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…
“Here read all the numbers you want:
http://www.plasma-universe.com/Sun_and_stars”
None of these number are calculated from EU theory. They are either observed or calculated from standard theories, or at times wrong. If you disagree, show me which numbers are calculated from EU theory, and how.
Here is your chance to be brilliant, go for it.
I would say that if you don’t or can’t, the discussion is brought to a deserved end.
——————————-
Leif: Ever get an answer to your challenge from the EU guys?? Do you have an idea why they havn’t??
The exchanges here and on that other recent thread on the MRI of the Sun’s convection belts are are disrespectul but seems to me they really desire your(!) approval even though they know they won’t get it. A curious thing really. You must be a celeb. and am now shipping off a photo-shopped version of you in swimming shorts with Arnold’s body, off to People Magazine. (As it’s the media they get it all wrong and run the caption: Santa spotted on Santa Monica beach…!!! hahah)
Cheers for the debate………again.
OK, Leif and Myrrh together, that’s too rich.
Whatever, dudes. I’m out of here.
The gasps of a lost battle when the name calling starts. When data can no longer be presented in coherent form they always turn to name calling. But I understand you are here only to retort what was parrotted to you and know no other way. Certainly marks of scientific exploration. Oh, but that’s right, we are so close to that theory of everything arn’t we.
Ever wonder why they cant unite both the macro and micro into one unified theory? Because in the one they include the electrical force (atomic interactions), and in the other they exclude it (galactic interractions). This is why, and this we all must admit is true, no one knows what causes the gravitational force, AND no one really knows what electrcity is. These are the two big unknowns in science that everything relies on and are in fact one and the same.
Doubt this, look at the very first graph to explain this CME. Stories written by Standard model theorists, so you can’t say we stuck it there. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/12/x-class-solar-flare-directs-cme-directly-at-earth/
As has been said, electrical fields and magnetic fields according to relativity are bound into one source. So everytime you see that solar magnetic flare, you are also seeing an electric arc. Whenever you see a Coronal Mass Ejection you are also seeing a Double Layer explosion. (Current carrying double layers may arise in plasmas carrying a current. Various instabilities can be responsible for the formation of these layers. One example is the Buneman instability which occurs when the streaming velocity of the electrons (basically the current density divided by the electron density) exceeds the electron thermal velocity of the plasma. Double layers (and other phase space structures) are often formed in the non-linear phase of the instability. One way of viewing the Buneman instability is to describe what happens when the current (in the form of a zero temperature electron beam) has to pass through a region of decreased ion density. In order to prevent charge from accumulating, the current in the system must be the same everywhere (in this 1D model). The electron density also has to be close to the ion density (quasineutrality), so there is also a dip in electron density. The electrons must therefore be accelerated into the density cavity, to maintain the same current density with a lower density of charge carriers. This implies that the density cavity is at a high electrical potential. As a consequence, the ions are accelerated out of the cavity, amplifying the density perturbation. Then there is the situation of a double-double layer, of which one side will most likely be convected away by the plasma, leaving a regular double layer. This is the process in which double layers are produced along planetary magnetic field lines in so-called Birkeland currents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_layer_%28plasma%29) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland_current) (http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/06/04/solar-stagnation-2/) (http://www.holoscience.com/wp/electric-sun-verified/?article=74fgmwne)
We do know that currents traveling in the same direction attract and currents traveling in opposite directions repel (http://techtv.mit.edu/tags/441-physics/videos/813-mit-physics-demo—-forces-on-a-current-carrying-wire). Just as two positives repel and positive and negative attract (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-spring-2002/video-lectures/lecture-2-electric-field-and-dipoles/) The atom can never be explained gravitationally, untill you realize that the electric force IS the gravitational force.
I have shown by using your very textbook descriptions that every mathematical formula you use to describe the curvature of spacetime is tied back to charge and the calculations Einstein derived from Maxwell. And charges that are moving in relation to one another are an electrical current. Einstein was a great man, but he was also a man with great integrety and always maintained that he was not satisfied with the theory.
