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Good bye Dark Matter, Hello General Relativity
dr. loser writes "The CERN newsletter reports that a new paper by scientists at the University of Victoria has demonstrated that one of the prime observational justifications for the existence of dark matter can be explained without any dark matter at all, by a proper use of general relativity! What does this imply for cosmology and particle physics, both of which have been worrying about other aspects of dark matter?"
. . . will be the proof that quarks are merely fudge factors. And hopefully gravitons will be dealt with in this way as well.
Seems perfectly safe, since there is no dark matter.
.. that Dark Doesn't Matter??
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Quite expectable, I'd say... just like the nature fear of vacuum or the ether
The concept is neat. I'm not about to wade through the math and double-check anything. It'd be nice if we could stick with general relativity without dark matter.
On a side note, they are distributing the source. It's possible they may even be GPL friendly.
GPL friendly physicists rule.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
And in 10 years, scientists "rediscover" dark matter once again.
Science just isn't definite these days, is it?
...the simplest solution turns out to be the best.
Geeze science, make up your mind - Think of the poor sci-fi writers for those made-for-tv movies! Have you considered THEM before publishing research findings??
~ slashdot.org - Where some of the world's greatest minds come together to scrutinize grammar.
That's really interesting. It makes sense to model a galaxy as a fluid on a very large scale. After all, gravity is a relatively weak force. I haven't gone through the paper, but if their math is right, since the assumption is relatively benign, this seems like it would be experimentally verified.
Since the model assumes that a galaxy is a fluid (on a large scale), the model would predict fluid-like phenomena. What I wonder is if there is a galactic analogue to solitary waves. How would these manifest? (A friend wrote his thesis on solitons)
After all, I am strangely colored.
...was physicists around the world collectively slapping their foreheads.
Dark Reflection
Does the GPL even apply to the "source" for a document?
Aha, but the Electric Universe theory offers a solution as to why much dark matter is replacing the grey matter that used to be important to our society.
Sadly, Brig. Gen. Harold Relativity was not available for comments.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Was this another English to Metric conversion that screwed it all up?
A recent Scientific American article does mention the formation of waves in galaxies. It's worth reading!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Always smelled like aether/ether to me anyway.
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
I always thought "dark matter" was a kind of special pleading, an appeal to magic in the face of the unknown.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
It has seemed in recent years that scientists have shunned the scientific method in exchange for sensationalism. As someone else alluded to, it seems that scientists are more interested in concocting incredible theories rather than addressing the more simple facts that are staring them in the face. Science community: please return to hard science, not fantasy.
that the theory of General Relativity is no longer a theory?
TFA is just plain silly.
Every teccie knows that the universe is held together by gaffer tape, and the only problem has been to find the link between gaffer tape and dark matter.
If relativity does away with dark matter, well fine, but the cosmologists are missing the key issue here. All this means is that now we have to find the link between relativity and gaffer tape.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
What does this imply for cosmology and particle physics, both of which have been worrying about other aspects of dark matter?
The case for dark matter has been built for several decades. There is a mountain of evidence that needs an alternative explanation. I would call these new results tentative at best.
an ill wind that blows no good
I wonder if some scientists might already be so invested in theories of dark matter that they will refuse to accept this position.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
There's clearly proof of the existance of dark matter in the futurama series. How can a serious scientist ignore these?
Ahh, this would explain why my undergraduate WIMP detector failed to detect anything ;)
General Relativity
I knew that missing mass was my fat brother-in-law!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
This may also be a cautionary tale about the use of linear models (Newtonian gravity) versus nonlinear ones -- interactions among masses distort the solution. If one assumes the wrong things and gets an answer that doesn't fit the observations, perhaps its time to change the assumptions, not add unseen dark matter, epicycles, etc.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
All of this is academic since the author only gives limited distribution rights to arXiv.org and reserves the rest. I'd be really pissed if someone "modified" my source and submitted it to Nature (or Proc. AMS. in my case)
After all, I am strangely colored.
...is going to become the major worry. Data from supernovae distance measurements indicate that the Universe has been expanding for some time already. That means that there has to exist a sort of anti-gravity (called dark energy by astrophysicists). Now, that is hard to explain by conventional means (although it is possible), and may involve either a "beyond Einstein" type of theory (e.g., an improved general relativity) or some exotic form of energy (or both). So, although general relativity alone might account for the rotational curves of galaxies, it does not account for the large-scale properties of the universe.
It means my physics paper is proper fucked, for one.
cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
How many of us have done as much?
Hell, even Hawking has never shaken up the ideas of science and physics to anything near the degree Einstein has.
How long has he been dead? And he's STILL stirring up trouble!
Personally, I think his statue in Washington DC needs to be bigger. He's done far more for this country and the world at large than most of the people with bigger statues. It's just not fair!
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Now there is ;-)
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The poster title is misleading, the paper still leaves a place for dark matter, but on very smaller amounts and far from the halo. So, this matter could easily be barionic (paper's conclusion).
What is really interesting is that the third galaxy didn't fit the model as well as the others. It may be because of the inacuracy of the calculations (is the inacuracy measurable? The paper should have said that) or because there is something different on this one, maybe a smaller concentration of dark matter near the center.
Rethinking email
Really?! I'm interessted in astronomy and physics at a hobbyist level, and have always assumed that the simulations of gravity and galaxy formation was done with relativistic mathematics. Instead they have used approximations using newtonian theories? WTF? No wonder they came out wrong!
I can live with newtonian approximations on a solar system level, but doing cosmology on the scale of galaxies, the age of the universe it self and so forth they really should have used the sharpest tool in the tool box.
If I had the knowledge and the machine power to do simulations my self I would've done so, but I don't so I trusted the astronomers. They really shuldn't have taken the shortcuts, escpecially after their scientific profgress went boink and they started devicing exotic new models just to cover up their seemingly faulty theories! Shouldn't they have done a simmulation without the approximations just to evaluate how good their approximations was?
I'm dissapointed!
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
Dark matter always seemed like it was in the honored high school chemistry tradition of adding a fudge factor. There was no direct observational evidence for it, but tossing it in there made the numbers fit.
What does this imply for cosmology and particle physics, both of which have been worrying about other aspects of dark matter?
I think it implies that we can stop chasing for something that probably doesn't exist, and get about the business of finding out what's really going on out there.
Maybe it's just me, but the first time I heard about dark matter and how it "must be out there" because it makes the calculations add up nicely...first thing I thought of was the ether. For a long time we needed an ether to explain radio waves, light propogation, etc. Turns out the truth of the matter is something totally other. And it's a far more facinating other, IMHO.
I'm guessing that hundreds of years from now, physics students will be reading about dark matter and chuckling. Same way we do today when we read about the luminiferous ether.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Before this paper, it seemed that the rotation of galaxies was inconsistent with the amount of visible matter.
Now it is consistent. But is it consistent with the visible matter plus any significant amount of dark matter? That is, does the GR calculation show that there can't be much if any dark matter?
Even if the article was correct, and dark matter was not needed to explain rotation curves in galaxies, dark matter is still needed to explain the acceleration of the universe, its large scale structure and the primordial anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background.
I'll have to check my bible but I'm pretty sure it doesn't say "and on the eighth day God created Dark Matter"
In fact I'm pretty sure it says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"
*cough*troll*cough*
-everphilski-
I am not a cosmologist, but wasn't it just a few minutes ago that they discovered that there are black holes at the center of each galaxy? I'm pretty sure that such a discovery would necessarily cause cosmologists to reconsider where the unaccounted-for gravity was coming from. (not that anything comes out of a black hole per se')
Black holes are, well, dark... so all the 'dark' matter is concentrated in localized places, namely the center of the galaxies.
I'm certain that this is not the entire explanation, and that there will be more theories as we discover more about the universe, our galaxy, and the existance of 'stuff' in general.
