It’s a mystery:
As one participating scientist points out, to miss the mark by so much means what we understand about the universe is fundamentally wrong. The universe continues to be exciting, a little scary, but mostly—a mystery.
And yet some have the hubris to tell us they can predict the temperature of the planet and level of the seas decades from now.
Naturally, the first resort of some is to say it’s because of the cosmic magic bag, “dark matter.”
Yes, or the hubris to say we know enough about how the human body reacts in long-term microgravity to send humans on a mission to Mars, or even around it.
It’s called ex-plor-a-tion. Everybody’s going to die someday; sorry to be blunt, but it’s true. Whether one dies under the bed afraid to go outside, or as the first person to try to do a round trip to Mars, is a choice.
…we know enough about how the human body reacts…
We absolutely know with certainty that we can find out more (by doing.)
“Yes, or the hubris to say we know enough about”
I don’t think anyone is saying that we know enough, only that ignorance should not prevent us from moving on. Realistically, the only way to find out what happens to humans in various gravity environments, is to send people into those environments. Exploration can happen at the same time as science.
Settlement is a different issue but before settlement takes place, there is a lot of other work that needs to be done and during this process we will hopefully answer some of those human factor questions.
“And yet some have the hubris to tell us they can predict the temperature of the planet and level of the seas decades from now.”
You too are making a prediction of the temperature of the planet and level of the seas.
No, I’m not, you moron.
If you aren’t making a prediction you aren’t engaged in science.
Yet another moronic statement form the village idiot.
When your epicycles (unobserved dark matter and unobserved dark energy) are calculated to have an order of magnitude more of an effect than the observable universe, something is definitely wrong with the model. There is also no mechanism for inflation to ever occur (or stop occurring) in any of the fundamental equations. Furthermore, there is no test to determine which, if any, of the infinite number of superstring theories is correct.
We need a new approach. I have long admired the work of Louise Riofrio, challenging the core assumption that the speed of light is constant. Recently, I came across the work of John Kulick, which I find very interesting indeed. Having read his work, I can see that not only does Riofrio’s GM=Tc^3 equation emerge as a result of his theory, but there is a further implication: space itself is quantized. The fundamental unit of space is a Planck volume. There are no singularities in such a universe, as there is a maximum energy density: the Planck energy contained in a Planck volume. This also means that the Big Bang is an ongoing process. The universe started as a volume about 10^-15 m across, completely full of energy, and thus there was no passage of time as energy could not move from one completely-full Planck volume to any of its completely full neighbors. The Big Bang process is the addition of empty Planck volumes to our universe, which proceeds at a rate of dV/dT = (8/3)piGMT. What we view as the passage of time is actually a secondary effect of the continuous asynchronous addition of these volumes to the universe. The additions of these volumes is mathematically equivalent to the movement of the entire universe through a fourth dimension of space, accreting new Planck volumes in the gaps between existing Planck volumes. And since the universe is expanding as it moves through that fourth spatial dimension, every point in space is following a curved line and experiencing a centrifugal force equal to our calculations for the effects of dark energy. I think it’s a theory that deserves some wider attention.
I should add that this dovetails nicely with the ideas put forth by Stephen Wolfram in A New Kind Of Science. If space is quantized, then what is really being transferred from one Planck volume to the next is information.
I read that article and thought of exactly the same thing, would a non-constant speed of light account for that difference?
As an aside, have you read her ideas on micro black holes at the center of planets, as the starter object for planetary and solar formation?
After reading that my head hurts.
Me too.
tl;dr: John Kulick’s theory does away with singularities, inflation, dark energy, and dark matter; describes the Big Bang as a process that continues to this day; and provides a mechanism for Louise Riofrio’s idea of a changing speed of light.
Riofrio’s equation also falls neatly out of Machian origin of inertia theories. In 2006, Marcelo Samuel Berman put a paper up on ArXiv (http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0609026.pdf) summarizing the work that has proceeded since Sciama’s seminal 1953 paper on the Origin of Inertia.
He notes that, in “cosmological models obeying Brans-Dicke-Whitrow-Randall-Sciama relation, GM/c^2R = 1” (second eqn 26,)
Substituting R=tc, one gets GM/c^2 t c =1, and which rearranges to GM = t c^3.
Perhaps this is how Riofrio came up with the equation in the first place, I don’t know, having never found a derivation within her work. So no new ideas are strictly necessary beyond relativity and the Machian principle. I’d be interested in discussing this with you in more depth, if you are interested.
The equation is derived from the Planck equations and E=mc^2, rearranging the equations so that the Planck constant cancels out.
