Space science contains big void - Astronomers admit they don't understand dark energy and matter

Mercury News ^ | 6/30/03 | Robert S. Boyd - Knight Ridder

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON - In ``Star Wars,'' Darth Vader rules the ``dark side'' of a fantasy universe. In real life, astronomers are exploring the ``dark side'' of our own universe. They find it a mystifying place.

According to a batch of new reports published in a special ``Welcome to the Dark Side'' issue of the journal Science, most of the cosmos cannot be seen, even with the most powerful telescopes. All but a tiny fraction of creation consists of two exotic, invisible ingredients called ``dark energy'' and ``dark matter.''

[GOPJ]

BINGO:

The clarion call of science is not the triumphant "Eureka!" of Archimedes, but the indignant "Who ordered that?!" of Isidor Isaac Rabi.

[Clinging Bitterly]

>> I lose no sleep over either prospect, however.

Nor do I. While not an atheist, I do consider myself a free thinker, and I understand the nature of what is regarded by many as the "word of God" as being mostly the words of men (their names are on most of the books).

It's a moral compass, written and rewritten for times that are past, and largely symbolic. I apply it as best I can in conducting my life here and now, knowing for certain the world is not flat. I don't have the problem of clinging to beliefs that contradict good, hard science. Science is knowledge, and I'm as big a proponent of pursuit of that as anyone I know, but I don't envision it disproving unseen forces of good and evil anytime soon. I hope that makes sense, it's sort of the foundation of my beliefs.

Do you know of the study to which I referred in the post above? I read the article as posted, but did not delve into the links which puportedly went to the actual background information. The motivation seemed rather obvious to me, but it seemed to be lost on most of the FReepers who had commented as of the day it was posted.

Dave in Eugene

[Ichneumon]

I will instead, invite you to any Creationist thread on FR.

Been there, done that, *still* haven't seen the actual behavior you describe.

I can recall one about an ant species simultaneously evolving all around the world. There was a peer-reviewed science article that showed that a particular ant species had not "spread" but had evolved concurrently in multiple locations.

Um, your memory and/or reading comprehension of that study and subsequent discussion are poor.

First, you have the study exactly backwards. Actually, the prior scientific presumption (admitted to be such, for lack of sufficient fossil evidence to make a firm conclusion) for a long time was that "old world" army ants and "new world" army ants had evolved separately on their own continents (through convergent evolution). The recent study actually examined new evidence and made a very good case that in fact, all modern types of army ants instead had descended from a single original army ant species (which itself had split off from earlier non-army ant species). Here's the reconstructed family tree:

The species in bold type are army ant species, the non-bold species are non-army ant species.

This had the Evolutionists scratching their heads (but not questioning their core beliefs).

No, actually, it didn't have the "Evolutionists scratching their heads", because the findings of the recent study are actually an even *better* fit for classic evolutionary theory than was the prior presumption about the origins of army ants.

Thus there was no "head scratching" by evolutionists on the threads which discussed that study, so I'm wondering just how you managed to "remember" some having occurred.

Nor should it have caused any evolutionists to "question their core beliefs", because the discovery itself, *and* the mass of related data uncovered during the study, very nicely *further confirms* evolution. For details, see my lengthy post about that study in post #1703 of that thread.

Ironically, that study was introduced to the thread by a creationist who had read only a poorly written press release about the study and mistakenly believed he could use it to undercut evolution. Wrong again.

Creationists on the thread suggested that perhaps God had something to do with it. You should have read the shouts of derisive laughter!

I find nothing like that in either FR thread which discussed that study. They are here and here. The former thread was begun to discuss a different study, but the army ant study was introduced on the first page and discussed at length in various places in the thread.

If your memory of those threads is as flawed as your memory of the study's results, perhaps that explains things.

This pattern repeats on any Creationist thread on FR (and elsewhere).

You have yet to offer a single example, much less establish a "pattern".

Some fly in the ointment which perhaps does not completely refute Evoltuionary Theory, but which poses a problem for it ... someone says maybe there is a God ... Evos start swearing and laughing at the poor dumb schmuck.

So you say. Care to try again to support it?

I have never once seen anyone on any FR thread "start swearing and laughing at the poor dumb schmuck" for offering God as a possibility. Never. You might want to support that broad accusation, or retract it.

I have seen people get laughed at for offerring goofy "disproofs" of science without knowing enough about it to succeed at the attempt, but that's quite different.

And lord knows I've seen several FR creationists laugh at evolutionists as "poor dumb schmucks" simply *for* their belief in the process of evolution. And yes, I *will* give specific examples if you want to see them.

[Sam Cree]

bump

[Ichneumon]

A couple weeks ago, I saw an article about a "study" that was posted here where the combined effects of a theorized quantity of dark matter and dark energy were factored in, and it seemed to demonstrate that the speed of light is slowing at a very high rate (in astronomical terms), and the light speed figure was extrapolated to arrive at the initial speed, then the universe's expansion rate was recalculated from the time of the "big bang", and, assuming these light speed calculations were correct, it showed the universe to be only about 8,000 years old. The result seemed rather convenient, since the study was done by scientists in a religious organization (who's name I don't recall).

Sounds like this. ICR finds a few cranks and touts them as brave new pioneers who might, someday, prove ICR right after all.

It would take someone with a lot more knowledge of this sort of thing than me to say whether that study had any credibility.