Hell, we can't even decide if there are 8, 9, or 10 planets in our own solar system, I'm sure it will take some time to figure out what the universe is actually made of.
Sadly, as soon as this happens, we'll probably figure out how to ignite it in a huge ball of flames, or would that be disk of flames?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
... but I do feel sorry for all the grad students who're crumpling up their dissertations papers.
Hell, even Hawking has never shaken up the ideas of science and physics to anything near the degree Einstein has.
No, maybe not, but the real Stephen Hawking in a f*cking Quake Master
-everphilski-
About 23% of the universe is thought to be composed of dark matter, and 73% is thought to consist of dark energy [1], an even stranger component distributed diffusely in space that likely cannot be thought of as ordinary particles.
In cosmology, dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy which permeates all of space and has strong negative pressure. According to the theory of relativity, the effect of such a negative pressure is qualitatively similar to a force acting in opposition to gravity at large scales. Invoking such an effect is currently the most popular method for explaining the observations of an accelerating universe as well as accounting for a significant portion of the missing mass in the universe. (From wikipedia)
Maybe the opposite of gravity is dark matter? Dark matter is synonymous to 'the Force'...it surrounds us, it penentrates us, it binds the galaxy together.
The problem with dark matter is that we can't see it.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
You had to drag creationism into this when it is completely irrelevant. Mods: Please mark troll or flamebait.
I noticed you were referring to an article on arXiv.org. While it may certainly be true, these articles have not been peer reviewed by a scientific journal. Also note that this author appears to have only the single article on the site (which may or may not mean anything - draw your own conclusions).
I think arXiv.org is a great idea - a way for physicists to communicate ideas informally before going through the hassle of getting them published. It's still best to take it all with a grain of salt, as papers here may not be as carefully reviewed as other sources.
Has this gone through peer review yet? xxx.lanl.gov is not a peer review process. They do say it has been submitted to a journal, and for something of this importantance I think we should wait until the process has done its thing and checked whether or not this is sound.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
My skateboard and I disagree,
you insensitive clod!
"I wonder if some scientists might already be so invested in theories of dark matter that they will refuse to accept this position."
Einstein's relativity was also denounced as Bolshevism at the time, but it didn't stop it. So I wouldn't worry much. _If_ the theory does match the observed data, it will do just fine. If not, not.
I know it's a popular view that science is some closed caste, with its holy bible of sacred truths, and trying to silence everyone who thinks otherwise. There's a whole class of charlatans and quacks using that to peddle their "miracle" solution as some "scientific" thing that the establishment science tries to suppress. Unfortunately, that's no more than marketting run amok. Reality tends to be in the other direction.
Dark matter itself is in fact the perfect counter-example there. It's a relatively new thing and not even the most obvious deus-ex-machina to reach for. But if the results of that theory matched the measured data better than the old theory, here we are taking it for granted.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Everytime i heard about the whole dark matter / dark energy concept, i just felt as if it were some poor escape.
;)
:)
Not that i don't accept that you have to have strange theories to get ahead, but it was like:
"No. Our theories aren't wrong. And our formulas are perfectly right!
What? The results are differing strongly from the measured reality?
Well then let's invent something new... And let's call it *dark* matter...
It's the dark side of everything! Woooohh... gives you a creepy starwars feeling...
And *tadaaa*: as i said, our formulas are perfect!"
That finally someone could prove that dark matter is as useless as luminiferous aether is wonderful news for me.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Oh, no! This is going to ruin all those ST:NG plot devices.
oooo. our bad about the whole dark matter mystery, turns out we just didn't read the footnotes!
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Having read this comment I think we need a "poorly researched" mod on slashdot. I havent looked into it enough to see if there's really a need though.
Oh yeah, and it shouldn't be a negative mod.
I worked for years drving the VLT in Chile...MOND was a very hot anti-dark matter theory in that control room...
y namics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_d
I don't understand all the tensors, but my best guess for the explanation of the qualitive effect is that it's reasonably well known that GR predicts a frame dragging effect around spinning objects. For example if you are in orbit around a spinning black hole you end up orbiting around it faster than you would around a stationary hole.
Presumably this is the same effect, except it's being generated by the rotation of all the stars that make up the galaxy. So everything ends up spinning faster than you would expect from Newtonian mechanics.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Yikes - it's frightening when General Relativity is the *simple* solution!
This page makes a very nice description of what science "is", or more precisely how it behaves, making the difference between science and faith very clear: science does not claim to have "the definitive answer" to anything. Just an answer "as good as it gets for what we know". This is why scientific theories are scientific theories and not dogmas.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
Now, we still have a few gaps, including that small things appear not to behave the same way as big things. No doubt, if we can quantify the differences* -- or explain why that would be impossible -- we can take a stab at a single Grand Unifying Theory which would underpin all of Physics.
It's also possible that there could be another possible set of laws of physics which would be mutually consistent, even consistent with the G.U.T., just contrary to all our observations. If there existed a parallel universe which obeyed this set of laws, one of four things could happen:
- It would collapse to a single point in our space
- A single point of space in that universe would be bigger than the whole of this universe
- It would exist for only a brief instant of our time
- A single instant of time in that universe would last longer than the lifetime of our universe
Of course, it's also possible {but extremely unlikely} that there is no Grand Unifying Theory, just a supreme being with a sick sense of humour who keeps changing the rules slightly every time we get close to discovering what they are* Canonical example of difference between quantum and classical phenomena: Why can't a chair just spontaneously shift position? My own take is that quantum wave functions do exist in large systems, but "quantum" phenomena are not generally observed because the waves are not coherent {just as you don't see interference fringes where the light from two candles falls on the same surface}.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
From the paper:
"Nature is merciful in providing one linear equation that enables us by superposition to model disks of variable density distributions."
OTOH, Nature is vengeful by causing storms and earthquakes to punish those who have displeased Her.
This is a value judgement that the authors of the paper do not support with any evidence. I am outraged (OUTRAGED!) that this could get through review, pretty soon they'll be saying that Death is impartial, that War is terrible, or that the FSM is benevolent.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
When I read these papers, I feel like the dog in Simpsons listening to Bart. Or like in the Peanuts cartoons when the kids are listening to a teacher...
Hypothesizing Dark Matter isn't a bad idea, but it seems as if it bypassed the vetting process and became accepted as fact too quickly. It does fill a need (accounting for unknowns in the previous model), but it's hardly the only possible explanation. It's almost a scientific equivalent of Haliburton's "no-bid" contracts in Iraq.
People don't like unknowns, and sometimes let their imaginations fill in the gap. Get enough people together imagining the same thing and belief system forms. Carry this too far and it becomes institutionalized. A lot is then staked on that basic belief.
Right now, "Intelligent" Design is making inroads into the American education system. It answers questions a lot of people have, but in no way holds up to scientific scrutiny. Teachers careers have been ruined by opposing it. Education becomes indoctrination and critical thinking becomes the enemy.
Acceptance of the Dark Matter model is hardly on that level, but there quite a few scientific reputations dependent upon it. I wonder how much thought and experimentation may have been stifled because it threatened someone higher up.
The three most important words in a relationship are "I love you." The two most important are "Humor me."
I think this fits into the FSM creationist view. Perhaps His noodly appendage touches dark matter just as He touched Einstein long ago, changing the results of scientific experimentation as He sees fit.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
If gravity has no "speed" then the advisories against instantaneous communication are violated as a change in the relative position of mass A to mass B would instantly be signaled even across the galaxies.
If gravity does have a speed then wouldn't this "dark matter" be explained as all of the extra grativational "signals" making their way through the universe?
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Ya know if you really want to get into this the Theory of Relativity can be used to explain creation and where God came from. Correct me if I'm wrong but, if I understand correctly the Theory of Relativity explain opposites. Where there is light, there is dark...where there is day there is night...where there is a smart Linux user there is a dumb Windows user. Therefore, where there is a time centered being (aka humans) there is a non time centered being, where there is a mortal (aka humans) there is an immortal (once again god).
