NASA New Conference

No...just no.

At this moment I wonder how peoples' brains works and then my nice brain goes, "Now Durakken, not everyone, despite having taken several science classes that should have taught this, has heard that there is a difference between a thing and a model of how a thing works and what it is."

Dark Matter and Dark Energy exists. It is a matter of fact. Same as Gravity and Evolution. They exist as a matter of fact.

The model of WHAT that stuff is and HOW it works is a whole different story. Those are the realm of theory and models.

It's like if I said "There is a person in the other room." You can hear them. You can smell them. It is a matter of fact that there is something there that I am calling a "person." When I open the door and show you the person I am showing you WHAT a person is, giving you the theory of a person. Now if I cut up that person and show you how the person works then I am giving you the model of how a person works.

Same thing with Gravity. There is something that is attracting something to the ground that we are going to call Gravity. When you look at Newtonian physics... that's the theory of gravity. Then we we have Einstein and that is how gravity works.

we can go on with many things... the thing exists... now we need to figure out what that thing is and how it works.

So prove it. Show me photos, show me a little black blob, show me something "concrete." You can believe gravity cause it's actually affecting you, the physical evidence is happening this very second. Galaxies moving in ways we don't expect isn't "proof".

As I said before, it could very well be our understanding of such phenomena is incorrect; see: recent revelation on bacteria replacing phosphorous with arsenic. We just knew phosphorous was a requirement for life, and yet we were just proven wrong. Don't forget, there was a time when we thought the world was flat too. I'm more inclined to believe that humanity doesn't know everything about how the universe works, rather than the universe isn't doing what we think it should be doing.

If it really makes up 90% of all matter in the universe, there has to be a way to detect it besides "that galaxy is going left instead of right like I think it should." Every scientist I've ever known wants concrete evidence of something before they accept it, which is why this wide-spread acceptance of dark matter by the scientific community baffles me.

I should probably start here though, as debating with Durakkan is like debating something with a tree. Doesn't matter what I say, I'm not gonna win.

Night-Hawk it seems to me you don't understand what evidence is, considering by your own admission it is wide spread accepted, and perhaps I suck at explaining it.

Dark Matter is a phenomenon. We know that it must be there because models show that the ways stars are acting cannot occur without more gravity being there (why that is i don't exactly understand) and we can see where it is because of gravitational lensing. Which just so happens to much the models when we add enough matter to make stars in galaxies act the way they do.

Dark Matter is more or less just a place holder and while we call it matter we don't have any idea what it is, if it is actually matter, or if it is one of the types of particles we have yet to find that is predicted by quantum physics.

As far as "they claim it's all around us but I've never seen it" is just an asinine comment as you've never seen cosmic rays (another misnomer), atoms, and a number of other things. That doesn't make them not there...even more so with the idea of the atom and matter which to a certain extent could be considered non-existent in the practical sense of the word.

Dark Energy, again, is not energy. It is the phenomenon we call the thing that is responsible for the expansion of the universe at ever increasing rates.

Now if you are going to argue that just because we can only see it's effect and not it in itself so there for it doesn't exist well you've just thrown out gravity, black holes, electromagnetic spectrum and a number of other things and I presume you believe your toaster works on magic.

I think I slightly agree with Night Hawk here. We (general we not this forum's we) are saying Dark Matter/Energy are real because someone else said they think it is. What Night is saying is that scientists are people that do their best to prove something exists or is true based on provable and repeatable facts. Unfortunately at this time (yes in another few years to thousands of years this maybe different) no one can say, "Here is the undisputable evidence that these things exist."

It's very much like the old saying, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" We know it should make a sound but it can't be proven to have made a sound because there is no one to prove it. You are basically asking people to believe "HOUORGNIDHIERN" is a starship from the future, because I said it was. I can't prove it is, because I haven't seen it or heard it or smelled it but I say it is so therefore it is.

I do believe this is why we call things explaining how/what/why things are "Theories". Scientists currently can only theorize that dark matter/energy exists based on what they think they see. Once they can go out there and actually experiment with it THEN it can be proven. Until then... just a theory. Does that mean I don't believe it's out there? No, but that's my belief not a fact. I also believe there is other life out there, but it hasn't been proven yet and probably won't in my lifetime.

