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What If Dark Matter Really Doesn't Exist?
sonar67 writes "According to The Economist: 'It was beautiful, complex and wrong. In 150AD, Ptolemy of Alexandria published his theory of epicycles--the idea that the moon, the sun and the planets moved in circles which were moving in circles which were moving in circles around the Earth. This theory explained the motion of celestial objects to an astonishing degree of precision. It was, however, what computer programmers call a kludge: a dirty, inelegant solution. Some 1,500 years later, Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer, replaced the whole complex edifice with three simple laws. Some people think modern astronomy is based on a kludge similar to Ptolemy's. At the moment, the received wisdom is that the obvious stuff in the universe--stars, planets, gas clouds and so on--is actually only 4% of its total content. About another quarter is so-called cold, dark matter, which is made of different particles from the familiar sort of matter, and can interact with the latter only via gravity. The remaining 70% is even stranger. It is known as dark energy, and acts to push the universe apart. However, the existence of cold, dark matter and dark energy has to be inferred from their effects on the visible, familiar stuff. If something else is actually causing those effects, the whole theoretical edifice would come crashing down.'"
So what if it doesn't really exist? We know very little about anything anyway. Trying to find a unified explanation via "String Theory" is spotty at best but at least it "helps".
What's the difference if dark-matter is really just another false theory? In the long run it's not going to make a whole heck of a lot of difference.
If something else is actually causing those effects, the whole theoretical edifice would come crashing down.
As it should.
-Colin
Much like a dog staring at a shiny object, I'm fascinated by this but I don't understand it.
Jedi don't stand a chance.
HAD
It will be interesting to see how scientists who have staked their entire careers upon the existence of dark matter would react to the discovery that it does not in fact exist. Ideally an invalid theory is dropped, and a new, more "correct" theory is created. However, I have a feeling that a lot of people have invested too much time and effort into dark matter to let it go without some serious evidence.
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
Actually, with Einstein's relativity, doesn't Ptolemy's theories hold true? Everything is relative to a point of view?
Sorry I didn't ask this question in Modern Physics's class. It was a morning class, and I was sleeping.
...but doesn't String Theory tend to suggest that "dark matter" isn't actually dark matter, but instead is gravitation bleeding from other universes? The same theory also explains why gravity in this universe is so weak. Because most of it bleeds of into other universes via the higher dimensions, it's weak enough for you and I to move our limbs.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
We don't understand something fully? Wow... that's about as brilliant as deciding to cut my sandwich in triangles instead of in squares.
The truth is this. We have such a little understanding of actually governing laws that we can't begin to fathom it. However, that doesn't stop us in progression to learning. Just because this theory might not be right (and probably isn't) doesn't mean we are any less an idiotic species. We've been working on these theories for many millenia. One of them turning out to be wrong won't be a surprise... it's a probability. Without the wrong hypthosesis, we can never stumble onto the correct ones. Its Edison's, "Every time I fail, I know one more way how to NOT build it" idea.
...then 99.9999999% of the world won't notice. But it will be on CNN anyways.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
There seem to be growing "hints" that something is wrong with current theories about the very nature and behavior of gravity. This includes alleged dark matter that cannot be identitied, planetary space probes with slight deviations from expected sun "pull" [1], and the fact that there is no identifiable "negative" gravity while the other forces do have negative values or particles.
[1] It was originally thought that heat generated from nuclear fuel cells was "pushing" the probes, but this was mostly ruled out because the heat lessens over time, but the pull was constant.
Table-ized A.I.
Science has been progressing on the basis of constantly proving theories as kludges and bringing about something newer and more real. Imagine if our currently held view was true (before Standard Model), we will never be able to travel faster than light, we'll never harness energy bigger than a hydrogen bomb, we'll never really travel far beyond the Solar system, travel back in time etc.
Before the cannon was invented everyone thought the arrow was the greatest weapon, and few could really predict the power of "Little Boy" on Hiroshima. Quantum Mechanics has given us so much hope, of unknown and unexplainable realities, and that far more is possible than we first thought. It means the road before us is much longer, but far more interesting. I'd prefer it that way.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Dark matter had better exist- otherwise, I've wasted a hell of a lot of money on that dark matter damage insurance I bought a couple years back...
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
Then I can walk down the hall in the middle of the night without fear of stepping on my little boy's building blocks.