Not because it was wrong, (it is incomplete as Newtonian gravity was not replaced by Relativity, Relativity just added to it,) but because the calculations are derived from Electromagnetic forces and then the electric part is discarded as if electricity only happens on Earth. This is especially confusing in light of the fact that the photon, the particle that defines the limit of velocity and time, is an Electromagnetic phenomenon. It is beyond comprehension how the one particle that defines the very meaning of velocity and time, can be something that is then excluded in everything else, although it is everything else that makes this photon exist. It is a byproduct, an emission of energy from a charged particle, an electron moving in relation to protons and nuetrons in the magnetic field the electric charge produces. As we know, Electromagnetic induction is the production of an electric current across a conductor moving through a magnetic field. It underlies the operation of generators, transformers, induction motors, electric motors, synchronous motors, and solenoids.
The only known way to create a magnetic field is with an electric current. But what about kitchen magnets someone has asked. Kitchen magnets are made magnetic by passing certain elements under a strong magnetic field that is produced by an electric current. Heat above 100°C starts to cause magnetized materials to demagnetize. The Earth is supposed to contain a magnetic core yet “The temperature of the inner core can be estimated using experimental and theoretical constraints on the melting temperature of impure iron at the pressure (about 330 GPa) of the inner core boundary, yielding estimates of 5,700 K (5,430 °C; 9,800 °F).” The Earth formed from a ball of molten material according to theory. How is Earth’s magnetic field maintained in temperatures where magnets can not exist? The only way known to create a magnetic field is with electricity. The magnetic field created by the electrical current can then be used to permanently align the electrons of materials capable of being magnetized. The entire sun even at its coolest temperatures could not maintain a magnetic field unless it was being constantly regenerated by an electric current.
For those that asked about weather and how the Sun can affect earth:
One puzzle of the Sun is the “rice grain” appearance of its photosphere which gave rise to the phrase “photospheric granulation.” Scientists now believe that each granule is the top of a “convection cell” because the opaque gases of the Sun, in the nuclear fusion model, need a mechanism for slowly transferring internal heat to the surface. The “granulation” must therefore be the “boiling gases” forced upward by million degree temperatures beneath the surface.
Immediately, problems arise with this interpretation. The gas density in the photosphere diminishes rapidly with height so that convection there should be completely turbulent. Instead, the granules seem to quietly appear, grow brighter for some minutes, then fade. As one proponent of standard theory concedes, “Convection remains the outstanding unsolved problem in photospheric physics.”
The statement confirms what Ralph Juergens wrote years earlier: “…Photospheric granulation is explainable in terms of convection only if we disregard what we know about convection. Surely the cellular structure is not to be expected.” Juergens proposed instead that “a [photospheric] granule may be viewed as a relatively dense, highly luminous, secondary plasma that springs into being in the embrace of a thinner, less luminous, primary plasma. …We are led directly to ask whether the granules might not be akin to certain highly luminous tufts of discharge plasma variously described in the literature as anode glows, anode tufts, and anode arcs.
science:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_glow_discharge
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050427sun.htm
Many more references are available:
http://www.plasma-universe.com/Electric_glow_discharge
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/040917electric-weather.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt
That weather and the Birkeland currents that connect Sun to Earth are directly related as a means of charging the Earth’s upper atmosphere explains things much better than standard models. In a universe that is 99.999% plasma one must “EXPECT” these things from having studied plasma, in contrast to those that haven’t and are always “surprised” when technology can finally detect them, even though they wern’t looking for it until it stumbled upon them.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/webnews/121707electricsun.htm
Yet after all the direct evidence the mention of electricity in space immediately brings direct confrontation, with the supporters of standard cosmology degrading into name calling beacuse without evidence they have no counter arguments. Instead of gladly following up on a theory which explains almost every structure in space as a true scientist would, they pretend the data does not exist, or make up imaginary fairy dust to explain away the descrepencies (Dark Matter to explain flat rotation curves of galaxies and Dark Energy to explain why DM doesn’t allow for an expanding universe. Now if they would only turn DM into plasma and DE into electric and magnetic fields cosmology would surge ahead.