What if tonight, the evangalism war could be over? Isn't that worth coding for? Isn't...that...worth...debugging for?
This is Copernicus all over again! The parallels are eerie.
Back in the day, the prevailing theory was that the planets were attached to the crystal spheres and travelled in perfect circles. When the data didn't fit, they proposed adding epicycles to the circular paths. When that didn't work, they added more and more circles, increasing the complexity of the theory. Then Copernicus came along and pointed out that it was not so complicated at all... the planets just travelled in ellipses. Even though the firmament and crystal spheres provided a tempting theory, it wasn't even close to correct and the reluctance to abandon it kept them from seeing the simplicity of the system and instead keep adding complexity to their system to keep it in line with the observations.
Now, we have a similar situation where a reluctance to delve into the nasty territory of nonlinear analysis has blinded scientists to the 'simple' solution right in front of them and lead them to propose all sorts of overly complex additions to, a basically simple and elegant, theory. Rather than adding circles on circles on circles, they've been creating elaborate families of exotic materials and expansion forces to account for something that needed no extra accounting.
Strange how history repeats itself.
Naturally, this theory just happens to align with my own crackpot TOE, so I really like it
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
On behalf of those of us who learned our general relativity from a physics professor rather than a pastor: you're talking out of your or someone else's ass. None of what you just said has anything to do with relativity.
Why is anything anything?
Is this an understatement? Last time I looked, gravity is THE weakest fundamental force.
/ forces.html
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/kids_space
Don't be dumb, when talking about the presence or absence of dark matter the appropriate theory is intelligent falling, not intelligent design.
Boy, some people disprove intelligent design every time they touch a keyboard.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
It's not wrong nor counterintuitive to GPL documents. This only means that you are making easier (as it is for software) to correct errors, make additions, and in general transform (like tranlating to your native lingua) the document.
As a matter of fact, as the GFDL is a veeery evil license, the GPL is IMHO the better way of licensing a document.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I've dealt with this same issue.
There seems to be, as you put it, a "dogmatic" belief, often from undergrads (I'm guessing), that their now current understanding of physics is "right", and that any questioning of dark matter is an excuse to call the qestioner ignorant.
I've asked numerous times why I should think dark matter is anything other than a mildly promising theory.
The responses questioning my intelligence, calling me names, and generally being assholes outnumber the cogent replies 3 to 1.
Since when did scientists start behaving like fundies?
Can someone please shed some light on what the referenced paper titled "General Relativity Resolves Galactic Rotation Without Exotic Dark Matter" is talking about? I seem to be searching in the dark all these while.
w00t
We should probably start with teaching spelling, then maybe work our way up to Intelligent "Deisgn" [sic].
Proverbs 21:19
I'd rather think that sensationalist science publishing has replaced science with sensationalism (doh).
;-)
In other words, boring science doesn't reach the headlines because it's pretty standard and well... boring. And we're in a news-for-nerds site, anyway. Do you think that the general public will be astonished by "scientists discover a predicted particle in an accelerator experiment"? O.o Or how about "another gene discovered for the red ant of the amazon"? The public is more interested in cures for cancer / aids, flying cars, green energy, life on mars and stuff.
See, not all scientific discoveries emit light, there's "dark research matter" as well
There are two problems in astrophysics in which dark matter is invoked as a possible explanation. One is the "galaxy problem": galactic rotation curves imply a distribution of matter different that you would infer from looking at the luminous matter. The other is the "cosmological problem": observation of redshift vs. distance, and of the cosmic microwave background, and other similar measurements imply a total mass density in the Universe different from what you would infer from looking at the luminous matter. Each of these problems can be explained with dark matter (e.g. some kind of extremely massive particles that only participate in the weak interaction, not yet observed). Sadly, the properties of the dark matter needed to solve these two problems are not necessarily the same.
This paper claims to eliminate the need for dark matter to solve the galaxy problem, but does not address the cosmology problem.
People tend to snicker sometimes history classes hearing about people who created the strangest "scientific" theories in order to fit their ideas to how the universe actually worked. Epicycles, aether, heavenly spheres...
Dark matter?
Actually, maybe those guys weren't all that laughable or dogmatic as you'd think. Maybe they just needed some time to work out the formula they needed.
Science tells us a lot more than it used to about the universe around us, but I don't think the days of imaginary constructs in science is over yet.
As far as we know [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
According to recent research [2,3,8,9,10]
Most observations [4,6,11] point to
Many physicists believe [3,6,12,13,14]
:) There.
Sounds like somebody's grant is in trouble if this turns out to be correct.
When science teachers started teaching `facts' instead of the simplest hypotheses which were not disproved by any observational evidence.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
IAAP, and while I see where you're coming from I'd actually make the argument in the opposite direction.
A previous poster has already noted a paper (astro-ph/0508377) which quickly followed this one and refuted its conclusions (I have seen other physicists describe the same point elsewhere). It seems (though I have not yet checked the math myself) that the authors made an honest error, and they weren't modeling the situation they thought they were. In addition to the self-gravitating cloud of gas they were trying to model, the metric also includes a disk-shaped "singularity" - essentially a very thin, very heavy disk in the plane of the galaxy. It is this unphysical disk which is responsible for the effect they observe.
It's also worth noting that dark matter has MANY independent lines of evidence pointing to it (rotation curves, gravitational lensing, the cosmic microwave background, large scale structure, element abundances... see here). Galactic rotation curves were the first such evidence, but arguably they are the weakest today. I'm still more than willing to believe that the dark matter paradigm could be wrong, and this result would be VERY interesting if true, but there would still be lots left to explain. This is how science works, of course - idea gets put forward, it gets checked by others, the community works out what to think of it.
This also makes me think of the current controversy over intelligent design, but in the opposite way to the previous poster. Look at the Slashdot thread around us. Hundreds of people are posting to say how relieved they are that dark matter doesn't exist, since they always thought it was too weird and that those pointy-headed physicists were out of touch with their own good common sense. They feel very confident doing this, even though (1) they admit that they don't understand the evidence and reasoning they are talking about (even as some of them chastise physicists for the "basic error" they were making), and (2) the reasoning itself was later shown to be flawed. Several posters have tried to make follow-up postings showing that this reasoning has been refuted, but they can't hit every discussion thread (and it's not clear it would do any good if they did). As with the anti-evolution "controversy", people latch on to sensational headlines of flaws in basic science and simplistic errors by scientists to believe whatever they felt most comfortable believing to begin with. From there, it's an uphill battle to get the truth out there.
"What does this imply for cosmology and particle physics, both of which have been worrying about other aspects of dark matter?"
You're asking slashdot?
The problem, as I see it, is often that those who question the theories don't have anything better to back them up -- they're just presented with skepticism or an alternative answer that has nothing to do with physics.
Of course, I think there's more room for that in astrophysics, given the focus on math and proofs rather than testing (due to rather obvious logistics). A new mathematical proof can come out that completely changes how people view space (or, heck, an appropriate use of an old mathematical proof, as the article shows).
But I can understand why some people would be a trifle edgy nowadays. I'm not saying that you provoked the argument, as I've dealt with scientists (heck, I live with one and hang out with her friends), but I have to ask -- when you said it was a 'mildly promising theory,' did you present an alternative opinion? One thing I learned is that scientists really dislike people saying "I don't believe that" or "I think that theory is wrong" but then don't offer what they DO believe in that's based on science. After all, that doesn't accomplish anything -- it just states a claim of belief, which isn't science.
