Dark Matter Exists 459
olclops writes "It's a big day for astrophysics. After much speculation, scientists now have conclusive proof of dark matter. This result doesn't rule out alternate gravity theories like MOND, but it does mean those theories will have to account for exotic forms of dark matter."
Re:Dark Matters (Score:2, Insightful)
But not as preposterous as the "Big Bang". Imagine all the matter of the universe compressed to the size of an electron. Well that is a fabulous explanation for observations. Any other ideas?
Blog First, Then Scientific Journals. (Score:3, Insightful)
* Note that I tried to go back and confirm the names and finish reading the story so I would have something intelligent to say, but apparently the user's CPU allottment only accounts for 20% of the server's total, suggesting that there may be another form of CPU cycles that don't interact with visitor's to the linked site. I think we should call these "dark CPU cycles."
I don't see any proof... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can anyone say aether? I knew you'd try...
We have next to zero understanding of the quantum vacuum, and don't know for certain if everything should pop in and out there including not only electrons and photons, but antiprotons and neutral pi mesons and everything else too. We do know it exists from many many Earth-side experiments and reams of dead trees covered in equations. We don't know how the potential fields exist which give rise to the fields we know, we don't know how any of them link in all ways to the nuclear fields which we also don't understand too well but we have loads of equations and experiments for those.
So we invent something, call it "dark matter", and look for anything we can then say matches our thought experiments and we can forgo all the careful Earth-side experiments. We just sort of treat the absence of any dark matter here or anywhere near here as one of those Hitchhiker's Guide SEPs.
More science-by-supposition and proof-by-spectacle. Show me the proof. Show me why dark matter has to exist. Prove it out with careful calculation and application to everything across the board. We've set off fifty megaton nukes for crying out loud without a single sign of anything amiss that would suggest we have a giant hole in physics requiring dark matter. We've done experiments on electromagnetic fundamentals, nuclear forces, and so on and along the way, we didn't hear of a need to invent dark matter.
But some people look at the cosmos and decide that despite not truly understanding the whole picture of physics at every scale yet, we can claim that dark matter exists and here's proof. Where in the Nine Hells does this stuff fit with the physics theories they alread promulgate as accepted science to be taught in universities?
It looks like modern aether, and it looks as though anyone buying it will be upset when someone working right along on the regular investigations into quantum physics and spacetime and so on puts it together and says, "oh, here's why that galaxy moves that way. We didn't need dark matter after all..."
Re:Dark Matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So funny (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd hazard a guess that we actually do know a thing or two.
MOND (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kanye West says.. (Score:0, Insightful)
Remember Vulcan? ( no, not startrek vulcan ) (Score:5, Insightful)
Then some smart aleck who worked in a patent office came along and showed that space is warped and that Mercury's orbit fits perfectly. Vulcan disappeared, never to be seen again.
Vulcan had more data in favor of its existence back then than dark matter does now. Pardon me, but I'm as skeptical as parent.
Re:Dark Matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Or "evidence," for short.
Re:"To be published..." (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Full Paper (Score:3, Insightful)
So, our options are to believe that some matter is disproportionately heavy than its appearance would suggest, or to believe that there's matter that we aren't seeing.
This is What Slashdot Should Be (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Blog First, Then Scientific Journals. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Remember Vulcan? ( no, not startrek vulcan ) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dark Matters (Score:2, Insightful)
Supersymmetric Particles (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dark Matters (Score:5, Insightful)
In science you don't get to make up the axioms. The universe does and we get to try to figure out what they are.
This observation just disproved MOND theories (Score:1, Insightful)
It takes many many instances of evidence to give weight to a theory. It only takes 1 failure to disprove it. This is it for MONDian as we know it.
Re:Remember Vulcan? ( no, not startrek vulcan ) (Score:1, Insightful)
That's 5 mostly-independent pieces of evidence versus the 2 for Vulcan, so at the very simplest "my number is bigger than your number" level DM is more believable. Sure, it might be wrong, and some details almost certainly are. That's how science works... all your point actually comes down to is that the word "proven" tends to get thrown around a bit carelessly. A better statement of the current status of Dark Matter would be that no-one has an alternative that explains all the observations.
Re:So what's new, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I recall my astrophysics correctly, the arms of a spiral galaxy are somewhat akin to a wave phenomenon. The individual stars revolve around the galactic center far more quickly than the arms themselves move, so the stars actually enter, pass through, and leave each arm as they circle the center. The arms arise because the stars tend to loiter there longer than in the spaces between the arms... a result of the gravitational attraction of the other stars congregating temporarily in that arm.
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As for the topic at hand, I have to say it really bugs me when science reporters claim that some new evidence "proves" such and such a theory. This isn't pure math, and it isn't theology either; stop hanging on to comfortable notions of being able to "prove" this or that theory as if to end the debate. One of the glories of science is that it is a work in progress, with precious few certainties.
Re:this stinks (Score:3, Insightful)