The most detractors of the Plasma Universe usually know about plasma is it makes pretty displays in a plasma ball. The rest they learn in the 5 minutes they bother to try to read about it in an attempt to have an answer. These same distractors are the ones that will claim that can’t be without having read one single thing on plasma up until that point, yet suddenly they are experts on it with answers that directly conflict with known scientific facts and laboratory experiments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations_in_curved_spacetime
“In physics, Maxwell’s equations in curved spacetime govern the dynamics of the electromagnetic field in curved spacetime (where the metric may not be the Minkowski metric) or where one uses an arbitrary (not necessarily Cartesian) coordinate system. These equations can be viewed as a generalization of the vacuum Maxwell’s equations which are normally formulated in the local coordinates of flat spacetime. But because general relativity dictates that the presence of electromagnetic fields (or energy/matter in general) induce curvature in spacetime, Maxwell’s equations in flat spacetime should be viewed as a convenient approximation.
The electromagnetic field also admits a coordinate-independent geometric description, and Maxwell’s equations expressed in terms of these geometric objects are the same in any spacetime, curved or not. Also, the same modifications are made to the equations of flat Minkowski space when using local coordinates that are not Cartesian. For example, the equations in this article can be used to write Maxwell’s equations in spherical coordinates. For these reasons, it may be useful to think of Maxwell’s equations in Minkowski space as a special case, rather than Maxwell’s equations in curved spacetimes as a generalization.
It was proposed over 100 years ago that such plasma structures exist in space because of the electrically charged state of plasma and its ability to conduct charge so redily. It is these electric currents that cause the elves and sprites at the Double Layer Boundry that seperates the Earth’s charge from the surrounding space, which eventially discharge into our atmosphere in sometimes visible forms as lightning. This is why spacecraft entering orbit become charged with voltage surges that caused havoc until they were shielded from such affects (http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19690022628_1969022628.pdf). NASA has known for years that space is not neutrally charged. The electrical connection from Sun to Earth is there as predicted 100 years ago, and now we find them on Jupiter and Saturn between them and their moons. We see these plasma structures stretching from galaxy to galaxy, plasma, by definition a charged medium.
Believe whatever you choose, but your search for the source of gravity will always be fruitless and your solar and galactic models will always require fairy dust to pacth them until you stick the electric back into Electromagnetism.
Have a nice day all!
“””””…..kuhnkat says:
July 13, 2012 at 8:39 am
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……”””””
You use your metaphor, and I’ll use my metaphor; that’s whate metaphors are phor.
johnnythelowery says:
July 13, 2012 at 3:29 pm
“None of these number are calculated from EU theory. They are either observed or calculated from standard theories, or at times wrong. If you disagree, show me which numbers are calculated from EU theory, and how.
Here is your chance to be brilliant, go for it.
I would say that if you don’t or can’t, the discussion is brought to a deserved end.”
——————————-
Leif: Ever get an answer to your challenge from the EU guys?? Do you have an idea why they havn’t??
I, of course, never got an answer, and it is clear that the reason is that they can’t.
The resident kooks [there is a time to call a spade a spade] are getting more desperate by the minute, recycling the same old, tired, cut-and-paste stuff that they don’t really understand. The Dunning-Kruger effect [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect if I’m allowed to use Wikipedia since I do understand the effect] finds substantial support right here on WUWT. It might even be interesting to write a paper on that…
Some of the worst offenders in the personal attack department [“mental disorder”, “evidence of poor judgement”, “no grounding in science”, “piss off”, “not stoop to your level”, “waste our time”, “what sort of person are you”, “Insufferable!”, …] are just being deservedly repaid in their own coin. I do not apologize for such repayment.
They often use a tried method of obscurantism: instead of answering specific questions, they respond with a barrage of cut-n-paste nonsense that does not address the issue and takes time to deal with. There is serious science in the topic. It can be discussed on several levels [as the thread demonstrates] so there is ample opportunity to learn at the individual level. The deliberate [I don’t know how else to describe it] avoidance of engaged discussion is a sad comment on the people doing this. In a sense, modern cosmology is the greatest story ever told. Humans have pondered these questions for [uncounted] millennia and we are beginning to get some answers. Sad that some commenters here [the same ones as always] throw away that hard-won story.
Myrrh,
What Einstein imagined was that subjective filtering by his mind created reality – he imagined because the perception of time slowed or speeded up depending on one’s state of mind, that this actually altered the objective physical world around us for everyone..
