What are your thoughts on dark matter?

[Humberto]

To me, it seems unscientific, wreckless and intellectually dishonest to explain that galaxies don't fly apart by invoking a hypothetical, yet to be detected, new type of matter called "dark matter". Yet we are told dark matter must exist in abundance to account for the gravitational shortfall of ordinary matter. It reminds me of the luminiferous aether of the pre-relativity era. I feel it takes astrophysics into the realm of hocus pocus. I feel that scientists are missing something. Dark matter is not the most rational explanation for why galaxies don't fly apart. I think a more rational explanation is the existence of a fifth fundamental force of nature.

 

[FrankCastle]

Another racist thread.
Bleh

 

[Techne]

To me, it seems unscientific, wreckless and intellectually dishonest to explain that galaxies don't fly apart by invoking a hypothetical, yet to be detected, new type of matter called "dark matter". Yet we are told dark matter must exist in abundance to account for the gravitational shortfall of ordinary matter. It reminds me of the luminiferous aether of the pre-relativity era. I feel it takes astrophysics into the realm of hocus pocus. I feel that scientists are missing something. Dark matter is not the most rational explanation for why galaxies don't fly apart. I think a more rational explanation is the existence of a fifth fundamental force of nature.

Like dark energy?

In physics there are two kinds of empty space (or space-time if you want). There is the empty quantized space of quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory, and there is empty, smooth and continuous space of general relativity.

In quantum physics, vacuum states are associated with zero-point energy. Zero-point energy (ZPE) applies to the strong, the weak and the electromagnetic interactions. In general relativity, dark energy is associated with vacuum energy.

If quantum theory and general relativity are to be harmonized one can see why ZPE and dark energy can be the same thing.

The Calphysics Institute has a good piece on the zero-point energy of quantum physics and NASA has a reasonable piece on Dark Energy.

The Greeks had a fifth element called fifth "quintessence" or aether (not to be confused with modern versions of ether). Lawrence Krauss talks a little about it in his book Quintessence: The Mystery of the Missing Mass (good read).

 

[Unhappy438]

Like dark energy?

In physics there are two kinds of empty space (or space-time if you want). There is the empty quantized space of quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory, and there is empty, smooth and continuous space of general relativity.

In quantum physics, vacuum states are associated with zero-point energy. Zero-point energy (ZPE) applies to the strong, the weak and the electromagnetic interactions. In general relativity, dark energy is associated with vacuum energy.

If quantum theory and general relativity are to be harmonized one can see why ZPE and dark energy can be the same thing.

The Calphysics Institute has a good piece on the zero-point energy of quantum physics and NASA has a reasonable piece on Dark Energy.

The Greeks had a fifth element called fifth "quintessence" or aether (not to be confused with modern versions of ether). Lawrence Krauss talks a little about it in his book Quintessence: The Mystery of the Missing Mass (good read).

Forgive me if i misunderstand your statement but i fail to see how labeling dark energy as a fundamental force alleviates the problem of dark matter?

 

[Arthur]

Hasn't been seen in ages, so can't say, really.

 

[copacetic]

I wish I knew enough to comment, but no matter how many books I read, or lectures I watch about this stuff, I can't wrap my mind around it enough to have a robust opinion.

 

[Elimentals]

Dark matter is just a place holder word.

Its like X or Y in math. We don't know what it is just that formulas work with the X value, nothing more nothing less

 

[Necuno]

What are your thoughts on previously disadvantaged matter?

FTFY

 

[Elimentals]

[video=youtube;6ypfFz38Lg4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ypfFz38Lg4[/video]

 

[Unhappy438]

Here is a really awesome entry guide video on dark matter and dark energy

[video=youtube;vwOTVX6Kxjs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwOTVX6Kxjs[/video]

 

[TJ99]

Well first off, lets list a few other people's definitions/opinions.

Then 2: never, ever state or admit our own interpretation/opinion.

3: Leave spaces between lines to appear authoritative

4: Eventually wrangle it into a semantic debate about a particular word, never mentioned in the thread, until the argument was brought up, and whether it has anything to do with the discussion or not, until someone gives up out of sheer frustration with idiocy.

Oh, I see I've been beaten up to step 3 already, dang.

But as for the OP, which warrants a serious response:

I feel that scientists are missing something.

I definitely agree (with the wording, if not the sentiment).. if they didn't miss something, they would have stopped being scientists a long time ago. Assuming that what we know about how the universe works, given the miniscule portion of it we know anything about, constitutes all the knowledge possible, is a bit silly.