It's more than that. If Dark Matter doesn't exist, we will be forced to re-examine more than just our current picture of the universe. Galactic Rotation curves, velocity dispersions of galaxy clusters, the flatness of the universe implied by the CMB, type Ia supernovae data, as well as other distance indicators, all imply that the parameter "Omega_mass" (the mass density of the universe divided by the critical density) is about 0.3. If there is no "dark matter", we don't know how to explain this number. Baryons, i.e. stars, planets, gas, etc., make up only an "Omega" of 0.044 +/- 0.009. This constraint is from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and is very strong. Although there are plenty of open questions about dark matter, it seems to me (just an astrophysics grad student) that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for not only dark matter, but the model of "cold" dark matter as well. None of the alternatives can explain even half of what Dark Matter can, including modifying gravity. Plus, Dark Matter is consistent with GR, the big bang, and everything else we hold dear about physics and astronomy, whereas other theories don't. Just my two cents... Ethan
There is some intriguing evidence of the existence of strange quark matter, a dark matter candidate, which we've recently published in the Bulletine of the Seismological Society of America. as previously discussed on /.
Dark Matter will be taught to school children as the Aether of 21st century science.
You keep telling yourself that... God boy. However only 7% of scientists believe in a personal god.
The keynote speaker at the 2003 SIGGRAPH conference in San Diego was the British astrophysicist Anthony Lasenby. He claimed that a new kind of unified Euclidean and hyperbolic geometry could explain acceleration and deceleration in the Big Bang. He was talking at SIGGRAPH because his new unification of geometry is supposed to be more elegant for computer graphics modeling than the current homogeneous coordinates now used. He wrote a book about the geometry. But I have been unable to find a paper relating to the cosmological application on the web.
This is not the first time geometry has been used to unify and simplify physics. Previous examples are Galilean coordinates, special relativity, and general relativity.
Bringing this up without mentioning M.O.N.D. is irresponsible journalism. MOND (Modification of Newtonian Dymanics) is a theory that simply says that gravity 'decays' at a slightly different rate than expected over astronomical distances. The effects predicted by this theory are spot on to the observed effects that dark energy and matter try to explain.
I googled about found this link, but I first read about it in New Scientist about a year ago.
The parent is either the most insightful thing ever posted, or the biggest bunch of doubletalk crap I've ever read.
Would someone please translate this and tell me what the hell is being said?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
well, let's see here. 4% of postulated matter in the universe is known to exist. 96% of postulated matter in the universe is NOT known to exist. that's a fine fudge factor to have in a test, and might explain where budget figures come from in the government :-D
:-D
it certainly explains where a lot of my assignments come from at work, lol
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Just like the Theory of Evolution.
Yes, exactly. That evolution occurs is a fact which can be demonstrated. On the other hand, the theory, which tries to explain how evolution works, could be inaccurate/wrong. The theory itself may change many times and might be completely overhauled for some new radical explanation. However, regardless of whether or not we understand the mechanisms behind it, nothing can change the fact that evolution exists.
See: Evolution is a Fact and a Theory
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
At the risk of feeding the trolls...
No, Relativity (neither the Special nor General theory) says that "everything is relative". Special Relativity says that inertial motion is relative in flat spacetime (i.e. in the absence of gravity). This is another way of saying that all inertial coordinate reference frames are equivalent. (Special Relativity says more than that, namely that light propagates at the constant speed 'c' independent of the motion of its source. This is what separates Special Relativity from Galilean Relativity.) General Relativity says that *locally*, accelerated motion is equivalent to inertial motion in a gravitational field. (The "locally" part accounts for the fact that the gravitational field lines are not parallel, but converge on the gravitational source.)
What this boils down to is that circular motion is accelerated motion, not inertial motion, and is not simply relative, and spacetime is not flat surrounding bodies that planets orbit. So no, Relativity does not validate the epicycles theory.
You can only make mathematical proofs if you accept some set of axioms that themselves cannot be proved (and thus must be taken for granted) as the foundation for your proof. As for 1+1=2, it can be proved directly using the basic axioms of arithmetic which neither are hard to understand nor require 300 pages to express.
I may be showing a few gray hairs here, but revolutions in the sciences have occurred in my lifetime with scientists adapting fairly well. The first was the acceptance of Big bang in the late 1950s. Between 1927 and 1955 the Big Bang was just one of several "equally attractive alternative theories" which included the eternal-infinite universe and continuous creation of matter. The microwave background and the abundance of helium brought the big bang into the fore front.