But I don't think I need to explain why an "accepted theory" will have people assume that it's accurate and "true" and be reluctant to drop it just at some new information or test or mathematical proof. That older theory generally has plenty of evidence to back it up -- the new theory has none. So people will look at the new theory, run through the math or tests on their own, and confirm, therefore changing the general understanding. That's how science works. The reluctance to accept just any new information without seeing a lot more proof is one of the reasons science tends to add to a base of knowledge, rather than jumping down any old path.
Dark matter always seemed like it was in the honored high school chemistry tradition of adding a fudge factor. There was o direct observational evidence for it, but tossing it in there made the numbers fit.
But that's how you usually discover things: Make predictions from your current theories, collect data and compare it to the predictions, make up new theories that explain it better, use the data to chose between theories and tell you where to look for more data to make better choices, and iterate.
Sometimes people take shortcuts or make errors in calculation and you have to check their work. And there's valuable science to be done there. But it's more "scientist fun" (and funding) to come up with "George's theory of dark matter" than "George's proof that Sam blew his calculations and Einstien was right after all". So sometimes it takes a while.
Now we wait for "Larry's proof that George blew HIS calculations and Sam was closer to the real world" or "Larry's confirmation that George's model has fewer/smaller holes than Sam's."
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You say "even Hawking", as if he towers over other physicists, but I don't see what you'd base that on. It's true that he's really famous and kicks ass when it comes to blackholes... but I don't think Hawking is in the same league as Feynman (to take another famous personality), Heisenberg, Planck, at least in terms of useful ideas (how are we to ever really know if there's a singularity inside a blackhole?). For that matter, where would Einstein have gotten without his friend Minkowski or without the work of Lorentz or Planck.
Ok, then how strongly do your skateboard and you attract each other?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
a disturbance in the Farce.
Just looking at the number of times science has been wrong (earth being flat, earth centre of the universe/galaxy etc) the only real way to look at this should be that both theories are valid until one can be disproven.
:)
But I wonder how this fits with inteligent design. Maybe the dark matter is really god. Hmmm.. God is some big invisible fat-ass that sits there and spins galaxies to make them look pretty.
Which just goes to show you--once a scientific "fact" has been established, our attachment to it becomes as dogmatic as any theological notion...
Perhaps for some people, but not for the overall scientific community. This article being the most obvious example. And I need not note the difficulty one would encounter trying to debunk a theological notion...
I have often mentioned my disbelief in common astronomical theories to my fellow students at the Niels Bohr Institute here in Copenhagen, and not once have I been meet with an attitude like the one you describe. (For instance I don't believe such a thing as a GR-black hole actually exists..)
In my oppinion your fellow students are seriously lacking in their scientifical education if they are unable to accept that alternative theories should be considered seriously but critically.
Perhaps with quantum mechanics as the only possible exception (because QM is true and that's just the way it is.. :), I have never had the experience that any scientific theory has been considered unquestionably true.
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None of that answers my question.
Dark Matter is far from an accepted Hypothesis, yet seemingly intelligent people defend it on the basis that it's the best thing going.
That's just stupid. Science isn't about being right, or falling into lockstep with "accepted theories", it is about continually asking questions.
My question about dark matter has always been "Why is it more acceptable to make up a new type of matter, rather than deal with the idea that the fundamental forces may work differently than is believed?"
Why is one SO MUCH better than the other? There is precedent for both possibilities.
you cannot be corrected as you are not wrong... you are just having a completely different discussion from the rest of us... we are talking about relativity and you are talking bollox
"When no-one around you understands start your own revolution and cut out the middle man"
Based on the moderation that followed, I would say that "some people" don't like it when popular theories get questioned. Which just goes to show you--once a scientific "fact" has been established, our attachment to it becomes as dogmatic as any theological notion...
Or maybe it's just that there's a big difference between meaningful debate between scientists, and random speculation on Slashdot.
Never mind dark matter. Can someone explain to me whether or not time actually exists (at least with respect to our universe)? Sure it's a neat concept to explain certain things, but I don't see why people assume there's such a thing as a past to go back to. You have an object in position A, it moves to B, it takes T seconds. So why should there be a "place where the object is in A" anymore aka "the past"?
The point does not concern having an alternative to back up the scepticism with, the point is that current dogmas literally eat almost all available funding, leaving little behind with which to develop and test any other hypothesis.
I've asked numerous times why I should think dark matter is anything other than a mildly promising theory.
The responses questioning my intelligence, calling me names, and generally being assholes outnumber the cogent replies 3 to 1.
Now that this, and replace "dark matter" with "global warming", and see if there's any difference.
And yes, I'm posting as AC because of the backlash that is sure to follow.
Oh please, even the Wikipedia article that was linked to in the original post already has criticism on this paper!
l em
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_prob
The model from the original post is discovered to be unphysical. This is all old news, why does it need to be on science.slashdot.org ?!
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0508377/
Well, it's size does depend on your frame of reference...
(also, powned? Dude, that's so radical!)
My question about dark matter has always been "Why is it more acceptable to make up a new type of matter, rather than deal with the idea that the fundamental forces may work differently than is believed?"
Because in doing so, you're not explaining how those forces would work differently.
Attacking something without presenting a viable alternative is pointless. It doesn't attempt to teach. It doesn't attempt to learn. It's like scientific trolling, basically. It only shows you're looking for an argument, not that you actually are attempting to accomplish something.
Explain how those forces working differently gets you the same results. Otherwise you're trolling by merely pointing it out. If you're unwilling or unable to do the work, then you can believe whatever you want to believe, but expecting others to take you seriously is unreasonable.
I think that saying "I don't believe in that." is an acceptable response in this case, or perhaps " I think your certainty in the existence of dark matter is excessive in the light of the seemingly sparse data for its existence."
We have Microwace radiation studeies that no one would feel strongly in saying are conclusive, and gravity lensing experiments which seem to me another way of stating the fact that gravity is stronger than we would expect in these cases.
The correct answer is that we are not sure and we are doing our best to find out.
I would love it to be a general relativity effect.
That's because you want the simplest general solution and not one that only applies to an overly simplified model. You ignore the insignificant details only after you've proved them to be insignificant.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
This is incredibly insightful.
Whilst we're on the subject, please, do tell us if there are any other aspects of the current controversies around the Standard Model that you'd like to put us straight on? What about Dark Energy, for instance? What do you reckon to MOND, or quintessence, as theories? How about that flake Ed Witten and his nonsense about M-space? Are you gonna knock that garbage down, are ya? are ya?!?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I'm not in this field anymore, but I spent 4-5 years in quantum gravity, black hole astrophysics, and inflationary cosmology. Summarizing my reactions to other comments in this thread:
First, I will say that I have not gone through this new paper in detail. I'm skeptical at a gut level that their results seem to depend on general relativity, because GR should not be relevant on the scale of galactic rotation curves: there is good reason why all the calculations ignore GR. It makes me think that there is a flaw in their calculation, and indeed another poster referred to a potential rebuttal of their GR analysis.
Second, as yet another poster mentioned, galactic rotation curves are just ONE evidence for dark matter. We have evidence from the aforementioned stellar orbits in galaxies, plus the motions of satellite dwarf galaxies, gravitational lensing, measurements of galactic gas temperatures (depends on the local gravitational neighborhood), anisotropies in the CMBR, the rate and structure of large-scale cosmological structure formation, etc.
(There are also a bunch of theoretical reasons to believe that dark matter particles could exist purely on the basis of particle physics, even if you ignore the astrophysical evidence; see axions, supersymmetry, etc.)
It's not surprising to come up with an alternative that can explain ONE of these phenomena. In fact, there is already another alternative that can also explain galactic rotation curves: MOND (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics), an alterating of Newton's laws of gravity. (There is a relativistic extension by Bekenstein, although it's currently even more ad hoc than dark matter appears to be.)
