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Fermilab Reports Dark Energy Not Needed
An anonymous reader writes "A Fermilab press release
reports that the expansion of the universe may be
explainable without the need for dark energy or a
cosmological constant. Apparently, ripples from
inflation in the early universe may account for
the observed expansion rate of the universe."
They don't need somethings they invented to explain away what they didn't understand.
If there was nothing to push against, what would cause something to be held back and "ripple" as if there were some sort of repulsive force?
Let's say we've reached the edge of the universe, what happens when we step beyond that boundary? What is out there that would possibly hold back further expansion of our universe?
"We realized that you simply need to add this new key ingredient, the ripples of spacetime generated during the epoch of inflation, to Einstein's General Relativity to explain why the universe is accelerating today," Riotto says. "It seems that the solution to the puzzle of acceleration involves the universe beyond our cosmic horizon. No mysterious dark energy is required."
A true scientific perspective would be to look at the evidence of the universe and theorize about the origins from there. Many studies(like this one find that light slows down over time. The idea that the universe must be 14-28 billion years old just to cover for the huge size is unnecessary and sloppy when the speed of light is not considered as a constant.
I beileve in explaining things in the most simple possible way. If a theory is challenged by plain old evidence the theory probably has an error and should be fixed. Making up new theories to explain a dead one is very sloppy and it takes away from the ethical reputation of science.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Comment removed based on user account deletion
According to a recent scientific american article that was written to debunk common myths about the universe, given that the universe is expanding, the visible universe is actually larger than 14 billion ly radius. This is because light from a star that is *now* 30 billion ly away could have reached us by now because for part of its trip it was closer than 30 billion lys from us. This is, of course, assuming that light goes at a constant speed.
The problem with all this highly theoretical physics is that no one really understands it - even the people who study it. I don't study it; I am just repeating what I read in an article, so I am sure that I know even less about all this stuff.
The idea is that if two theories produce and predict the exact same results, the simpler one is to be preferred. If two theories produce and predict slightly different results, but the predictions only differ on matters which cannot be empirically tested, the simpler theory is to be preferred until such time as a way is found to empirically test which is more accurate.
This principle is often referred to as "Occam's Razor", as it is seen to be similar to an argument a 14th-century theologian named William of Ockham employed. His words, as Wikipedia quotes them, were something closer to "If two things are sufficient for the purpose of truth, it is superfluous to suppose another."
While this principle is technically not guaranteed to pick the "correct" theory, this is reasonable; would it be better, given two theories, to pick the one with more arbitrary complexity? Anyway, the only standard we have for "correct" is that it is consistent with evidence. Satisfying all collectable evidence is a worthwhile persuit in itself.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Hence "dark matter" - we can't see it, but it seems to be some sort of matter. Think of it like leaves blowing in the wind - we can't see the wind, but we see the motion is causes.
,and we can see wind ,but we can`t see leaves (can, but whence if not)
maybe more surch dark matter is leaves
Obviously a physicist didn't write this article. When something unexpected happens in the field of physics, physicists are not embarassed, there is rather much rejoicing among the people of science. The TOE aside, we in the pursuit of pure research do not concern ourselves with the prerogative of questions or the solving of problems, rather we are in the business of finding new questions and new classes of questions to ask. This is the essential difference between pure and applied research.
If 10 billion light years worth of protons travelling from a galaxy had a mass, does it's own emitted energy pull it away from the bang? and do other stars' emitted energy push away at the accellerating galaxies?
You're suffering from what I call the Big Number Fallacy; while the number of photons may be large, the amount of matter is so much larger it completely swamps it.
More to the point, conservation of energy and mass<->energy equivalency says that when a star emits a photon, it loses that energy in mass. Obviously, stars are not routinely boiling away due to photon energy losses, or indeed, energy losses at all. Not enough mass-energy is floating around as photons to affect anything.
What was that experiment confirming Earth's 'tearing' effect of gravity the sattelite?
I think you're referring to the "frame dragging" experiment, which is almost completely unrelated, except inasmuch as they are both related to relativity.
I know it's fun to play word games with the shiny Physics and Cosmology terms, but if you really care, you need to learn the real stuff, not merely keywords. I rather liked this; the fact that it's seriously tough shit is a good sign, if you get my drift. If it's easy, you're just playing word games.
This anti-intellectualism stain in /. responders is saddening. Basically it seems to be, "I don't understand what they're talking about, so I think I'll make fun of them" or "I don't understand the thousands of papers that have been published, so I'm going to shout something superior-sounding from the cheap seats". Dismissing a beautiful and maturing field of physics with "we don't really know anything, so give up" is a sophomoric and pretentious reaction.
Sure, there's a bunch that we don't understand, but please realize that this is the way science works. Nature is too subtle for us to have canned and precise answers for her behavior. Cosmologists are rightly invigorated by the new data, and ought to be encouraged to research and refute each other's ideas.
Can't we just admit we don't have a freakin' clue and move along?
...but he was right. He took a stab in the dark, figured out an explanation that worked (even though it sounded insane from a "common sense" point of view), and the evidence proved him right. Time and space are relative--we know this for a fact now, because other scientists set out to prove (or disprove) Einstein's crazy ideas. We're not so sure about Dark Energy/inflation ripples/mystical tomatoes, and hell, we might never know for sure, but it's obvious that SOMETHING is going on here, and I for one am glad that the scientists of today are coming up with these all of these cheesy, crazy explanations.
Move along to what? Above all else, science is supposed to try to explain these mysteries. To give up because we don't have a (seemingly) elegant or simple explanation is, well, the anthesis of the scientific method. You've got to come up with a theory. Maybe it sounds good, and maybe it doesn't--the only real question is, does it explain the phenomenon being observed?