In the 1960s the quark unification of subatomic particle became the predominate theory. Plus quantum electrodyanamics was verfied in high energy experiments to extremely high precision.
Also in the 1960s plate tectonics replaced an up-and-down explanation of geologic forces.
If the evidence suggests a more powerful theory, then physicists will revise their theories again. Science does not stay attached to incorrect theories (though block-headed individuals do).
I may be incredibly naive, but it has always bothered me that we insist on believing there are only 4 types of force in the Universe, each operating on widely different scales. Why can't there be other forces that operate on too large a scale or too small a scale for us to observe? Is the postulate of "dark force" effectively a theory about a fifth type of force?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
First claim: Analyses of the WMAP data on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) show correlations with galaxy clusters that indicate the official analyses of the data are wrong. I find this highly unlikely. First, the effect of the hot gas in those galaxy clusters on the CMB is well known - it is called the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect and perturbs the spectrum in a well-known way. Second, the official fits to the WMAP data use a consensus cosmology model with about 12 free parameters to fit a dataset of more than a hundred points... beautifully. Third, the consensus cosmology itself has been built up out of a huge array of other observations (supernova distances; Big Bang nucleosynthesis; the "weighing" of galaxies and galaxy clusters; the age-dating of globular clusters), all of which were pointing to the existence of dark matter (even within our own Galaxy!) long before WMAP was even launched. Fourth, modern theories of particle physics also give us good reason to expect the existence of dark matter particles, independent of any astronomical observations whatsoever. So WMAP has simply been the final nail in the coffin, and anyone who wants to overturn dark matter and dark energy has a great deal of additional work ahead of them.
Second claim: Measurements of the masses (actually, the luminosities and temperatures) of high-redshift galaxy clusters indicate a high fraction of baryonic mass, removing one of the justifications for positing dark matter. This finding is even more fishy-sounding. To understand this, realize that the group in question has deliberately chosen the most-distant and therefore hardest-to-study clusters to study, and adopted temperature-mass relationships that are calibrated in the local universe (and may not apply at these great distances) in order to find that their sample differs from the standard model predictions. Without even bothering to list all the ways in which they might be wrong, let me simply state that even if they are right there is a lot of independent support for the dark matter + dark energy picture that neither of these groups is addressing.
Rather than distract yourself by trying to figure out why the carefully constructed consensus cosmology might be wrong, then, I think it is more useful to examine the remarkable ways in which it has been proven right in the last few years. Altogether it is truly a wonder of the modern world - even if it may at some point be shown inadequate to the universe we live in.
-renard
Same idea here. Kepler's laws reduced a nightmarish tangle of mathematics to a three line "program", if you will. Out current model of how various things in our universe interact requires a degree in cosmology to fully grasp, and a PhD to do any meaningful work in. Imagine reducing that to one chapter of a freshman-level physics or astronomy course.
Einstein's Special and General Relativity, Maxwell's Equations, and Schrodinger's Equation are all expressed in a few lines of equations. But you need extensive math and physics training to relate them to the familiar world around us. Simple doesn't mean easy. Theoretical physicists are already busily looking for theoretical formulations in which dark matter and dark energy arise naturally, rather than as a kluge. Of course, if the original observations turn out to have been misinterpreted, they may be wasting their time.
As a scientist, I'm sure you can completely explain this mathematically, as a scientist should.
Oh wait, you're not a scientist. Oh well.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
From your article: "60% responded...", "half replied...". In other words, a self-selecting survey. Demonstrates nothing.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
In particular, dark matter, though incredibly mysterious, is probably on firm enough ground that it will withstand a series of challenges. Galactic rotation curves and measurements of cluster temperatures both give very strong evidence for dark matter on vastly different scales; in addition, it is difficult (OK, fine: downright impossible in standard Einsteinian gravity) to get any kind of structure to form *at all* in the universe if one is only allowed to use the visible matter. The precise ratio of dark to visible is definitely up in the air; and, of course, there are competing models that modify gravity -- if these matured enough (they may already have -- I haven't kept up) to make predictions on a wider range of scales, they might work as well.
Indeed, a lot of gravity modifications (extra dimensions, etc.) behave *phenomenologically* as if there was dark matter -- so all the effort we've put into simulating dark matter may not be in vain after all, even if Einsteinian four dimensional spacetime is not the name of the game.
In contrast, indeed, is the exact count of the "baryons" (ordinary matter.) I would be very surprised if we were off by a factor of (lets be ultra-conservative here) five in the baryon number, which is constrained very well by big bang nucleosynthesis, whose predictions remain in the "ordinary" realm of nuclear explosions. Something we know a little about.