The problem is coming up with explanations for ALL of these phenomena. Dark matter is the only theory that has been able to do so, and it's not for lack of trying. Contrary to popular Slashdot groupthink, scientists are not in love with coming up with the most absurd and exotic possibilities they can. Most astronomers hated dark matter. For decades. I even know one who only came around to it a few years ago. It's simply that dark matter works, and everything else people tried to propose in its place didn't. As Carl Sagan said, "No physicist started out impatient with commensense notions, eager to replace them with some mathematical abstraction... Instead, they began, as we all do, with comfortable, standard, commonplace notions. The trouble is that Nature does not comply."
Now, this is not to say that dark matter is the end-all, unassailable dogma. It's possible there are alternatives, including modifications to gravity. I like to compare it to the discovery of Neptune and the perihelion precession of Mercury. People say that it's ad hoc to postulate unseen matter to explain gravitational anomalies. But that's precisely what led to the discovery of Neptune: its gravitational effects on Uranus. On the other hand, you can't always get away with postulating unseen matter: when Mecury's orbit wasn't behaving right, people tried inventing an unseen planet ("Vulcan"), but it turned out that general relativity was the answer, modifying the laws of gravity. Either can be right a priori.
In the dark matter case, it was once true that the evidence in its favor was strong and there were a number of competing theories, but now there is a lot more evidence, and higher standards for theories, and dark matter is pretty much all that's left. People should and do continue trying to come up with alternatives, but as of now, dark matter is still the best game in town. Far from claims of ad-hockery and epicycles, dark matter is actually a robust physical theory: most theories of dark matter have already been falsified because they make such specific predictions about what we should see. It's only a very specific type, quantity, and distribution of dark matter that can work. That's the hallmark of a good theory, not unfalsifiable wish-fulfillment.
Finally: this is a
My favorite quote on this general issue comes from Carl Sagan in one of the Cosmos shows:
Talking about early observations of Venus...
"Observation: Couldn't see a thing.
Conclusion: DINOSAURS!!!"
That scientific methodology has not left us, I am afraid to say.
It seems to me, the simpliest explaination for extra gravity that apparnetly exists, but has no apparent mass to explain it, is merely that the mass is currently in a dimension we cannot detect.
Postulating form of matter that has mass but no other effect on the universe is a bit screwy, if you ask me.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
No it's not.
SOMETHING is needed to explain those things.
Dark matter is just one of many possibilities.
Since forever. It's a sad truism that a theory only dies after the people who invented it. Seriously, do you expect scientists to be that much better than "normal" people?
I am trolling
I think the reason is that in seeking for more fundamental theories in particle physics we get theories which imply there are some particles we don't know yet. Therefore it's not too unlikely that there is a form of matter we don't know yet, and there's no known reason that it may not be enough to be relevant in large scale structures. Therefore, introducing dark matter means introducing something which we might well have to introduce anyway. Changing the law of gravitation means doing another, independent change. Therefore, introducing dark matter is the simpler solution. Moreover, dark matter has a better testability (because we can search for new particles in our accelerators).
What astonishes me is that a GR calculation seems to be done only now: I would have expected this to be the first thing to check before introducing anything new, be it dark matter or modified laws of physics.
Disclaimer: I'm neither in astrophysics nor in particle physics, therefore the above is just an educated guess.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This is a very interesting discussion for me, since I took General Relativity from Dr. Cooperstock when I was at UVic 6 years ago. He was a great teacher, but he always had slightly... unconventional ideas? Such as he doesn't believe in the existence of black hole singularities. It doesn't surprise me that he would write a paper refuting the existence of dark matter, but knowing him, I'm not sure I would trust it.
Now, I'm not saying he won't turn out to be right. But I'm not holding my breath on this one.
You have to look at it this way: if there is a problem with any theory, someone has to admit it and then someone has to fix it...
What are you talking about? Your example assumes the existence of time by taking about how an action takes T seconds. Seconds is a measure of time.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
No, Dark Matter was a first-day thing: "darkness covered the face of the deep".
Lemme get this straight: you own a copy of the Bible, but you haven't gotten past the first sentence, so you're just guessing how it ends?
Yeah, that's the kind of intelligent discourse we need!
Wrong theory methinks. Try this one instead:
An unknown creator organized what is scientifically observable using controllable forces on both a galactic and microscopic scale" similar to how the creator of a published work didn't create the language in the publication, he/she organized language into a completed work.
Try disproving that.... Riiiiiight
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
> In my oppinion your fellow students are seriously lacking in their scientifical education In my oppinion a scientifical education iz aparantly far two specializated.
No, Dark Matter was a first-day thing: "darkness covered the face of the deep".
Yeah, it was dark before he created light on the first day.
And you saw the need to post as an AC?
-everphilski-
there is no way that there is a smart Linux user for every dumb Windows user. You've never worked at a help desk have you?
Since always. True scientist are rare, followers of the Almighty Church of Science are a dime a dozen.
Tou must realize, if something is obvious, your much less likely to get a Nobel...
/not all physicists are like that
//physicist in training
Sig
My question about dark matter has always been "Why is it more acceptable to make up a new type of matter, rather than deal with the idea that the fundamental forces may work differently than is believed?"
Well, because there was no theoretical framework to explain the data without the use of darkmatter. Let's face it, the whole darkmatter hypothesis is extremely ad-hoc, a fudge factor added into galactic rotation calulations to make them fit to what was expected. The outcome was a predicition that darkmatter must exist.Now, there is nothing particularly unscientific about this. Go take a look at particle physics where all kinds of particles were predicted to exist, and as a result many particle physicists went out looking for these particles. When they were found, this confirmed the theory, when the particles were not found, they continued to look, or they revised the theory.
The same kind of thing happened here. People have been looking for darkmatter for quite some time, however, it appears that a revision to the models used to predict galactic rotation curves *and* galactic clustering is what's needed.
Why was the existance of darkmatter more "acceptable?" 1) Basically, because it was a prediction that fit the models. That's something that scientists like a lot, it gives the experimentalists something to really sink their teeth into. And 2) there was no way to predict that a change in the theory was needed without having already developed a theoretical framework that could explain galactic rotation curves without the need for darkmatter.
As an astronomer, I would say that you're not wrong to ask your question, however, without having any idea of how our theory might need to be changed, it's kind of a pointless question. And in this case, it sounds like we really don't need to change our theory at all, it turns out that the range of validity of Newtonian gravity is a lot smaller than we thought.
I think the bigger question in my mind is why hadn't someone tried to do this before now? In some sense, it's one of those things that just kind of surprises you, because all of a sudden you realize that *everyone* has been operating under the same false assumption about Newtonian gravity, and then you wonder why nobody thought to check that out.
Of course, this all assumes that this new model using relativity is correct... It probably is, but I think it does need to under go the usual scrutiny just to be sure.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
Please, global warming is a fact, the man-made greenhouse effect is the theory that is being questioned. Please keep them separate. When you question global warming you have to back it up with proof that the temperature measurements from the past century are wrong.
Now, I don't mean to imply that the authors are cranks or similar; I'm not in the GR community, and I've no reason to believe that they're anything but sincere and competent. But it does add fuel to the fire, and something for the "I've always known dark matter is a crock"/"those scientists don't know what they're doing"/"they're repressing alternative ideas" folks to consider.
Indeed. A great book was written on the topic years ago.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Yeah, but that's time as a measurement concept. That stuff I understand.
However, that's not the same as the concept of time where there's such a thing as a past to go back to.
Recently there were physicists talking about time travel via warping space etc. That's the bit I don't understand.
Dark matter is divided into "ordinary" and "exotic" dark matter. Ordinary dark matter includes baryonic matter, plus black holes, neutron stars and the like (astophysicists don't seem to call free neutrons baryons, go figure; they call carbon a metal). TFA is only really talking about "exotic" dark matter, the rest is detectable through its effects in reasonably certain ways.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> I believe the solution known as "dark matter" is an approach known as multiplying entities.
