Dark Matter: PseudoScientific American Blinks

08/02/02 | self

[medved]

The new issue of the "Scientific American" contains an article which appears to amount to hedging its bets on the question of "dark matter", and at least recognizing the potential which the idea (dark matter) has for making scientists look stupid.

In the universe at large, things which appear roundish or which lack any particular shape are dominated by gravitational forces, while things which appear orderly such as spiral galaxies, are necessarily controlled by something vastly stronger, such as electromagnetic forces. In some cases, this is glaringly obvious.

A good example is the spiral galaxy shown above. The arms, particularly the upper arm, show material being held in a straight line until some point at which the field breaks down, after which material very quickly trails away and dissipates.

Again, this is obvious and nobody should need to be Albert Einstein to comprehend it. There is no conceivable way gravity could do something like that.

Astronomers, however, are for the most part wedded to a sort of an ideological doctrine which states that all such phenomena are controlled by gravity and inertia, and within the framework of that doctrine, things like dark matter are mathematically necessary.

Scientists not wedded to the doctrine refer to dark matter and similar notions as "Fabricated Ad-hoc Inventions Repeatedly Invoked in an Effort to Defend Untenable Scientific Theories", or FAIRIE DUST.

One internet resource for people looking for more serious answers to cosmological problems than "dark matter" is Don Scott's Electric Cosmos Site.

"Scientific American" is on the list of things which I do not patronize but what I gathered looking at the thing in the magazine rack at WallMart this morning is that the article looks into the possibility of dumping "dark matter" and simply changing the equations governing the cosmos, i.e. changing the laws of physics. The term "MOND", or MOdified Newtonian Dynamics occurs. Scott and others like him of course take a sort of a dim view of all such machinations

[medved]

FYI

[apochromat]

Apparently, the two galaxies in the center of the picture are joined by hot dark filaments that contribute a large percentage to the total galaxy cluster system mass.

I would guess that it's possible for such filaments to conduct extremely large currents.

[onedoug]

SA was a great magazine before it went new age.

What's all this dark matter, so inenergetic, and hence presumably unexotic, that we should guess at it there and then rather than find it here and now?

[coloradan]

A good example is the spiral galaxy shown above. The arms, particularly the upper arm, show material being held in a straight line until some point at which the field breaks down, after which material very quickly trails away and dissipates.

The eye is good at locating patterns ... straight lines sometimes happen even in nature. The fact that the line is there doesn't by itself mean some unidentified force must be present.

Again, this is obvious and nobody should need to be Albert Einstein to comprehend it. There is no conceivable way gravity could do something like that.

If you don't know general relativity inside and out, you really don't have any clue what gravity can and can't do. Even Einstein didn't think of black holes, Schwartzchild did - although Einstein agreed, once having had them pointed out to him, that they were indeed valid solutions to his equations. And those are spherically symmetric solutions - galaxies with billions of stars churning around each other's gravity are unimaginably more complex than black holes are - and even Isaac Newton knew that the mere three body problem has no analytical solution.

I wouldn't be so sure that I would take on a chaotic system with as many bodies as I have brain cells, and state what is "obvious" about how it will behave.

(On an unrelated note, Scientific American likes to publish gun grabbing propaganda, so I boycott it.)

[gcruse]

If it weren't for gravity to assemble the material to crunch into stars to illuminate the arms, you wouldn't be able to see the arms at all. So gravity is involved in what you see.

[coloradan]

By the way, that straight segment can only be identified as striaght from our line of sight; it could be as curved as a fishhook - which also can look straight from certain vantage points.

[Rudder]

The arms, particularly the upper arm, show material being held in a straight line until some point at which the field breaks down, after which material very quickly trails away and dissipates. Again, this is obvious and nobody should need to be Albert Einstein to comprehend it. There is no conceivable way gravity could do something like that.

From the picture it looks like centrifugal force is the culprit.

Is this too easy or what am I missing?

[medved]

My own view is that if "dark matter" were actually 95% of the universe as claimed, I'd be having to vacuum it up off my carpets every morning with an industrial grade vacuum cleaner. I mean, what kind of BS is that, claiming that something nobody has ever seen is 95% of the universe?

[medved]

fyi

[Balding_Eagle]

It would be better to post a vanity on a subject you know something about.

[Liberty Tree Surgeon]

Is it this as yet unmeasured and unseen electromagnetic force that allowed 20 foot tall humans before the Flood?

[FreedomAvatar]

I mean, what kind of BS is that, claiming that something nobody has ever seen is 95% of the universe?

Nobody saw fermions and bosons 100 years ago either. They are routinely "seen" today.

[medved]

The problem is that the further out from the center of something like that you get, the slower you'd expect things to be moving (assumingly only gravity and inertia); just like extending your arms slows you while spinning on figure skates while pulling your arms in allows you to spin faster. Thus, unless those spiral arms are being held rigidly together by something vastly stronger than gravity, they'd just get smeared into a sort of a blurry haze. In fact, you'd never see ANY sort of spiral arms, much less straight ones like you see here.

[longshadow]

Teddy versus the Universe.

grab a chair and a handful of popcorn, and enjoy the show.

[FreedomAvatar]

Thus, unless those spiral arms are being held rigidly together by something vastly stronger than gravity, they'd just get smeared into a sort of a blurry haze.

You mean duct tape?

[medved]

If you had ENOUGH of it...

[apochromat]

Carried by duct tape-carrying cannibals, no doubt.

[First_Salute]

Zee zolution, is the category known as Force.

A "black hole," if that be the compaction of matter, would be also be the "mark" of conversion from Force defined in our relativity into Force of another relativity.

In zimple termz, as their are many frequencies of electromagnetism, there are more than we now know, "frequencies" of Force.

Vee are zimply a very long way from knowing 'zem!

[general_re]

grab a chair and a handful of popcorn, and enjoy the show.

Chair at the ready - no popcorn, thanks. I brought beer, though - shall I just put it in the fridge?