The real mystery is "dark energy." There, the evidence is a lot shakier. It rests on a few pillars. There is a theoretical bias that wants the universe to be flat (so that the missing mass-energy is made up for by some dark energy component that doesn't cluster and affect our galactic rotation curves.) There are some really excellent (but difficult) measurements of universe acceleration, a signature of dark energy, from people who observe distant supernovae (these provide "standard candles" that allow you to measure distance given an apparent brightness.)
Finally, there are the CMB measurements, which provide a similar kind of distance measurement, but are open to alternative interpretations (instead of measuring apparent brightness, they measure apparent angular size -- but it is perhaps possible, if you squeezed around, to construct a different model where the apparent angular size is squished in odd ways.)
And then there are a host of other measurements that one might call more "marginal" (without prejudice to the people who work very hard to do them -- I aspire to be one of them.) They rely on a few more astrophysical assumptions, and perhaps would not convince the slashdot skeptic. (My profound apologies if I've missed out someone's awesome measurement.)
One big "trouble" is that we haven't seen good evidence for a very particular signal that one would associate with the simplest model of dark energy. (This is the "low quadrupole" -- the news stories you read about finite universes are from people who, in part, are motivated by the desire to explain this low quadrupole signal by other means.) Of course, it is entirely possible to make more exotic dark energy models that don't show this signal (I've coauthored a paper on one such model), but that missing signal, gosh, damn.
The Economist is usually good with science articles, but it really kind of missed the point on this one. Shanks et al. are not "bringing down the whole edifice"; they are pointing out what they see as a possibly problematic signal in the CMB data. This may inspire in some a little additional -- and very healthy -- skepticism about the dominant models. But it is important to mention that there really is no "dark energy mafia"; nearly any astrophysicist worth his or her salt would drop dark energy like a stone if the evidence started piling up, and many, many astrophysicists keep a hand in alternate models that don't rely on dark energy because, hey, what a scoop that would be.
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How many scientists believe in God?
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Just to show another angle (as opposed to the highly doubtful statement that only 7% believe in God), I Googled and found:
In the US, according to a survey published in Nature in 1997, four out of 10 scientists believe in God. Just over 45% said they did not believe, and 14.5% described themselves as doubters or agnostics. This ratio of believers to non-believers had not changed in 80 years. Should anybody be surprised? (from http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13
So no, it's not most scientists, as it's mostly half and half (according to Nature/Guardian).
Lots of things were done this way. Specifically, Planck's attempt to correct the ultra-violet catasctrophe of black-body radiation theory by quantizing the radiation was a total kludge. The theory matched the data fairly well, which led to a flood of new inquiries, leading to Einstein's description of the 'photoelectric effect' and the birth of quantum mechanics.
The concept of the gyromagnetic ratio, or Lande g factor, for particles was another kludge that can be adequately explained using sufficient detail of Quantum Field Theory.
Even more macroscopic phenomenological theories, like Landau's theory of 2nd-order phase transitions expands the free energy of a physical system in terms of one or more order parameters. That's a kludge and a half, but in many cases adequately describes physical systems close to phase transition points that formal Hamiltonian interaction methods cannot get to.
Extending on this is the Ginzberg-Landau theory using a complex order parameter for superconductors. (Remember Ginzberg just won the Nobel Prize for Physics a few months ago. Landau won it decades ago and would have won it again if he was alive). It was shown by Gor'kov that the BCS theory of superconductivity (ie, formally-applied theory involving Cooper pairs of electrons and superconducting gap) approaches the Ginzberg-Landau expansion at the critical point.
So yes, Kludges are really used all the time in physics, and they're no black eye at all. There's two reasons we need to use these. Firstly - macroscopic systems are just so damn complex one cannot solve a 10^23 dimensional Hamiltonian, that's ridiculous. So even from basic principles complicated order can emerge.
The second reason is that it is quite likely we don't fully know the ultimate physics basic building blocks, just a very good approximation of them. Complicated systems can reveal small perturbations from the standard model that's accepted.
make world, not war
Dark matter is simply a theory. If Newtonian mechanics is correct (we don't even need to worry about relativistic corrections here), and the laws of physics are the same everywhere (a fundamental principle of science), then there is a lot more matter than we can see (i.e., that is glowing). We can tell this by looking at the rotation curves of galaxies, and even the behavior of clusters of galaxies. There must be a lot of matter there that we can't see, if Newtonian mechanics is a reasonable approximation. It's called dark matter.
