Study plunges standard theory of cosmology into crisis

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/uob-sps050509.php ^ | May 5, 2009 | Unknown

[wow]

Hallelujah brother! If you really want to get them cranked up, let it be known that you think their great, great, great, .... , great grandpappy was an ape. I find it amazing that ignorance is expressed as a necessary tool in the defence of obviously weak faith. I suspect you also yearn for the days when being a conservative meant you agreed with the likes of Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater with Everret Dirksen as the center of the Republican party with a Nelson Rockefeller on the far left. It increasingly seems to me that one must hang out with left wing pinko parasite redistributionists or girly men neo isolationist libertarians to find an intelligent view of the universe.

[Rebel_Ace]

I said, "If you just argue about what a couple of thousand year old text has to say, whether it is the Bible, or the Koran or the Epic of Gilgamesh, you’re going to be stuck with 2000 year old world views."

You replied, "That is untrue. Arguing, in the classical-logic sense is a good way to gain understanding, and to convey that actual knowledge."

My rebuttal is as follows:

Ancient Aristotle, the "founder" of classical logic, had people convinced (and quite reasonably so) that the world around them was made from 4 elements, Earth, Wind, Fire and Water, I believe. His arguments were sound, with the information available to him at the time. "Arguing, in the classical-logic sense" can only take you so far. The advancement of knowledge requires the continued testing of the environment around us, re-applying what we have learned earlier. If we only studied Aristotle's texts today, we would be arguing about how much more "Air" a feather contains than a stick of wood. Of course that sounds silly to us today with our better understanding of the nature of matter, but that knowledge was gained from thousands of years of human effort.

As a concrete example, I offer the strict Koran based Muslim cultures around the world. Their "scientists" publish articles "proving" that Mecca is the center of the world, and other foolish claptrap.

[Rebel_Ace]

"girly men neo isolationist libertarians"

I'm going to have to remember that one...

[raygunfan]

claptrap? dark matter? separated at birth???

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon.

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[navyguy]

“I will stick with the truth of Christ, you can stick with man made fairy tales about dark matter that cant be seen or tested, etc...”

God can’t be seen or tested either. By your own definition that makes God a fairy tale.

You should probably come up with a better test for ‘fairy tale’.

[onedoug]

I think God made existence for us to discover. I wouldn’t want to seem ungrateful in not at least wondering at some aspect of it.

[samtheman]

Rebel_Ace, thanks for your explanations of what science is all about. By its very nature it takes wrong turns once in a while, and dark matter might turn out to be one of those wrong turns. But also by its nature it tends to be self-correcting, though sometime only on the scale of generations. I fear that the boondoggle of “global warming” (which really isn’t even science in the first place but politics with a lot of scientists drafted to man the barricades) is one of those wrong turns that will take a generation to correct.

Dark matter could fall much more easily (if it is indeed an incorrect explanation) because there’s a lot less invested in it.

The thing about these scientific uncertainties (and I’m going to except global warming in this, because it is an act of politics and not science) is that they tend to exist at the edges of our understanding. So while they provide a convenient target for the Luddites to point out the supposed failures of science, they do nothing to subtract credibility from the huge body of knowledge we already have and the large number of theories that have stood the test of time.

No one doubts, for example, that the universe is expanding. It wasn’t that long ago when that was one of the uncertainties of science. We’ve moved on. Now we’re dealing with some of the esoterica of that expansion and we’re running into some difficulties. There’s no surprise in that.

Science always runs into difficulties. Solving previously unsolved mysteries of Life, The Universe and Everything is difficult. If it was easy, we wouldn’t need scientists.

[djf]

LMAO!
Big time!

They’re trying to blame it on Newton, even though the papers have been full of items for the last thirty years braggin up Einstein, even thought we’ve been adamantly told for the last four decades or so to completely discard Newton’s theory...

So now that GR doesn’t cut the mustard, they want to blame Newton!

Hint number A:

Einsteins theory depends and requires a “classical vacuum”. Something we now know does not exist. Anytime. Anywhere.

CMAO!
(Chuckling my A off!!)

Einstein STOLE his ideas. It’s very well documented and proven.

[Rebel_Ace]

Well said. I actually think that Science is exciting and fun, pretty much about any topic worth investigating. However, I often think that explanations are largely “lost” on a fair number of readers here.

[LomanBill]

>>So now that GR doesn’t’t cut the mustard, they want to blame Newton!

I think the discrepancy is due to an inadequate knowledge of space itself - i.e. variability of the “Classic Vacuum”.

If Space is to Energy as Energy is to Mass, then I suspect the observations attributed to “dark matter” can be explained by presuming a localized density of space - where spatial distortion is equivalent to E. “Dark matter” existing where E is locally sufficient to manifest the weak gravitational force (observable as gravitational lensing) but insufficient to manifest the strong forces required for the creation of matter.

If this is the case, then mass would be variable in proportion to the density of its spatial context.

G=M+E

IOW: Total Relative Gravity = Newtonian Gravity + Spatial Energy Density.

[LomanBill]

Though certainly some un-natural reasons have been manufactured by folks who generally seem to share a desire to live as though God is dead and they are He, I see no natural reason why scientific exploration of the universe should preclude the pursuit of a relationship with its Creator.

Admittedly, some would-be religious tyrants do disagree.

But that whole “Let there be light” thing?

Pretty good guess it seems - especially for a bunch of sheep herders who’d presumably never heard the QM notion that, one moment none of the energy in the universe existed - and the next it all was.

Quack, waddle: Bang, Big - One each.

[AFPhys]

I have long held that the correct description of Gravitational Force is NOT that it is dependent EXACTLY on the reciprocal of distance squared. A very small linear component seems possible to account for much of the difficulty that is seen in today’s cosmology. Another inference would be that the linear extent of the universe is greater than the “visible” universe. The anomalous force allowing galaxies to remain together is a result of the matter which is outside the visible universe- it is not “dark”, but is simply too distant to be seen.