It looks to me like the inertial force mentioned in Berman’s paper is mathematically equivalent to the centripetal force proposed by Kulick.
The Big Bang process is the addition of empty Planck volumes to our universe, which proceeds at a rate of dV/dT = (8/3)piGMT.
If the universe is hyperbolically (de Sitter space) shaped (that is, “has dark energy”), then V could be capped with an upper bound while simultaneously, dM/dT decreases at an exponential decay rate (as distant matter slides off the horizon of observation). Such a thing would also make it difficult to extrapolate to events near the Big Bang singularity since relevant information is getting pushed out of our known part of the universe.
If Kulick is right, then you don’t have to look very far for it – the Big Bang is still happening, in your own body, in your computer, everywhere.
the Big Bang is still happening, in your own body, in your computer, everywhere
Don’t let the IRS here you say that, or they’ll use it as the latest excuse for stunningly convenient hard drive failures.
“It’s as if you’re in a big, brightly lit room, but you look around and see only a few 40-watt lightbulbs,”
Maybe they’re energy saver bulbs.
My suspicion is that their calculations rather than the universe is wrong, as Oppenheimer acknowledges: “It’s possible the simulations do not reflect reality, which by itself would be a surprise, because intergalactic hydrogen is the component of the universe that we think we understand the best.”
Here’s my theory: in addition to dark matter, we have dark light.
My name goes on this when it catches on…
LOL.
All joking aside, I am not a physicist, nor do I play one on TV, but doesn’t it seems a bit weird that all of this belief in Dark Matter that makes all the equations balance has taken root so easily and is taken very much on faith since no one has found any evidence for it or dark energy in spite of years of looking for it. It reminds me too much of magical thinking…
Are you familiar with Chandra’s observations of the Bullet Cluster? Consider this boldly titled news release:
NASA Finds Direct Proof of Dark Matter
http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/06_releases/press_082106.html (from 2006)
Bob-1, that is interesting, but not what I would call “proof”. What I what to know is can those observations be explained using Renfrio’s theory? Or something else? Dust propagation? I would also think that if proof of dark matter had been found, it would have been trumpted to the moon and back by now…
But honestly, the truth is probably stanger than we will ever know since we know so little about the universe we live in.
The article mentions a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, A search there using the keywords “Chandra bullet dark matter” yields 109 results… any idea which is the paper they’re talking about?
I’m pretty sure it is this one:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0608407
But, obviously, there has been a lot written about the issue since the above paper was published!
For those who don’t want to click, I just want to point out that the title of the paper was as boldly titled as the press release. Here’s the title, the authors, and the abstract:
A direct empirical proof of the existence of dark matter
Douglas Clowe (1), Marusa Bradac (2), Anthony H. Gonzalez (3), Maxim Markevitch (4), Scott W. Randall (4), Christine Jones (4), Dennis Zaritsky (1) ((1) Steward Observatory, Tucson, (2) KIPAC, Stanford, (3) Department of Astronomy, Gainesville, (4) CfA, Cambridge)
(Submitted on 19 Aug 2006)
We present new weak lensing observations of 1E0657-558 (z=0.296), a unique cluster merger, that enable a direct detection of dark matter, independent of assumptions regarding the nature of the gravitational force law. Due to the collision of two clusters, the dissipationless stellar component and the fluid-like X-ray emitting plasma are spatially segregated. By using both wide-field ground based images and HST/ACS images of the cluster cores, we create gravitational lensing maps which show that the gravitational potential does not trace the plasma distribution, the dominant baryonic mass component, but rather approximately traces the distribution of galaxies. An 8-sigma significance spatial offset of the center of the total mass from the center of the baryonic mass peaks cannot be explained with an alteration of the gravitational force law, and thus proves that the majority of the matter in the system is unseen.
That’s why I refer to Dark Matter and Dark Energy as epicycles: they haven’t actually been observed, they are mathematical tricks to explain why the observations don’t follow the Standard Model, rather than admitting the model needs to change.
First, I thought maybe lots and lots of this stuff might be an explanation:
http://www.newser.com/story/190892/scientists-create-super-black-that-our-eye-cant-see.html
But now I’m wondering what happens when it interacts with dark light.
(In all seriousness: I enjoyed the discrete universe speculations and references above. )
You can always balance equations by playing with numbers. Truth doesn’t care what you believe.
We have lots of data saying light speed is not constant. We just don’t have acceptance. Somebody famous needs to make a prediction (thinking Einstein and eclipses?)
Are the measurements too much in the noise?