Dark matter in and of itself is really not a revolutionary concept. In most wavelengths of light, for instance, you qualify as dark matter (you emit no visible light, although you do emit infrared radiation, so you're not completely dark matter). Look around your room or office. How many things emit electromagnetic radiation. Your computer and your monitor, sure. Your light fixtures and other electronic equipment either emit light or heat. But most of the stuff around you emits internal radiation. A pen is dark matter. A cup of dark matter (once its reached thermal equilibrium, of course). That book is dark matter. The concept of dark matter is not only not revolutionary and mind-blowing, it's downright mundane. Given the survey of stuff in your office/room, is it any surprise that most of the junk in the Universe doesn't emit radiation on its own?
When we start getting into the weird realms of dark matter is when we start applying the Standard Model and find out that it doesn't seem like all that dark matter can be explained by baryonic matter (basically, protons and neutrons -- what we would normally consider matter). That's where things start getting sketchy and speculative, although we have some theories about what might be responsible. But dark matter in and of itself is simply a consequence of the mediocrity principle (that is, the laws of physics operate elsewhere just the same as they do here) and Newtonian gravitation.
All the popular media's fascination with dark matter is only so much hoopla.
The same is true with almost any domesticated animal. For pete's sake the entire science of animal husbandry is application of Evolution, just under our control.
Of course, our efforts in domesticating animals show that one force seems to be required to really make evolution work properly: a regulator. Someone who reviews what's good, what's bad, and what is really cool, though unexpected.
Next time some god-boy goes on a rant about how evolution doesn't exist, quote the parable of the Wheat and the Tares. In it Jesus talks about how God can't really tell what is useful and what is not until it has had a chance to develop. Once it is clear what is good, and what is not, someone comes by and clears the crap out.
Evolution by any other name to me.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
All species are intermediary species.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Entire careers in physics are going straight down the shitter because of dark matter, because it doesn't exist. From the very first time I read about it, I thought "Geez, this sounds like a 3 year old trying to cover up the fact that he doesn't KNOW the reason why".
Uh.
The primary evidence for dark matter is that if you look at how galaxies move and how clusters of galaxies move, they should all be flying apart. They are moving too fast for the amount of gravity we calculate by adding up all the mass of the stars and the gas that we can see. Since galaxies and clusters are around all over the place, we know they're not falling apart. Ergo, there must be more gravity than can be accounted for from the material we can see.
The simplest, easiest, and most direct explanation is that there is more there than we can see. Matter not emitting light, thus called dark matter. There's nothing kludgy or ad-hoc about this, it's the most natural conclusion to make. The alternative is that Newtonian Gravity (or General Relativity, which has Newtonian Gravity as a limit in the relevant case)-- that theory which perfectly predicts the motions of planets, spacecraft, apples, and other things that we have lots of experience with-- must be wrong. There are people who believe this over Dark Matter, in fact, but to me, "stuff there that we haven't found yet" seems to be a much more likely and plausible explanation.
The evidence for why the dark matter can't all be baryonic (i.e. made up of "normal" stuff) is more indirect, but it comes out of other theories for the construction of the elements in the hot early Universe-- and this other theory itself has made predictions that match well what was observed.
-Rob
There is no decent explaination... emergent intelligence...
it may explain why things can be completely random at a quantum mechanical level, but balance out in larger systems...
It's called the Central Limit Theorem and Superposition. You've got billions of identical particles (low variance), and a huge sample size at macroscopic scales, thus your mean (likelyhood of "expected" things, the precision, and thus "intelligence" in systems) will be pointy as a pin.
I am 100% dead serious.
Perhaps maybe your REAL question is "why are quarks so damned sticky, protons so stable, and h_bar conveniently small?" because that encapsulates the huge gap between the quantum world and the stable world we live in.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If all the herring gulls in North America and/or Asia were to die due to some natural disaster (or to human interference), the white herring gull and lesser black-backed gull in Britain would become different species. In a sense this is a situation where the gulls have in most ways already evolved into two species, and could readily become two species given particular natural events. This type of species is called a ring species.
Welcome to the world of neuro-bio! Whoever built our brains didn't know jack about maintainability. They're a bloody mess! Unused functions left around from previous versions. Disabled features. Appalling code reuse. Oh sure, there are some beautiful optimizations, and the system architecture has a certain elegance -- but the implementation is crap.