Funny, I call it "the best hypothesis so far". It may lose that status if the new one stands up to scrutiny, but that's no justification for dismissing it as a hack.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I don't know that they put theologians and politicians to shame, per se. I've seen ugly fights there too :) But you're right, science is no bastion of open-mindedness either.
There are certainly evolutionists that hold the view you describe, but they are not so monolithic in their attitudes (see the NCSE website, for instance). Bear in mind that the evolution fight for the past several years has been to keep evolution in the classroom, or to prevent it being watered down by indirect attacks (e.g. intelligent design theory). In other words, it's been largely a defensive fight. But that said, I think what you would find, were you to speak to evolution proponents, is that they do not object, per se, to religion in schools. You want to have a religion/philosophy/epistemology course? Go for it. Just don't put it in a science classroom. It's not science and it has no place there. If this isn't absolutely clear, then maybe we need to do a better job teaching what science is in the classroom.A valid criticism of science teachers, but not of scientists. A difference sometimes overlooked.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Based on the moderation that followed, I would say that "some people" don't like it when popular theories get questioned. Which just goes to show you--once a scientific "fact" has been established, our attachment to it becomes as dogmatic as any theological notion...
Except scientific dogma can be changed with enough evidence. Taking a span of 1-20 years. Religious dogma either never changes or takes soemthign like the reformation or civil war. So the gulf is immense.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
When the fundies start handing out awards for providing conclusive evidence that their old ideas are wrong, you can claim that scientists (as a whole, at least) behave like them.
The don't hand out Nobel prizes for believing old ideas, and not proving them.
There aren't any competing scientific theories outside of evolution so I'm not sure what else a biology class could teach. Obviously, evolution is not cut dried, it's science, its a living thing that is being updated constantly. That's why we have journals.
Maybe you're thinking of Creationism/ID? I guess you could hold it up as pseudo science (what not to do) but that's more pertinent to a philosophy class.
Bang on. Unfortunately, in the world we live in today it seems almost everybody is misunderstanding this, including many scientists. I think that people inherently defend their beliefs no matter what we do for a living. Science (the process) is objective. People are not naturally objective, including scientists.
That still doesn't excuse the whole "fact versus theory" issues going on. This completely misunderstands the scientific process, the meaning of "fact", and the meaning of "theory". Unfortunately, most people misunderstand all of these as well, so it's easy to play up on that to get wild hypotheses included with the best models derived from the objective scientific process.
Can someone explain to me whether or not time actually exists?
Yes. Read this.
Dark Matter is far from an accepted Hypothesis, yet seemingly intelligent people defend it on the basis that it's the best thing going.
People like some romantic ideas. For instance: Free will, Ether, Non-Deterministic Universe, FLT, Ghosts, ect...
Dark Matter happens to fit this notion, like either it sort of makes a loose intuitive sense and the exotic term help keep it in peoples minds.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"because QM is true and that's just the way it is.. "
I find this funny because I too see this a lot. It must come from trying to teach the subject. When pressed, however, I've had people fall back to "OK, it could all be wrong, but *you* have to proposed a better quantum theory of measurement first". So I think even Quantum(tm) alternatives may be considered seriously but critically, it's just that you have to propose a very broad replacement theory, beyond what could easily be expressed in English.
On the whole I too have found scientists very willing to consider alternative theories, as long as those theories haven't already been considered and determined to be false.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Please, global warming is a fact, the man-made greenhouse effect is the theory that is being questioned. Please keep them separate. When you question global warming you have to back it up with proof that the temperature measurements from the past century are wrong.
Okay. How about this?
The GPL is a license to copy and modify. In a world without copyright there are no licenses, everyone copies freely and there is no need for the GPL or any other license to copy or modify. Your parent is absolutely correct, the GPL is based in, and only works because of, copyright law.
Even more important in the context of this discussion is the fact that you don't understand the distinction between software on the one hand and fixed documents on the other hand. The most obvious proof of this is the fact that the GPL itself is not licensed under the GPL. That's right, you may not modify your copy of the GPL. You may merely copy it unmodified. This is in direct and stark contrast to software licensed under the GPL which you may both copy and modify. From the GPL itself:
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Publishing scientific papers under the GPL is precisely the sort of thing that even the authors of the GPL consider unreasonable, since they have chosen *not* to license the GPL itself under the GPL. Some documents are meant to be fixed. A license that allows modification, such as the GPL does, is completely inappropriate for such documents. There is a long standing and accepted process for correcting or challenging the statements in a scientific paper. It consists in authoring a new paper, not modifying the existing one.
So stop using diaper epithets until you yourself actually understand the issues involved.
Evolution is indeed a fact. It is observable that over many generations species will evolve. Grow a few batches of fruitflies if you are in doubt about this. What is questioned is the theory of natural selection that attempts to explain evolution and the origin of species. Please, never confuse the observable facts with the theories that explain them. That's part of why so much of the scientific debate these days sounds stupid.
I also have a personal beef with people who call intelligent design a theory deserving of equal merit as natural selection. Intelligent design pretty much requires a deity who does not obey the laws of physics, since if you have a non-deity designer you still have to explain the origin of that designer, which is where the deity comes in again. When your scientific explanation for the observable world involves declaring that you shouldn't bother with laws of physics, there is something inherently broken with your conjecture. That's just my two cents.
In my opinion, the only thing science classes really need is more teaching on scientific principles and logic. Just teaching facts doesn't cut it, as has been shown. You need to teach how science works, why it works, what constitutes a valid scientific theory, and how logic works in disproving theories (and especially how it is impossible to prove anything, which would shut up the "if they're so sure, why do they call it a theory?" crowd).
Logic, people. If you can't rely on it, why even bother?
Funny, I call it "the best hypothesis so far".
Sometimes "we don't know what causes that" is a better answer than "the fairies cause it with their magic". Maybe the latter is the "best hypothesis" but, more importantly, it's crap.
In my experience, undergraduate science students, at least in the US, are usually of the belief that they are being taught "facts". Maybe in an introductory class more emphasis is placed on the unknowns, but as they move into their specialties all but the most controversial or speculative ideas are presented as facts.
Generally as they move into graduate studies there is more emphasis on the quest for knowledge as opposed to the memorizing and understanding of facts.
As one of my professors said my first year of graduate school, "You're graduate students now...you're allowed to have opinions."
IMO, all science degrees should include a class in Philosophy of Science. Most undergraduate students I've talked to about this idea say something along the lines of "Philosophy has nothing to do with science."
-pete
Please, global warming is a fact, the man-made greenhouse effect is the theory that is being questioned. Please keep them separate. When you question global warming you have to back it up with proof that the temperature measurements from the past century are wrong.
Yes, my apologies for mixing the measured data with the theory about the source of the change. Though my verbage was incorrect, I'm sure you understood where I was drawing the analogy. So, my point still stands.
"What does this imply for cosmology and particle physics, both of which have been worrying about other aspects of dark matter?"
It implies that nobody is even close to knowing, so making a big ado about such theories is a waste of time for everybody except the ones making up the theories - and that only because they're under "publish or perish" and loss of grant threat.
In my lifetime, the estimated size of the universe has probably expanded by several orders of magnitude. Which means most of the relevant scientists during my lifetime were wrong at least part of the time.
When somebody can produce useful technology from these sorts of theories, I'll take them seriously.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"Which just goes to show you--once a scientific "fact" has been established, our attachment to it becomes as dogmatic as any theological notion..."
The entire history of the scientific method spans only a few hundred years. If your statement were true, we'd still be burning the Gnostic texts instead of sending probes to the edge of the solar system.