 

[Techne]

Sean Carrol over at Discover Magazine just posted the following article:
Dark Matter vs. Aether

Probably the biggest single misconception I come across in popular discussions of dark matter and dark energy is the accusation that these concepts are a return to the discredited idea of the aether. They are not — in fact, they are precisely the opposite.
Back in the later years of the 19th century, physicists had put together an incredibly successful synthesis of electricity and magnetism, topped by the work of James Clerk Maxwell. They had managed to show that these two apparently distinct phenomena were different manifestations of a single underlying “electromagnetism.” One of Maxwell’s personal triumphs was to show that this new theory implied the existence of waves traveling at the speed of light — indeed, these waves are light, not to mention radio waves and X-rays and the rest of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum.
The puzzle was that waves were supposed to represent oscillations in some underlying substance, like water waves on an ocean. If light was an electromagnetic wave, what was “waving”? The proposed answer was the aether, sometimes called the “luminiferous aether” to distinguish it from the classical element. This idea had a direct implication: that Maxwell’s description of electromagnetism would be appropriate as long as we were at rest with respect to the aether, but that its predictions (for the speed of light, for example) would change as we moved through the aether. The hunt was to find experimental evidence for this idea, but attempts came up short. The Michelson-Morley experiment, in particular, implied that the speed of light did not change as the Earth moved through space, in apparent contradiction with the aether idea.
So the aether was a theoretical idea that never found experimental support. In 1905 Einstein pointed out how to preserve the symmetries of Maxwell’s equations without referring to aether at all, in the special theory of relativity, and the idea was relegated to the trash bin of scientific history.
Aether was a concept introduced by physicists for theoretical reasons, which died because its experimental predictions were ruled out by observation. Dark matter and dark energy are the opposite: they are concepts that theoretical physicists never wanted, but which are forced on us by the observations.
Dark matter, in particular, is nothing at all like the aether. It’s something that seems to behave exactly like an ordinary particle of matter, just one with no electric charge or strong interaction with known matter particles. Those aren’t hard to invent; particle physicists have approximately a billion different candidate ideas, and experiments are making great progress in trying to detect them directly. But the idea didn’t come along because theorists had all sorts of irresistible ideas; we were dragged kicking and screaming into accepting dark matter after decades of observations of galaxies and clusters convinced people that regular matter simply wasn’t enough. And once that idea is accepted, you can go out and make new predictions based on the dark matter model, and they keep coming true — for example in studies of gravitational lensing and the cosmic microwave background. If the aether had this much experimental support, it would have been enshrined in textbooks years ago.
Dark energy is conceptually closer to the aether idea — like the aether, it’s not a particle, it’s a smooth component that fills space. Unlike the aether, it does not have a “frame of rest” (as far as we can tell); the dark energy looks the same no matter how you move through it. (Not to mention that it has nothing to do with electromagnetic radiation — it’s dark!) And of course, it was forced on us by observations, especially the 1998 discovery that the universe is accelerating, which ended up winning the Nobel Prize in 2011. That discovery took theoretical physicists around the world by surprise — we knew it was possible in principle, but almost nobody actually believed it was true. But when the data speak, a smart scientist listens. Subsequent to that amazing finding, cosmologists have made other predictions based on the dark energy idea, which (as with dark matter) keep coming true: for the cosmic microwave background again, as well as for the distribution of large-scale structure in the universe.
There is still much we don’t know about dark matter and dark energy; in particular, we certainly haven’t nailed down what exactly they are (although we have many plausible ideas), and the only way we’ve detected them is indirectly, through their effects on gravitational fields in the universe. But they are not arbitrary; both ideas make very specific predictions for what those gravitational effects should be, which astronomers have tested and verified. Unlike the aether, which shrunk and eventually disappeared under experimental scrutiny, the case for dark matter and dark energy continues to grow stronger.

And this from NASA:
Fermi Observations of Dwarf Galaxies Provide New Insights on Dark Matter

 

[Swa]

I don't exactly agree with him. Other ideas have been put forward some as simple as an incomplete or inaccurate theory of relativity. Just like Newtonian physics breaks down on a large scale it may break down on a cosmic scale. If this is the case it's just like the aether both filling a gap in knowledge. The same can be said for dark energy. Halton Arp has shown evidence that the Hubble expansion or acceleration could be an illusion.

 

[zippy]

To me, it seems unscientific, wreckless and intellectually dishonest to explain that galaxies don't fly apart by invoking a hypothetical, yet to be detected, new type of matter called "dark matter". Yet we are told dark matter must exist in abundance to account for the gravitational shortfall of ordinary matter. It reminds me of the luminiferous aether of the pre-relativity era. I feel it takes astrophysics into the realm of hocus pocus. I feel that scientists are missing something. Dark matter is not the most rational explanation for why galaxies don't fly apart. I think a more rational explanation is the existence of a fifth fundamental force of nature.