If an omniscient power built us, I hope He/She wrote in a high-level language and then compiled with some heavy optimizations turned on (-oGOD?). If They were hand-rolling this shit, I'd like to have a word or two with Them.
However in this case your comment is only slightly wrong and therefore I have some hope that my reply might be a useful contribution.
You are correct that mathematical proofs are based on axioms. However there is still a crucial difference between a mathematical proof and a scientific theory. A mathematical proof is an absolute certainty. Note that I am not claiming that the underlying axioms are certain. I am only claiming that the proof itself is certain.
To put it another way, mathematicians are never certain about their underlying axioms but they are absolutely certain that if those axioms hold then the result stated in the proof also holds. It's kind of like a building with indestructible walls but no foundation.
Scientific theory is a whole different kettle of fish. You cannot prove a scientific theory with absolute certainty. In fact it is not even clear to me how one can define certainty within the framework of the scientific method. You never have any guarantee in science that future observations will be consistent with past observations.
In science you can prove a theory in the sense of preponderance of the evidence. You can even sometimes prove a theory beyond all reasonable doubt. But there is no way to eliminate the unreasonable doubts. Any endeavour based on empirical observation suffers from the fundamental limitation that you can never be sure of the next observation.
Finally, regarding 1+1=2, the foundational proof of this fact using the standard propositional axioms of mathematics really does require 362 pages. You can see the 362nd page on the bottom half of this Russell's paradox site.
It seems to me that a central tenet of Christianity is the Good News itself -- that an actual guy actually taught a bunch of people how to be good to each other, and actually came back from the dead. That is (at least in principle) a physical, provable proposition, and finding things like the shroud of Turin is a big part of that. Other religions work the same way -- there're a core set of beliefs that hold in the physical world, and that are thought to be supporting evidence for some metaphysical beliefs.
It also seems that this thread is pretty far afield from the topic of cosmology. Religion and physical cosmology are somewhat orthogonal.
1) Pascal's wager doesn't work - lots of religions make countervailing or contrary claims to being correct. The question that most people have to decide is not whether to have faith in anything or not, but whether to believe in Christanity or Hinduism or Judaism or Islam or... Many of these choices are exclusive or contradictory, so believing in something won't necessarily save you - only believing in the right thing will. In addition, believing in something excludes options from the here and now - if you hold a religious belief, you must act consistently with it, excluding some possible actions that might benefit you. Pascal's Wager is not cost-free, and since its benefits are unclear (if all beliefs lead to the same place, Pascal's wager holds; if some beliefs lead to Hell (or some other bad place) then the value of choice may be much smaller and on the order or the cost of choosing and the opportunity costs of actions you cannot do), it isn't really a very good argument for religious belief.
2) Science and religion are not exclusive unless one forces them to be. Science takes a pragmatic view of the world - what effects we can observe or measure are those of consequence to science. The immeasureable is not science's purview. Religious beliefs ask different, perhaps broader questions: What are we doing here? What do we do with our lives? How does everything work? Science can be considered a subset of this. Multiple religious beliefs may be consistent with a physical phenomenon - the things that distinguish them exist in a place science can't get to and thus has no legitimate say in. The problems occur when religious and scientific claims occupy the same ground and are contrary. In this case, science usually wins because it can be tested, whereas religion depends upon claims that cannot be tested (but which can only be trusted).
In my opinion, it is not the "anti-religionists" who have betrayed us, but a subset of religionists. Religion and science have existed side by side for some time and were not considered inconsistent. In the last few hundred years, some religious folk have tried to "prove" their beliefs by misusing logic and science to their ends (creationism/intelligent design/creation science, for example). Trying to prove the unprovable only further hardens the demands of people for proof before they will believe, undercutting the faith; after all, if the people who claim to most strongly believe something require proof to believe in it, how much faith can they really have? There is also the bonus of trying to force people to have a faith whose value derives from chosen belief (thus destroying the object of belief for others). In addition, the likely purpose of the logical legerdemain (to compel others to behave as one would like) only serves to alienate those who would otherwise be quietly accepting of the faith of others. Vehement (and sometimes illogical) people who don't believe in religion probably come at least in part from this.
This thread misses an important point. Even though Ptolemy's theory was wrong, it was a lot closer to the truth than previous ideas like "the lights in the sky are gods with flashlights." The point is that even theories that are wrong add to our knowledge by providing a starting place for deeper inquiries.