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Originally Posted by Lothic But if as you say you are working on a physics/astronomy degree and you flatly disagree (and even outright assume) that the currently widely accepted theories of Dark Matter/Energy must be wrong because they don't "seem" right to you because they don't match up to your everyday experiences then frankly I worry about your ability to apply that degree in any reasonable fashion. Yours is almost like a fireman in training who doesn't believe in the existence of fire.

Fire can be proven to exist, even to a fireman that doesn't believe it is real....burn him with it. What Night is saying is, like I said above, Dark Matter CAN NOT be proven at this time. And for a scientist not to agree with a given theory is totally just. It has often even been a good thing. The world being flat is a good example. It was believed by, at the time what was considered to be, scientists. Yet someone came along and said they are wrong! Wonder what happened to that guy? I think a good scientist is supposed to question things, possibly even things he/she have suggested to be fact. If not they will become blinded by any little inkling that their theory is correct and then ignore the things that suggest otherwise.

I have not seen Highlander 2. Therefore, it does not exist. As for those who claim to have seen it, you were actually watching a rerun of the prequel to Lost, generally referred to as Gilligan's Island, while under the effects of swamp gas from Venus.

Highlander...2? I've seen Highlander, and Highlander 3. I always thought it was strange that they went straight from 1 to 3, but hey, it's Hollywood, right?

However, there is an approximately 2-hour gap in my memory of early November, 1991. I have absolutely no recollection of what I was doing during that time. It's weird...


THERE IS NO HIGHLANDER 2!!!!! LA LA LA LA LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING LA LA LA LA LA!!!

Dark Matter and Dark Energy are basically code words being used as a designation for "whatever it is that is causing the phenomenon we see happening." It's very much like Newton saying there was a force, which he called Gravity, that caused matter to be attracted to other matter. He didn't know what it was, or how it did what it did, but he was able to describe its effects. It wasn't until Einstein that we started to get the picture of what gravity really was, and even now we're not sure that's really right since Einstein's gravity doesn't play nice with quantum mechanics.

Generally speaking, in science we don't "prove" theories. We try our best to disprove them. If you (the generic you) think there is something wrong with current theories (be it Dark Matter, Cell Biology, Gravity, Evolution), then that's great! Show us what's wrong with it! But as Lothic said, saying "it isn't proven, it's just a theory" is somewhat insulting to a scientist because "just a theory" took a hell of a lot of experimentation, data collection, peer review, and scrutiny. It stood up to a whole lot of attempts to disprove it. It had to gain wide acceptance among people who know a hell of a lot more about the subject than you probably do. So being "just a theory" means it's very likely close to the truth, or at least on the right path.

Again, theories can be disproven and replaced with new theories. But it takes some work to show why this theory that has found widespread acceptance is wrong.

Now, if you want to say you don't believe the theory, because you just don't buy it, then that's your right and your prerogative and no one can take that away from you. But it's got nothing to do with science.

scientist (ˈsaɪəntɪst) — n a person who studies or practises any of the sciences or who uses scientific methods
scientific method –noun a method of research in which a problem is identified, relevant data are gathered, a hypothesis is formulated from these data, and the hypothesis is empirically tested.
scientific theory noun a theory that explains scientific observations; "scientific theories must be falsifiable"

I did not mean to imply that what scientists do is passable or laughable. I am only pointing out that there is an opposing view here and to insist otherwise is just being stubborn. Which is the EXACT opposite of what a scientist should be.

Using the definitions above (found on Dictionary.com) The problem is someone(scientist) saw something in the sky and don't know what it is(problem). They hypothosized it is Dark Matter(scientific theory). Now how do we go about doing that last part of the definition of scientific theory? We can't. So until we CAN it's "just a theory". That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying it's a bad theory or that it's not possible/probable/practical. I'm just saying it's a theory. That's all.

If I were a scientist (I'm not but I do play one in COH), I could theorize that the odor from cooking broccoli is actually a harmful gas that is depleting the ozone. It's silly and a bit out there, but I could still make the claim. I've smelled broccoli cooking for YEARS, I've observed the gases inside steam leave my house hundred of not thousands of times. It singes my nose hairs even, therefore it must be harmful to the ozone. I'd have to now prove that point some way. Until I can come up with a method to prove or disprove this theory, it's just a theory. Have I belittled myself? Have I belittled the scientific community? I would hope not, as there was a guy or girl at one point that theorized the excess gas from cattle damaged the ozone. Much less glamours to prove than broccoli vapors.