If I knew Einstein back in 1905, I would've told him he needed to lay off the crack pipe. "Matter bending space? Relative velocity creating differing timeframes? Dude, what a fantasy, what a KLUDGE! You can't just go ripping apart some of the basic assumptions of science just because you want Maxwell's and Newton's ideas to play nicely together."
ya but who needs Fermilab with all their "fuzzy math" and such all you need is one hick cowboy with good ole common sense to tell whats what.
I don't know what you're thinking when you say "data ... diluted or compromised," but it's a lot more difficult than you may realize to come up with a scheme which has something funky happpening over long distances of space without us being able to detect side-effects.
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
FAR more interesting than The Elegant Universe is his subsequent book The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. I highly recommend this to anyone that was interested by his earlier work or the various discussions here.
Most posts here seem to be quoting science from decades ago. The errors and misconceptions too numerous. It is clear that many have no idea how far we have come in understanding everything all the way back to and including time zero, including what even caused the Big Bang. It takes a mass of just 10Kg at the Big Bang to explain all known matter and energy in the unverse today. The Inflationary Model today is nothing like the originally proposed Big Bang. It predicts and explains what we currently observe.
Fermilab's proposal is fascinating and if they are correct could have a serious impact on modern research such as the search for the Higgs boson that will be done at the CERN supercollider. The Higgs Field is related to the Inflaton Field responsible for the initial expansion.
The universe is very possibly 2 dimensional, you can think of a Pac-Man screen. If string theory is correct, all known matter is made of open ended strings. Open ended strings must be attached to a d-brane, a one or more dimensional membrane predicted by string theory. It is very likely our entire universe is attached to a 2 diminsional d-brane. This prevents our universe from any of those sci-fi parralel or other universes we love reading about. The only thing that can possibly escape is gravity, hence Gravity Phones for those of you that watched the Elegant Universe.
> ...moving at the speed of light away from the
> epicenter.
There is no epicenter.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If the universe is 14 billion years old, and the edges are nearly 28 billion light years apart
It's not.
Our perceptable universe is 28 billion light-years apart. We have no way of knowing how much larger the universe is, because no information from beyond our information-cone can get to us.
(Graph space and time on an X-Y axis. Pick a point on Y, time, and draw two 45-degree lines down the page. As time progesses, the distance that we can get light from increases, because light has a finite speed. That "cone" of sense is what I mean by information-cone.)
It isn't the universe that has to be elegant, but our theory of it. The reason why is that we aren't very smart, and theories with fewer free parameters are a lot easier for us to understand.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Well, we could get into a very long and detailed discussion into the value of basic research. I'll point out just a few of the benefits we have received from Fermilab, and leave the rest to you.
1) Ever hear of a "computing farm"? I'm sure you have. The concept was pioneered at Fermilab.
2) Ask Bob Young, "Who made the most important confirmation of the value of Linux in the early days?" Couldn't be Fermilab, could it? ( Bob Young was one of the founders of RedHat, BTW. )
3) Who has done more basic research into superconductors? Who pioneered the use of superconductors? Fermilab.
4) How many lives have been saved through the use of radiation for treating cancer? Neutron therapy was pioneered at Fermilab.
5) Do you like American Buffalo? At one time, the only surviving herds were at Fermilab and Yellowstone. Fortunately, they have made a comeback.
6) Enjoy using the web? Fermilab was the third website on the planet, behind CERN and SLAC.
I'm sure I have missed a few, but I hope you get the point. We are lucky that our ancestors didn't take the same outlook as you. Some things need a horizon of lifetimes, not just your own. How long was the electron studied? Quantum theory? Radiation? Thankfully, many did, and have left us with a rich environment to live in. I hope the current generation, and those to follow, are wise enough to invest in the future with basic research.
As for my assertion that money devoted to basic research is dropping at a alarming rate, I will leave this as an exercise for the reader. The results of your studies will be quite enlightening, and quite possibly, terrifying.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
for Fermilab to announce some scientific result by press release, but if some other institution does it they get slammed for it.
Shouldn't they at least wait until the paper is peer reviewed and accepted before doing a public announcement like this?
Very well put! What really shocks me is that the cowboy mentality is even so prevalent here on slashdot, where many people interested in technology seem to believe that science is of no worth, but God and bombs are.
I find it simply frightening, because I think it poses a very significant threat to the future of the USA, which is heading down the road of becoming a military power without the brains needed to steer it in a wise direction.
No, something that does not appear possible or make sense in nature does not prove that god exists. You cannot put everything that you do not understand down to god, jesus christ!
What you're missing is that science has theories that make predictions about observable things in the real world.
General Relativity, for instance, led to predictions of 1) longer particle decay times for moving subatomic particles, 2) different orbital period for Mercury than Newtonian mechanics predicted and 3) bending of starlight due to intervening gravitational fields. There are quite famous observations confirming these predictions.
Similarly, there are quite convincing observations that lend support to the Big Bang theory. Cosmic backround radiation measurements, observed Hubble expansion and observations of galactic evolution as we look further away (further into the past) come to mind as examples.
That is the difference between religion and science. Science attempts to verify its theories with observed phenomena and experiments. Religion accepts its theories based on blind faith.
All that said, there is nothing incompatible between science and religion really, as long as your religion doesn't dogmatically insist its wisdom about the real world subsumes observed scientific knowledge (the big trap into which some Christian sects seem to have fallen). In fact, I would argue that quantum mechanics provides an interesting "out" for religion - quantum randomness versus "Gods will". After all, quantum randomness is neither knowable or predictable for us, but it might be exactly enacting Gods will...
I've often wondered why Einstein said "God would never play dice with the Universe". Perhaps Gods dice are loaded. :-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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