By the way, there’s a difference between being a “good skeptic”…which implies being informed…from being incredulous, which only requires ignorance.
Let me rephrase this “The problem with either of these alternatives is the deviations of the galactic rotation curves from that expected by the inverse square law does not appear to be the same in all galaxies.” See Jennifer Coy’s thesis (again I’m trying to get a copy) for a complete discussion of this.
Jim, as I said, it would benefit the discussion of all involved got beyond personalities (I know I’m guilty of this too at time, so please don’t see this as me “getting on the high horse.”).
As to “dark matter” not being dark if it is inside of the Sun, that’s a semantic distinction you make that misses the point of what “dark” matter means. It means it doesn’t interact strongly with photons. Whether it’s in the center of the Sun or not has no effect on that.
Jim G says:
July 13, 2012 at 12:28 pm
“The problem is that Leif claims to know the unknowable (mass directional flow in initial conditions of the BB), speaks of theory and estimates based upon theory as if they are fact (mass distribution of the universe), makes pronoucements like “solar system DM might be inside the Sun”,”
First of all, you state that Leif made a pronouncement, you put it in quotation marks to imply it is the exact quote. You either cannot read or are just careless. Here is the cut and pasted quote from Dr S:
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 12, 2012 at 7:27 am
“… And about dark matter present in the solar system: We do expect there to be some, possibly in the sun….”
Now you may decide to argue that your statement was close enough or means the same thing. Perhaps you were simply too lazy to actually look back at it to get it right, which would then seem to validate Leif’s criticisms about some of the posters here.
Tom in Florida says:
Criticism accepted, I was too lazy. Should not have used quotes. Mea Culpa. Still a pretty ridiculous comment for the location of DM. How about the rest of my comments? Do you want to defend his other pronouncements or his manner?
Gary Pearse says:
July 13, 2012 at 11:29 am
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=pioneer%20anomaly&mkt=en-ca&setLang=en-CA
“Both Pioneer spacecraft are escaping the Solar System, but are slowing under the influence of the Sun’s gravity. Upon very close examination of navigational data, the spacecraft were found to be slowing slightly more than expected. The effect is an extremely small but unexplained acceleration towards the Sun, of 8.74±1.33×10−10 m/s2. The two spacecraft were launched in 1972 and 1973 and the anomalous acceleration was first noticed as early as 1980, but not seriously investigated until 1994.[1] The last communication with either spacecraft was in 2003, but analysis of recorded data continues.”
Here the gravitational pull, apparently of the sun at these distances is stronger than we “calculated” using the tried and true theory. Take off your labcoats for a moment and just think about the possibilities. Does Dark Matter come to mind all by itself.
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http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Sun
“The heliosphere, which may be considered the tenuous outer atmosphere of the Sun, extends outward past the orbit of Pluto to the heliopause, where it forms a sharp shock boundary with the interstellar medium.
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The heliosphere (The heliosphere is a bubble in space “blown” into the interstellar medium by the solar wind. Although electrically neutral atoms from interstellar volume can penetrate this bubble, virtually all of the material in the heliosphere emanates from the Sun itself), which is the cavity around the Sun filled with the solar wind plasma, extends from approximately 20 solar radii (0.1 AU) to the outer fringes of the Solar System. Its inner boundary is defined as the layer in which the flow of the solar becomes superalfvénic—that is, where the flow becomes faster than the speed of Alfvén wave until it impacts the heliopause more than 50 from the Sun. In December 2004, the Voyager 1 passed through a shock front that is thought to be part of the heliopause. Both of the Voyager probes have recorded higher levels of energetic particles as they approach the boundary.”
It looks like it is this shock front which could be slowing them down. Could the shock front be caused by a greater mass of the intersteller medium pressing down on the surface of the heliosphere?
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p.s. – how can the universe be flat if it expanded in all directions?
Dark matter, has mass but does not interact electromagneticly, does not produce light nor reflect light, only interacts gravitationally? So, if it is inside of the Sun, or any other star, its mass should affect the burn rate of the star, and the size of the star due to the change, by its presence, in the star’s gravity and the coutervaling outward force of the nuclear reactions caused by that greater mass? So, now even though we do not see it directly we see a larger hotter star and this dark matter is no longer effectively dark and would be seen as part of the baryonic matter taht we can see? Effectively it is no longer dark matter, though we still cannot see it? This is very convenient and explains why we cannot find any dark matter locally but also means there is even less baryonic matter than we thought. A fudge factor for the fudge factor. Dark matter and dark energy may indeed exist but the convenience of these circumstances to existing theory would seem to call any true scientist to question and be skeptical that we are not just possibly missing something in our theory and not to be so dogmatic in quoting it as fact..
David, simply because you have trouble imagining these things, does not make them either untrue, or contradictory. Obviously some people have better imaginations than others. Einstein was able to imagine a universe with curved space. Can you? What is space, that it curves?
Well, hard to say. Analogies are possible, but not easy to swallow. For example, what does it mean to travel in a straight line? Straight relative to what? Let’s say we have a very large race track. If you travel around the track, staying parallel to the inside of the track, you will seem to be traveling in a straight line. In reality, your path will be curved. You can only tell it’s curved by comparing it to things outside the racetrack. But if the racetrack is the entire universe, and you can’t see anything outside it, how can you tell if you are going in a straight line, or a curve, and relative to what?
Well, you can tell by comparing it to light, which does not curve, but travels along space which does curve. By observing the displacement of starlight by the sun during a solar eclipse, Einstein’s theory was confirmed in 1919. Space is curved by gravitation. But what is being curved? Well, hard to say, even though you can quantify it quite easily. As with matter, energy, and force fields of all kinds, all science really can do is quantify these, it can’t tells us what they are at some irreducible level. Space is merely a quantified field in which energy and matter and force interact with one another. If you want a better answer than that, seek a theological one.
I can’t get into all your other objections in this limited space, but essentially you are objecting to the fact that science defines things in relation to one another, and not in relation to some absolute. Thus, there is indeed a fundamental circularity to its logic. If you want an absolute to found all these on, again, look to theology. As l