To be honest I don't even have a clue what Dark Matter/Energy is or is supposed to be. I just wanted to point out that there can and are other views (why oh why do I do these things?). Do as you (general you) are insisting others do and open your mind and see the other side.

I feel that I now need to post that jpeg of the comic guys sitting at his computer and telling his wife he can't come to bed because someone on the internet is wrong.

So how about that arsenic eating bacteria that National Aeronautics and Space Administration discovered.... HERE ON EARTH?

I think the ultimate point here is just because we call something scientifically theoretical (like Dark Matter/Energy) doesn't mean it CAN'T EXIST until it's proven experimentally, just like something like gravity is not any less a theory just because we all have a very easy time accepting its effects in everyday life.

I would agree that as scientific theories go it's relatively hard to wrap our heads around the ideas of Dark Matter/Energy because their supposed properties are far beyond what most would consider "everyday experience". But just like I can't see atoms or Neptune with my naked eye the mere "weirdness" of Dark Matter/Energy is not really enough for me to claim these things don't exist.

As Quasadu said the reality of Dark Matter/Energy is that they are basically placeholders which help solve certain fundamental cosmic equations. The fact that physicists need these fudge factors to make things work according to their observations may not be enough to "prove" the existence of Dark Matter/Energy. But it does show us that there is "something" out there that needs to be accounted for and until we know exactly what that something is then what we call Dark Matter/Energy is serving a REAL purpose to explain the actual physical universe.

We may one day be able to undeniably prove the existence of Dark Matter/Energy with actual experimentation (according to the definitions for the Scientific Method that were provided) but it's just as possible that much like gravity or evolution we'll never be able to take it to that final conclusion. It may always be "just" a theory, even if it's a theory that becomes so widely accepted that no better answer ever takes its place.

What Lothic just said is basically what I am trying to convey, just obviously much better than I could. Giving "something" a name does not make it real. If all we do is accept it then fine but that still doesn't make it undeniable fact.

I did read the Wiki info on Dark Matter. Now my head hurts and I must drink copious amounts of beer. Basically there is something out "there" that as yet can't be explained, so 'they" named it and are in the process of trying to falsify it. Until "they" figure out what it's made of then it's just like Q said, a place holder.

Heck I've forgotten my point by now... Oh well here's to Dark Matter/Energy! Cheers!

*sigh*

When I first responded to this I made it perfectly clear that THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOMETHING EXISTING AND KNOWING WHAT THAT THING IS.

Dark Matter exists. Period. I can show you the gravitational lensing that is caused by it.

Dark Energy exists. Period. I can show you the expansion that is caused by it.

I have no clue what either Dark Matter nor Dark Energy is. There is no theory for what they are or what they might be.

Now whether it'll be renamed or subsumed into something else doesn't matter. For now, it's the name of the phenomena that is occurring.



if someone were to suddenly start floating in mid-air there is no way I could say, "I don't know what is happening so that isn't happening" No. The Floating is happening. How it's happening, why it's happening, and what is happening has nothing to do with the FACT it is happening.

Like wise there is the FACT of Gravity and there is the THEORY of Gravity. These are two very different things. Gravity exists. That is a fact. I can observe that it is happening, that it is there. Everything else is theory.


And as you said, Night-Hawk, the theories and hypothesis of science need to fit the fact. Well, The Dark Matter phenomena is a fact. Any theories or hypothesis that does not fit that this phenomena existing is not right...or at least not 100% right.

On the phrase "just a theory:"

Science, or rather the scientific method, really just deals with three things: hypotheses, observations, and theories. The only thing in Science that are "facts" in the colloquial sense are observations. Gravity (specifically, the theory of universal gravitation) is not a fact. "Things fall down" is also not a fact: its an induction. "I observed this object falling to the Earth" is an observation, and if trustworthy is a fact.

Theories never become facts. Theories eventually become generally accepted. Hypotheses become theories after they are tested, and they are tested by the somewhat misleadingly named process of falsification. A scientific hypothesis is supposed to make predictions which cannot be otherwise deduced in the absence of the hypothesis, and those predictions must be theoretically capable of being proved false. If these predictions are tested, and they are shown to be correct, then when a preponderance of the evidence demonstrates the predictions of the hypothesis to be verified the hypothesis becomes a scientific theory.