Uh, no, exactly the opposite. Relativity has nothing to do with subjective mental states. It merely says that a clock traveling on a train at a high relative speed will move more slowly than one at a standstill. All physical processes will slow down. On the other hand, because everything slows down, the brain will slow accordingly, and will see no change in its own relative space. The world outside the train will seem to be speeding up, however.
This has of course been proven innumerable times, even by using actual clocks in airplanes traveling in opposite directions.
It didn’t prove anything of his theory, all it showed was basic Newton that gravity pulls in matter.
Light is not a form of matter. It is a form of energy, and has no mass that can be affected by gravitation.
Einstein’s gravity is nonsensical, a mass’s weight distoring ‘spacetime’ in a vortex is only going to be on one side of that mass, the opposite side will be a bulge into ‘spacetime’. Is this how we got the ‘flat universe’? That ubiquitous flat rubber mat distorted to show a ball careering into the vortex centre?
I’m not sure even a single word of this makes sense. Mass has no weight. Weight does not distort spacetime. Gravity does. It does so according to the inverse square law, uniformly, on all sides. There is no “opposite side” to space. There is no such thing as a flat universe, unless it has no mass or energy. And if it lacks these, is it a universe at all?
As for GPS, if this falsified relativity, every physicist would be all over it. Is this really all you’ve got?
Here, take some free courses from MIT, I do not ask you to believe anything i tell you.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-spring-2002/video-lectures/
“That ubiquitous flat rubber mat distorted to show a ball careering into the vortex centre?”
Yet if gravity is nothing more than curved space-time tell me one thing. A large mass sitting on a rubber sheet would make a large indentation, and that indentation would induce smaller nearby masses to role toward the indentation. This is an analogy for curved Space-Time, which is likewise supposed to be the cause of bodies accelerating toward large masses. The reasoning in the analogy further suggests that target bodies simply respond instantly to the local curvature of the underlying Space-Time medium (like the rubber sheet). Therefore, any delay associated with altering that local curvature would not produce aberration, and the target body would appear to respond instantaneously to the source unless the source suddenly changed its motion.
The rubber sheet analogy is represented as a way of visualizing why bodies attract one another. However, in that regard, it is highly defective. A target body sitting on the side of an indentation would stay in place, with no tendency to roll downhill, unless there were already a force such as gravity underneath the rubber sheet pulling everything downhill. And this failure of the analogy helps us identify the precise problem with the curved Space-Time description of gravity – the lack of causality. Without consideration of why a target body is induced to accelerate through space, and how quickly it receives updates of information about how to accelerate through space, neither the Space-Time curvature explanation nor the rubber sheet analogy can help us understand. There must already be a force beneath your rubber sheet acting on the target body to cause it to roll “downhill” That force is the EM force.
Steven says:
July 13, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Here, take some free courses from MIT
How about you take it yourself: at 0:07 into the video of lecture 17:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-spring-2002/video-lectures/lecture-17-motional-emf-and-dynamos/ you are reminded of what you learned in lecture 16: “we saw how a changing magnetic can produce a current”, this is what happens in Nature and Plasmas
Steven says:
July 13, 2012 at 8:50 pm
There must already be a force beneath your rubber sheet acting on the target body to cause it to roll “downhill” That force is the EM force.
It looks you like are back to square one. Still don’t know what the forces are. And did not heed Anthony’s advice.
And if you understood the lecture you would know the magnetic field was caused by the movement of charged particles, an electric current. But you just skipped to the one you thought might bolster your defense if no one else bothered to study it, without taking the courses that lead up to it, that is why it is lecture 17 not lecture 1. But you always seem to leave the electro out of electromagnetic forces, why is this? Electricity, the very thing that makes your muscles contract so that you can walk, the very thing that makes it possible to form thoughts, to see the world around you. You would not exist without it. Even with all the gravity in the world you cannot get two particles to slam together at the subatomic level until you accelerate them in EM fields at near c. This is because the EM force both attracts and repels.
This is a general statement:
The agora was a square in ancient Athens, the market place, where every citizen could discourse on any subject. One could call Socrates a fool with no penalties except the peer pressures of the market place, and peers in the agora by definition have an average IQ of 100.