Let's put it this way -- if any experiment or study concludes that the universe is only a few thousand years old, it's not credible... There's just enormously *too* much evidence, of every conceivable kind, that it's vastly older than that. Concluding that the universe is only a few thousand years old is just as non-credible as today concluding that the Earth is flat after all.

Any "study" which concluded to the contrary (on either point) would rightly be laughed off the stage unless it managed to simultaneously explain why *all* the evidence for the generally accepted conclusion happened to be wrong, and how. Good luck with *that*...

[Dimensio]

You might also mention two problems with "lightspeed decay", as creationists call it. First is that it is based upon incredibly flimsy evidence -- specifically, it takes specific measurements of the speed of light since it was first measured through to 1965 and points out how the measurement steadily decreased. Nevermind that the measurements were upper limits and that the means for calculating lightspeed became more and more accurate since it was first measured. I don't know if they selectively omit measurements that don't fit nicely on their "decay" curve, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Second, lightspeed slowing down over the last thousand years would have SEVERE consequences. If you can't think of what they might be, consider that E=mc^2

[JSteff]

Two words, Event Horizon.

[Aric2000]

I assume you mean a black hole? Or am I missing something?

[Clinging Bitterly]

>> Nevermind that the measurements were upper limits...

Thank you. That little bit puts the lie to it.

Glad to hear you and all the other more learned ones chime in on this. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable and competent in my field, but this ain't it.

When you want to know about nuts & bolts I hope I can be as informative.

Dave in Eugene

[Ichneumon]

Second, lightspeed slowing down over the last thousand years would have SEVERE consequences.

And on top of that, it would be easily detectable. Measurements of the speed of light a few years apart with modern instruments (which can measure the speed *very* precisely) would show measurable changes in the speed, if it were "decaying" as rapidly as some creationists assert. No such change has been detected -- the natural speed of light appears rock-steady by all tests.

[ThreePuttinDude]

"Did George and Jerry write it?"

With assistance from Newman
and research by Kramer

[PatrickHenry]

Dark placemarker.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

``Cosmologists have no idea what the nature of the dark matter and the dark energy may be,'' Jordi Miralda-Escude, an astronomer at Ohio State University in Columbus, wrote in Science.

g3000??

[Physicist]

Which seems to mean it is the observation of orbital motion that these conclusions are based on. Are you refering to a different set of observations?

Orbital motions, both within our galaxy (the famous "flat rotation curve") and without (in the Virgo cluster) were the first indications of the existence of dark matter. Gravitational lensing allows us to map the distribution of dark matter, and measurements of the cosmic microwave background allow us to measure the dark matter content of the universe.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Sadly for them, God keeps shrinking in that model.

Not according to this article and others I have read. It seems the more we learn the more we realize how much there is to learn, yet. Extrapolating that you conclude that the unknown is out stripping the known each day. In fact, taking it to a logical progression, the more we know the less we know.

According to a batch of new reports published in a special ``Welcome to the Dark Side'' issue of the journal Science, most of the cosmos cannot be seen, even with the most powerful telescopes. All but a tiny fraction of creation consists of two exotic, invisible ingredients called ``dark energy'' and ``dark matter.''

Considering that much of what we think we know is unproven conjecture, God does not seem to be shrinking the model as much as expanding it.

Regardless, it is futile to attempt to "know" God except in your heart. Proving God destroys that particular version of God, making it finite rather than infinite.

[Gary Boldwater]

"Those curvy things are the distorted shapes of very distant galaxies, whose images are being bent by the gravity of the intervening galaxy cluster. It is straightforward to calculate the mass of the cluster from the curvature of the distorted images. It's also straightforward to measure the mass of the normal matter in the cluster, by measuring its spectrum. The difference is the dark matter"

Is the measurement of mass via spectrum fundamental? How accurately can I determine the mass of the moon by its spectrum? Of Jupiter? How many assumptions are made by about the spectrum of clusters to arrive at mass? How does dark matter affect the spectra?

[Gary Boldwater]

Thanks for the alert. The article is good, at least it admits the speculation over dark matter.

[hopespringseternal]

Sometimes, new physics has to be sifted painstakingly from the white noise. Other times, it kicks you hard in the testicles.

Yeah, but spend any time around working scientists and you find that sifting can be remarkably arbitrary. It works for the most part, but it's like watching sausage being made.

[Physicist]

Well, the moon and Jupiter aren't ionized the way stars and HII regions are, so there isn't a clear relationship between temperature and brightness.

You do raise the point, however, that there are baryonic components of dark matter. We have two handles on that. First, we can measure the percentage of baryonic matter in the universe by looking at the abundances of light elements. Second, we can search for dark, compact objects (presumed to be baryonic in nature, such as "brown dwarf" stars) by searching for "microlensing" events, where a compact object passes in front of a single distant star, with the gravitational lensing of the object causing the star to brighten temporarily, in a characteristic way.

The upshot is that, while there is a surprising amount of dark, baryonic matter in our galaxy, there isn't nearly enough to account for all the dark matter.

[Physicist]

that sifting can be remarkably arbitrary

If it's wrong, that will be discovered, too. The same problem is usually attacked by many different people, by many different methods, and any important discovery will be rechecked many times.

In the case of dark matter, however, very little sifting is involved. Its existence is as manifest as the curvature of the Earth.