We will never directly "observe" universal gravitation. There's no way to know that gravity won't change behavior tomorrow, or doesn't work differently in specifically one place in the cosmos we haven't observed yet. We theorize these things to be true. They may yet turn out to be false.

However, it is *extraordinarily unlikely* to be false in any large way. Furthermore, even if one day we determine that gravity in fact doesn't work the way we theorize, any new theory will have to explain why it *looked* like it worked the way we theorized under so many conditions and circumstances. That's what happened with General Relativity. GR didn't "overturn" Newton. Newton still makes extremely accurate predictions for essentially all circumstances that newton himself could have ever experienced or tested. It works for nearly all calculations we would ever need to do involving gravity. NASA still uses Newtonian calculations for spaceflight navigation. General relativity was *constrained* by Newton. GR had to explain why Newton almost always *looked* correct, and if GR did not agree with Newton in low energy environments, it would be GR that was wrong, because we already had billions of observations that backed up Newton in low energy environments. Anything that comes along in the future will have to agree with both Newton and General Relativity *most of the time* or it will be wrong.


On the subject of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Why do so many cosmologists believe in Dark Matter and Dark Energy? Well, even though neither has been directly observed (niether have individual neutrinos, but we believe in them) there is strong evidence to support both. Most convincingly, when cosmologists attempt to reconcile discrepancies in cosmological observations and invoke dark matter and dark energy to explain them, they always seem to invoke *the same* dark matter and dark energy.

Suppose dark matter and dark energy didn't exist, and instead all of these completely different observations were either in error, or were explainable by some other unknown phenomenon. That's possible, but it would be an incredible coincidence if many separate unknown phenomena all happened to behave in exactly the same way.

Take dark matter. When we observe galactic motion, we discover that galactic revolutions (stars going around the center of the galaxy) doesn't behave like we think it should if the galaxy had the mass distribution we would assume from visual observations. The galaxy should be much more massive, and what's more it can't be that what we see is just heavier: the mass of the galaxy looks concentrated in the center visually but gravitational observations suggest the mass is evenly distributed in a "halo" around the galaxy. We can compute what that missing mass has to be to be consistent with our observations. It could be lots of things, but we can say whatever it is the amount of mass in individual galaxies is some multiple of the visible mass.

The Cosmic Microwave Background can be spectrally analyzed. In simple terms, its power spectrum can provide clues to the amount of matter in the universe and the amount of it that was coupled to radiation - the stuff that would be normally visible because it interacts with photons. It turns out the CMB makes a prediction about the ratio of normal matter to non-interacting matter - invisible matter.

We can look out into the sky for what are called weak gravitational lensing effects. This is where a large massive object - like a galactic cluster - bends the light from extremely distant objects like quasars or other galaxies. These lensing effects can be used to map the mass distributions of the cluster, and compared to the visual mass in that cluster. Again, these observations suggest the amount of mass in the clusters is higher than the visible mass by some amount.

All three of these observations could be errors of some kind. They could be caused by completely different phenomenon. They could simply represent cases where scientific theory is incomplete in explaining these effects. But if any of these things were true, it wouldn't explain why all three (plus many other independent lines of inquiry) all predict *the same* ratio of dark to light matter. When all of these observations suggest the same gap in mass measurement, it strongly suggests that either they are all being caused by the same thing - dark matter - or there is an enormous coincidence at work causing many different observations to be wrong in exactly the same way. And that seems highly unlikely.

Why dark matter (and to a lesser extent dark energy) is generally accepted is not because any one set of observations seems to prove its existence, but because so many completely unrelated ones seem to predict the same kind of dark matter to exist. That suggests there is one root cause of all of these observations, and that root cause is dark matter.

What dark matter *is* is something still undetermined. But that is how we can know something exists to a high degree of certainty without actually seeing it or even having a way to observe it. The neutrino was conjectured in the same way. Radioactive decay was observed that did not conserve momentum. So either the conservation of momentum principle was false, or something we couldn't see was taking the missing momentum away. Science presumed the latter, and Science was correct.