The current agora is the internet. Anything can be discussed and anybody with an internet connection can have his/her say.
What one should keep in mind is that discussing in the agora is fun, but certainly not definitive of anything nor a school where knowledge could be accumulated coherently. For that, there were the philosophical schools, which had teachers and students. It is from those schools that we have Plato, Pythagoras etc. The discussions in the agora were “έπεα πτερόεντα”, “flying words”.
Correspondingly, our schools exist in the universities and research institutes where it takes dedication and an enormous lot of elbow grease to reach the level of current, in this case, physics understanding.
It is very often that in the current agora, the internet, one. finds people bashing Einstein, disagreeing with any scientific models in any discipline. The people like Leif, who want to educate the public, find themselves in word battles with little meaning, talking at cross purposes.
It is not that the current cosmological theories are written in stone and professors of the subject the current popes, infallible. It is that the current theories will be falsified, if they will, not by
votes and arguments in the agora, but by scholars who have spent the years in elbow grease and thoroughly understand the current status. When Einstein posited his ground breaking theories, Special and General Relativity he was thoroughly conversant with the mathematical theories of his time. That’s why it is called “Lorenz transformation”. It was found by Lorenz within Maxwell;s electromagnetic theory. The genius of Einstein was in thinking outside the box.
The problem is that one has to thoroughly know the box, before one can think outside the box.
Most of the people commenting on this thread, in this current agora, are commenting without knowing the box, just popularized outlines. It is not possible to encapsulate twentieth century physics without mathematics, as some demand, as if one can make a QED argument in the agora. One cannot..
People who are seriously interested should start studying from Physics 101 reach General Relativity 401 and then discuss in the appropriate forums for such level of understanding their new insights, not the internet agora.
Yes, current cosmological models may be superseded, by new data, new insights. This will not happen here.
Steven says:
July 13, 2012 at 9:10 pm
And if you understood the lecture you would know the magnetic field was caused by the movement of charged particles, an electric current.
You need a magnetic field to create a current…
Leif says:
“You need a magnetic field to create a current…”
Except your previous statement was more complete. You need a changing magnetic field to create a current.
But Leif, you assured me that magnetic fields “out there” are FROZEN IN the plasma.somehow. (I don’t remember the explanation of how that happens or is retained.) So, if the magnetic field is frozen in how can it be changing to create a current??? You still are ignoring the simple fact that current is the movement of charged particles in a general direction. This will create a magnetic field. are those charged particles a varying magnetic field Leif??
I keep thinking Chicken and Egg!! Except, we don’t need a magnetic field to create ions or a charge do we?? Can we create a magnetic field, frozen in or not, without current or charge??
Jim G says:
July 12, 2012 at 9:18 am
After all, it is mathmatical models which tell us that there cannot possibly be that much additional baryonic matter out there
No, observations show that:
http://www.nicadd.niu.edu/~bterzic/PHYS652/Lecture_10.pdf
Almost the entire earth is shall we say magnetically “neutral”, since you are fond of that word. Yet two particles that are not magnetically attractive as they cannot be picked up by a magnet, will in space drift together. This is because of the charge of the particles, course 1 through 15. The movement of one charge in proximity to another creates an electric current which produces the magnetic field. This field since it is a time varying magnetic field, not static, induces further charge in the surrounding particles, which as we know then creates a stronger magnetic field. In plasma this action confines the electric current into filaments termed Birkeland Currents. You want the magnet to move against a conductor or vice versa without any causative action. The only way two subatomic particles is known to move in relation to another is from charge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_%28physics%29
“Composite particles also possess magnetic moments associated with their spin. In particular, the neutron possesses a non-zero magnetic moment despite being electrically neutral. This fact was an early indication that the neutron is not an elementary particle. In fact, it is made up of quarks, which are electrically charged particles. The magnetic moment of the neutron comes from the spins of the individual quarks and their orbital motions.”
It is the moving electrical charge which creates the magnetic field. Because the neutron had a non-zero magnetic field being electrically neutral, it was realized it was NOT an elementary particle, instead it was the moving electrical charges of the quarks which cause the magnetic moment. Magnetism only enhances a charged particles current through the Lorentz force.