E pluribus unum
This doesn't seem terribly surprising. There are so many things about the universe that we do not yet understand, and the idea of dark matter was kind of a catch-all. It's not as though we've ever physically witnessed the stuff... we just couldn't figure out why the theory didn't work, so a new name was invented. Regardless of what Einstein said, if a fact doesn't fit the theory, then there's something wrong with the theory. It's nice to know that, in this case, an experimental whole mess was just a result of theoreticians' BS (bad science).
A perfect case in point is the current debate over teaching evolution in public schools. You'd think that it was a religious debate on both sides, the way they act. Since they currently have the upper hand, they are determined not to give any ground, the mere mention that evolution has some competing theories is completely unacceptable, it must be taught as absolute fact with no questioning allowed. We simply can't allow young impressionable minds access to any facts that might contradict evolution, they might start questioning the "one true religion", and the scientific community can't bear the thought of that.
Regardless of your beliefs regarding evolution, disallowing any mention of other ideas is not education, it's indoctrination. If scientists that believe in evolution wanted to do what's right, they'd insist on a larger discussion about what various cultures historically believed about their origins and how our understanding has evolved and the questions that still exist. It could be done in a way that is not endorsing any particular "religion" and would certainly lead to some interesting class discussions.
There are a few things wrong with your arguement.
1- There are no valid alternatives to evolution, only ID/creationism. Evolution has help up to a lot of tests, we haven't formulated anything close to be as solid as evolution. Refinements to evolution are introduced all the time but evolution stands. Just like GR isn't 100% right but it still stands as a basic accepted theory.
2- You imply not offering alternatives is indoctrination however if there are no competing theories then you cannot offer alternatives. For instance The theory of thermodynamics has no competing theories so teaching that fairies may possibly transfer heat from one thing to another and that the entire universe is slowly heating up until it becomes one massive inferno would be absurd.
3- It might be fine in religion, but has no place in science.
4- your political/social motive is obvious as your ignorance of the subject. There is no alternative to evolution. Only refinements. If it turns out humans were introduced to earth via a alience specieis it still doesn't change evolution, onyl refine the theory and change our information abotu humans. Evolution is observable, well supported, although often refined.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
For some time now, I've felt that the "dark matter" hypothesis was considerably lacking in the expermental verification area.
If the bulk of the universe was supposedly made up of dark matter, it ought to be fairly easy to get some under the microscope, so to speak.
The absence of such experimental verification has made me want to treat dark matter as the modern day equivalent of the "ether" of a century ago that facilitated transmission of "light waves" across the universe.
Hopefully, not too many textbooks have been already printed telling us that dark matter exists and explains the details of the expansion of the universe.
His statue in DC is awful, it reminds a panda or some other cuddly animal with a big head. Einstein deserves a real statue.
I have a hunch that while gravity can never be faster than the speed of light, it can affect how fast the speed of light is depending on where you are in the universe and what and where you are observing.
If light cannot escape a black hole after it passes event horizon, then obviously light is affected by gravity somehow. Perhaps, the more gravity the less the speed of light and the more gravity the slower the speed of light is. This also depends on which direction the gravity is coming from too... But I am not a physicist nor am I an expert on the subject, but just a layman's hunch on what could cause this.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
God: DUH! I forgot to turn the dark matter on... Better think of something quick or my galaxies will spin themselves apart....
In her rush, god accidently spills 'galactic fluid' into the universe.
God:Heh, would you look at that... Looks like I don't need dark matter after all...
Most other theoretical work involving Black Holes has been checked by Hawking, but did not originate with him. He deserves full credit for backing theories that have often conflicted with his own - very few scientists have the guts to do so - and he definitely deserves credit for being able to bring people together in this field, but the respective discoverers deserve the credit for the discoveries.
Evaporation of Black Holes, for example, came from one of his students. Professor Hawking apparently spent a LONG time trying to find why the equations would be wrong, eventually concluded they weren't, and then set about finding out why they weren't. I guess he deserves partial credit for this, as he actually found the mechanism even if he didn't discover the phenomenon itself.
As for singularities at the middle of Black Holes - that is still under debate. If we are to believe the modified equations for the early Universe, in which time is bent so much that there is no "zero point" in time for a singularity to exist in, then the same must hold true of Black Holes as the same basic conditions (albeit on a smaller scale) exist. This must be the case, as the same equations are used (in reverse) for the two cases.
Black Holes are also important in that they offer the only non-zero solution to quantum foam. Around the edges of Black Holes, the particle pairs that make up quantum foam cannot recombine. In consequence, you will get highly localized regions in which the usual law of conservation of mass/energy does not apply. The resulting Hawking Radiation, over the lifetime of a Black Hole, will presumably add to the total mass/energy of the Universe. In consequence, the Universe must be getting more massive over time. Whether this would be enough to significantly alter Hubble's Constant - especially in the early Universe where Black Holes were super-massive - is beyond me, but may explain some apparent uncertainty on the constants of the early Universe.
(ie: if the Universe has been changing shape over time, it may produce the illusion of changing constants, if cosmologists are assuming a fixed amount of matter/energy.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually, the article you refer to (presumably as proof that, as the grandparent post says, "the temperature measurements from the past century are wrong") says:
"We know that atmospheric carbon is increasing. We are also in the midst of a natural warming trend that started in 1850 at the end of what is called the Little Ice Age. It is scientifically impossible to prove whether the subsequent warming is natural or man-made."
Otherwise, this is not an article that discusses specific scientific observations; it is a collection of generalizations about the scientific study of the world's climate. The object of the article is to convince people that the global warming issue and related initiatives are being driven by rich countries and forced upon the poor ones (specifically India, in this case). Whether or not the author's point of view is correct, this article does not at all dispute the observations of global warming.
Every pound of it weighs 10,000 pounds!
Mathematicians prove stuff. Scientists just demonstrate that the evidence appears to suggest stuff. The latter is of course a lot more tentative and prone to change. So the situation you mention could easily come up if the scientists kept finding new sources of data to evaluate or new implications of their existing models to test, both of which have been occurring as the computing and mathematical fields of human endeavour have flourished.
In science, there's no right or wrong answer - there's only "best answer with the data we have".
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Based on the moderation that followed, I would say that "some people" don't like it when popular theories get questioned. Which just goes to show you--once a scientific "fact" has been established, our attachment to it becomes as dogmatic as any theological notion...
This has been the general way of science from the beginning. Have solace in the fact that eventually the truth will win out, but just like anything else it takes time to change people's opinions. There haven't been any scientific paradigm shifts that happened over night.
Time makes more converts than reason
Nor the GFDL nor any the CC licenses are _really_ Free. They impose onerous (more onerous than the GPL's) conditions on the licensee of the text. More: there is no real, tangible distinction between "document" and "program". A LaTeX file is a text or a program? And a PostScript file? What happens if I pick some algorithm expressed in PostScript (supposedly a "document" format) and convert it (creating a derivative work) to C++? If the "document" was GPL'd, now it is safe to put that algorithm in GPL'd code; if the document was GFDL'd or CC-by'd, then you would be out of luck.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Since when did scientists start behaving like fundies?
It's always been that way. Hence, the saying that old scientific theories don't go away until their proponents are all dead.
It's not a big deal, though: even though old scientists usually don't learn, the next generation is open to new ideas.
That's almost right.
People are lazy. If they have a theory that seems to work, they don't want to go through the effort to check out an alternative. (If someone else does so, they'll be more accepting...but it's still work for them to change all their assumptions.)
If you just present some WAG as an alternative to a theory which has been more thoroughly checked out, expect LOTS of resistance. They want you to present some reason for preferring your alternative to the current theory. If your theory is no better, why should they change? And ideas are cheap and easy compared to checking them out.
Even when you have a better theory, and have experimental evidence that it's better, and YOU have checked it out, the calculations that you used to justify it will need to be verified by several differnt independant groups before it will be accepted, and if it's a very basic theory, don't expect the established scientists to EVER be satisfied that it's a better theory. They have so much invested in the current framework that it becomes essentially impossible to provide them with sufficient reason to go back and re-invest all the time and effort that they've applied to the current theories.