You need to take a closer look at why they call it "Dark".

It has yet to be observed/measured directly.

Ever heard of the "mystery" object in a matchbox experiment? The teacher puts something in a matchbox, shakes it about and asks pupils to guess what is inside.

Ofc., scientists are missing something. They are the first to acknowledge it. The current theory encompassing Dark Matter best explains the movement and shape of galaxies. There is ongoing research to work out exactly what Dark Matter is and how to observe and measure it directly.

Read up on how Neptune was discovered. Its presence was predicted before it was observed. The orbit of Uranus could not be explained as it did not fit in with Newtons laws. Using Newtons laws, astronomers calculated that there has to be another planet influencing the orbit of Uranus. Using Newtons laws they calculated where this planet should be and lo and behold there it was.

This is the process where a theory is developed to explain how things work and then the theory is tested. Sometimes the theory is wrong and it is discarded. Sometimes(actually most of the time) it doesn't quite fit and needs tweaking.

This is the process of scientific discovery.

 

[Swa]

You need to take a closer look at why they call it "Dark".

It has yet to be observed/measured directly.

Ever heard of the "mystery" object in a matchbox experiment? The teacher puts something in a matchbox, shakes it about and asks pupils to guess what is inside.

Not really a true comparison. You know there is an object and it makes a sound. Dark matter makes no sound and can't be observed.

Ofc., scientists are missing something. They are the first to acknowledge it. The current theory encompassing Dark Matter best explains the movement and shape of galaxies. There is ongoing research to work out exactly what Dark Matter is and how to observe and measure it directly.

Always love the rhetoric of how scientists acknowledge mistakes and science correcting itself. No it's usually other scientists that correct something and not science that corrects itself but people that correct it. Often the very people that opposes it. It's a valid criticism that prevailing ideas are not always correct or accurate.

Read up on how Neptune was discovered. Its presence was predicted before it was observed. The orbit of Uranus could not be explained as it did not fit in with Newtons laws. Using Newtons laws, astronomers calculated that there has to be another planet influencing the orbit of Uranus. Using Newtons laws they calculated where this planet should be and lo and behold there it was.

And using Newton's laws there has to be other stuff pushing and pulling on solar systems. Yet that was not what was proposed or if it was then the people that proposed it were wrong, but instead general relativity was developed and it dealt with the discrepancies in Newtonian physics very well. Why is it so inconceivable that general relativity breaks down on an even larger scale instead of some unobservable mysterious substance that nobody can detect?

 

[Geriatrix]

Why is it so inconceivable that general relativity breaks down on an even larger scale instead of some unobservable mysterious substance that nobody can detect?

I don't know. Physics guys?
Is it possible that maybe, over very vast distances, gravity might have fall-off or something? Temporal fall-off even, that would affect observation? That would be amazing.

 

[Devill]

I do not get the problem.

There is something that is making our 1 + 1 = 7.

Thus we add in a x + 1 + 1 = 7. Then we try and prove that X = "element" that we suspect it to be (in this case 5).

It may also not be five (1+1)^X = 7 ... etc etc..

Dark matter / Dark energy etc etc are all just "variables" denoting that we don't know what they are.

 

[Geriatrix]

I do not get the problem.

There is something that is making our 1 + 1 = 7.

Thus we add in a x + 1 + 1 = 7. Then we try and prove that X = "element" that we suspect it to be (in this case 5).

It may also not be five (1+1)^X = 7 ... etc etc..

Dark matter / Dark energy etc etc are all just "variables" denoting that we don't know what they are.

What Swa is say is that its not that simple and I agree to a degree.(See that? I made a rhyme )

Its more like;

X + F = 4 - T but for some reason X + F + T = 7

thus we have to add a D = 3 on the right at the first equation or something is missing in the other variables. Does it make sense?

 

[Devill]

What Swa is say is that its not that simple and I agree to a degree.(See that? I made a rhyme )

Its more like;

X + F = 4 - T but for some reason X + F + T = 7

thus we have to add a D = 3 on the right at the first equation or something is missing in the other variables. Does it make sense?

Haha, that is what I was trying to say

It may also not be five (1+1)^X = 7 ... etc etc..

I am puzzled by the OPs thoughts that it = Myth and fantasy and takes away from science...

 

[Geriatrix]

I am puzzled by the OPs thoughts that it = Myth and fantasy and takes away from science...

Ignorance