Since Leif seeems to be favorable to outside the box thinking, here are some more:
a critique of Dark Matter and Energy:
http://milesmathis.com/dark2.pdf
and an alternative solution for the apparent issues with the consensus model(s):
http://milesmathis.com/mond.html
compared to believing in non-matter that interacts wih matter non-gravitationally and is otherwise invisible Miles’ charge field is perfectly believable!!
Oh yeah, that reminds me of another hole in my knowledge. Since dark matter isn’t baryonic and doesn’t have graviation and does have a repulsion, why would it lense light like baryonic matter???
Night all.
David says:
July 12, 2012 at 1:05 pm
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. … The balloon analogy, like the raisens in bread analogy does nothing for me.
Maybe plate-tectonics? Let’s say you have two cities, Los Angeles and San Diego. When an earthquake happens, these two cities can move apart. But LA has not “moved”, it is still on the “its” spot. Neither has SD “moved”, it is still on “its” spot.
Or tried another way, you could think of positions in 3D space as locations on a 3D wire-mesh – and the mesh is being pulled apart. Sure we can move on the mesh, but even if we sit tight, we are being pulled apart from each other (gravitational clustering of the local (super) group non withstanding).
I think the problem is that we think of space as “nothing”, we envision it as empty vacuum – but space is “something” in itself.
[snip – bogus email address – fix it or stop commenting here – Anthony]
“There must already be a force beneath your rubber sheet acting on the target body to cause it to roll “downhill”
Gravity is most certainly a force. Relativity did not alter that basic understanding. It merely says that it is a force which curves space in the process of attracting mass. The greater the force, the greater the curvature, and the greater the acceleration. They all go together.
And to all the people who have a problem that you can not directly observe dark matter (and therefore reject it as a article of faith):
:: Can you directly observe air? ::
If you reject belief in dark matter, you should belief in air as well.
We may not know what this “dark matter” exactly is, but is it is there, we can most certainly observe some of its effects (and in some ways, it acts very much like ordinary matter, in some ways it does not, so we think it is something “matter like” but “not matter”). And we will tease out one day what exactly it is – piece by piece.
Same as we did with this “air” thing. We knew that “something” was there, even if we could not directly observe it (at room temperature in a lab). We could observe its effects (just wave your hand). And we teased out what this “air” was – peace by peace.
Nobody is saying we have the full picture – we don’t. At least nobody credible is saying that (unlike the EU hacks who tell you they can “explain everything” by some magical currents, and magically separated electrical charges). Science is most interesting when you are in the middle of teasing out something – and here we are, looking at the very fabric of the universe itself. I think it is exciting.
Myrrh,
Bodily processes slow down when you’re travelling faster? Bacteria in the gut go into slow motion? But it appears to you that it is still working in real time? You’d be dead in seconds. The world outside the train seem to be speeding up while you’re going faster on a train through it? Appears to be. Appears is the operative word. These are alterations of perception, not of physical changes in the matter on and off the train. These are fantasy mental pictures. That’s all they are.
Ah, no. It has nothing to do with mental perception. Clocks move more slowly when in motion. They have no minds. Subatomic particles decay more slowly when travelling faster. This isn’t subjective.
The train analogy is for demonstration purposes only. No human has ever traveled fast enough to actually notice the slowing of time relative to his surroundings. One would have to travel a fairly good percentage of the speed of light to encounter such things. Even astronauts only encounter time distortions of thousandths of seconds. It takes finely tuned atomic clocks to notice these distortions.
Of course light is matter. Photons are particles. And gosh, are you really saying that energy isn’t matter??
Right. Energy can be converted to matter under the right conditions, but it isn’t matter. Photons are massless particles, to the extent that they are particles at all. It’s even misleading to say that they are particles. They only appear to act like particles when certain types of experiments are conducted. Under other conditions, they appear to be waves. So in a sense, they are neither, but just seem to be like one or the other depending on your viewpoint. Something like an optical illusion.
Light slows down through different mediums, it slows down in travelling from the Sun to Earth, in the atmosphere and in the oceans – it is slowed down in the oceans some 14/15 times more than in the atmosphere – it is slowed down a lot passing through a diamond which is why we get all the brilliant colours, colours are affected differently, blue slows down more than red. That’s what reflection and scattering are all about, light is bent or scattered or transmitted through without being absorbed which means it is slowed down at each encounter of meeting matter.
Yes, and all that is due to their wave-like properties.
So, without mass or energy the universe would be flat somehow proves the universe is not flat because it has objects with mass on it distorting it?
The proof of the curvature of space is not in circular argument (pun intended), but in experiment that verifies the predictions made by Einstein’s theory, which are different from the predictions made by Newtonian gravitational theory. Einstein’s theory stands until it fails to pass experimental tests, and not because you may have trouble imagining the world it describes.
Just because it sound oh so bloody clever, doesn’t mean it is.
I do wish you would take those words to heart.
The claim that the body’s functions go into slow motion but somehow are experienced as if at normal speed is what you, generic, need to show proof of because that is your claim. You can’t use the GPS example – it already has a physical explanation.
I’m not sure you are grasping the meaning of the word “relativity”. Time is not distorted in the viewer’s own mind or experience. It is only distorted relative to some object traveling at a different speed. A person in moving around the kitchen is only in motion relative to the kitchen. In relation to themselves, they are motionless, and hence experience no time distortion. They only notice a time distortion when examining those people or objects who are not moving along with them. Kind of like you don’t notice that you are moving at hundreds of miles an hour on the surface of a rotating globe which is traveling 29 miles per second around the sun, because everything around you is also traveling at these same speeds. You only notice this speed relative to objects outside the earth. You don’t even feel dizzy. Or do you?
Should read:
:: Can you directly observe air? ::
If you reject belief in dark matter, you should reject belief in air as well.
(Oh well: The dangers of insufficient caffeine supply – A case study)
David says:
July 12, 2012 at 5:16 pm
This is my fourth request for some insight into the concept of space expanding. …
How does space expand, and what does it expand into?
Well, how does space expand? That is a very excellent question. What causes this expansion we can observe? I think the brightest minds in the world are right at it. I think they call it dark energy, if I am not mistaken. It is like 1491. I think it is exciting. In some decades under-grad students will have to learn this how and most of them will find it boring – at the moment, you can pocket a Nobel if you etch out a part of the how. Of course, one doesn’t work anymore alone, in one little room (which you call your “lab”), with a pad, and maybe one little experiment – nowadays you need billions (if not trillions) of $ worth of satellites, and particle accelerates, and giant laser interferometers, and what not.
But at the moment, we don’t know excactly what causes the expansion. We have a lot to find out, and again, I think it is exciting.
As to the “where does space expand to”? The short answer: We suspect there is nothing “outside”, as we suspect that the universe is infinite, without limits or bounds (mind boggling concept, as “infinites” are only used by those lazy mathematicians, who fill in infinity where ever they don’t know what to do – as opposed to manly physicists, who don’t use infinites, and most certainly not for real life manly physics).
We can observe a bubble*, which we call the “observable universe” (creative, isn’t it?). We estimate the observable universe at 93 billion light-years across (that comes from the 13.7 billions of year light had time to reach us, modified by the co-moving distance of space expansion itself). As the observable universe is pretty “homogenous”, we estimate that there is some more universe outside of what we can see. As I said, we suspect that this goes on and on and on for infinity. But there is a chance that it “ends”, that there is a border. For this off-chance, there would be some kind of border, and outside of this border would be true nothing: no space, no time, no nothing. (Here a reminder that “empty space”, even if it were a perfect vacuum, is not “empty”, but contains space, contains time, plus all kinds of quantum shenanigans).
* And we are pretty sure of the what we can observe so far.
And if you really want to boggle your mind, you should read about the shape of the universe, the curvature and topology of the universe or the local and the global geometry of the universe …
There are most certainly some Nobels to be made in that field.
@Alexander Feht:
Physics is not a debate. You don’t “win” at physics by pointing out to the audience logical flaws that you suppose your opponent has committed – you need to find actual flaws in the physics. Is it too much to ask of you that you actually try to understand all the observations, and how well (or how poor) the theories fit the observations, and how well (or how poor) the internal consistency of the theories and how well (or how poor) the theories agree with other parts of physics? You think you are intellectual, but you are just a debate heckler.