This actually goes even beyond math. With any basic scientific theory, your entire philosophy of how to live in the universe will be changed with a change in the basic theories. Einstein never *did* really accept quantuum theory, even though he mastered it as a theory in a way that few scientists ever have. He wasn't able to adapt his philosophy of they universe to it. (This was very important and aided the development of quantuum theory immensely, as Einstein kept looking for weak spots, and forcing others to fix them.) But note that Einstein UNDERSTOOD quantuum theory. This meant he had had to invest all the time and effort to master the mathematical justifications, and to study the experiments. (Fortunately, a lot of his work in Relativity could be re-used during the learning of Quantuum theory.)
P.S.: Names being important, perhaps some university should establish a department of Evolutionary Mechanics which would cover both biological and non-biological evolution, and even genetic programming. That could be used to answer those who say "Evolution is only a theory". Because mechanics sounds so certain when contrasted with theory. (And it could be justified by analogy with Quantuum Mechanics...which analogy would also define the approaches originally used.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I think that overall this is a good point, but I've seen many people who make their living doing hard science who, once they open their mouths, start putting their personal credibility where it does not yet belong.
Although I don't do it for a living, I'm dedicated to science and it's progress and I have a real love for both the process and the results. But I'm afraid that one of the biggest factors that has made science vulnerable to inroads by fundamentalists is that scientists have, of late, embrace three (admittedly hastily constructed) levels of credibility on scientific subjects:
1) We very strongly believe this is true because it has been repeatedly verified through controlled experimentation.
2) We very strongly believe this is true because it can be strongly inferred from existing verified data.
3) We understand that we don't have all the facts, but we are critical thinkers for a living and our theories are worthier than your theories.
Number 1 is where scientists should be, but in debates, articles, and various other discussions on the battle between religion a science I have seen prominent and credible scientists arguing 2 and sadly, much more often 3. I understand it, but many scientist should reign themselves in.
Understand, I'm not saying don't fight, just that we should fight from our position of greatest strength, which is being "fundamentalist" about the scientific method. If we can teach kids, or anyone, how it works and why we're devoted to it, all the while showing by example how to be scientific in thought, then we win. There's plenty of room for religion in the world even with hard science, and there's plenty of amazement and wonder to be had in science too. I just don't want to see scientists try to expand their own role in human exploration way beyond the data.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
That's because evolutions at it's heart is based on just one thing: "There is no Creator."
So the only possible counterpoint is: "There is a Creator."
And since using "God" as a counter argument doesn't fit into the Scientific Method you have the convenient fall back of dismissing the only possible counter argument as "not science."
So, if I may, I'd like to point out that the question of "where it all started" doesn't belong in a Science classroom. It belongs in a Philosophy or World religion classroom. If you are going to teach it in the Science class though, then don't use that as a convenient excuse to exclude the only possible counter argument. That's just Intellectual dishonesty. Evpolution as a non origin's study, if you can keep it that way, is perfectly acceptable in the classroom. It's not presented that way currently though, nor is there any discernable desire to do so.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
Fairies require a complete reworking of the fundamental basis of physics, some kind of scientific explanation of magic, and either the location of a large amount of hidden real estate for the Faerie realm, or the postulation of prallel dimensions and a method of traversing between them that doens't require wormholes or gravitational singularities.
Sounds like Intelligent Design.
I'm so happy this main reason for Dark Matter finally got explained with standard physics.
I didn't quite buy the whole idea of Dark Matter, it wasn't scientific enough. We took a stab and said that there were phantom particles that we couldn't see and they were causing our observations to be different from what they should be. It just seems like we assembled a mythos. DarkMatter, the God of the Slow Galactic Turn, floats unseen at the edge of all galaxies. 90% of all matter is dark matter, and no you cannot see any of it (short of one lensing effect from an unknown object). So verifying this theory is next to impossible. And after a while we took the leap to say that we were correct. Even though we just invented stuff to 'fix' the flawed equations. Not that we can't guess right the first time, but just inventing a solution with no basis shouldn't hit the nail on the head.
I think the comparison between Luminiferous Aether and Dark Matter is one of the most prudent ones I've heard in a long while. Making something up to force your data to fit is a pretty bad idea. We can't be wrong. There's something that we cannot see that exists (does some calculations)... here; that makes the data roughly fit. It might as well have been the law of invisible elves of slow rotation.
And yes, if by some odd happening this gets peer reviewed dead... I still believe everything I said.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
We need to know whether John Wheeler's claim that "A black hole has no hair" is true and, if not, then
what color is it?
Have you SEEN the number of reports claiming that many study results are "PhD'd" just to either garner attention ( kind of like Scientific Munchausens ) or $$$ ( GBP, Yen, etc. ) thrown at further studies ? The next time someone tells me that mosts scientists don't push "facts", I'll point them at the ping pong of studies saying that caffeine is and isn't harmful to you. Don't preach facts about all scientists, when observation speaks otherwise about sizeable ( and growing, unfortunately ) number of studies which continually get called into question, for reasons other than "faulty data".
This seems like a pretty direct observation.
[T]his article does not at all dispute the observations of global warming.
And, in fact, it says, "Greens say, rightly, that the best scientific assessment today is that global warming is occurring."
More below.
Otherwise, this is not an article that discusses specific scientific observations
You only found one instance of a specific scientific observation? The first sentence gives a specific instance of low temperature observations. The second paragraph discusses a span of recent large-scale global cooling. The sixth paragraph makes a general observation about the accuracy of global climate models. There are still more direct observations in the article.
Let's step back a minute. The point of bringing this article to light was to illustrate that the recent attention about global warming, and its proposed anthropogenic source, may be a bit precipitous, given the accuracy of the predictive modelling of global climate simulations. While I've seen results of global climate simulations that extend out 150 years, I've yet to see any good data that give me confidence that our accuracy is high enough to say more than "global warming is not much than a mildly promising theory." And specifically "global warming" = "anthropogenic causation of global warming". This was the claim that I was attempting to bolster.
And of course there is already another paper calling into question the physical model used by the paper in the story summary.
I still think Dark Matter is something of a kludge that is going to be displaced by a real explanation sometime and that there is a good possibility that using general relativity (as in this paper) is going to lead to that real explanation, but teaching any of these theories as "facts" just demonstrates the lack of knowledge by the teacher. They are simply alternative theories that somewhat fit with most recent measurements.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I've been suggesting for years that "dark matter" is an unnecessary idea which only exists as a transitional kludge until we can uncover some more fundamental error in the theory of gravity, like planetary epicycles or what not. I have made this suggestion both on the internet and in person to some people I hang around with from my college's physics department.
While generally people have not agreed with me, I have never encountered what I would call "dogmatic" resistence; I never felt that people were upset at my suggestion or disrespected my opinion that this was a possibility.
Perhaps the reason why you have met with poor results expressing the same idea have more to do with the way in which you expressed the idea?
I find a lot of people seem to believe that if people disagree with them, it is automatically because of dogmatic resistence. Not necessarily, maybe it's just because you've not made your case very well, or because there are other factors to the discussion you aren't considering (for example, that asking a physicist to abandon the idea of dark matter would-- in the absence of a better explanation for anomolies in gravitational theory-- effectively require them to accept the idea that the galaxy is the wrong shape for no reason whatsoever).
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
That's because evolutions at it's heart is based on just one thing: "There is no Creator."
So the only possible counterpoint is: "There is a Creator."
And since using "God" as a counter argument doesn't fit into the Scientific Method you have the convenient fall back of dismissing the only possible counter argument as "not science."
So, if I may, I'd like to point out that the question of "where it all started" doesn't belong in a Science classroom. It belongs in a Philosophy or World religion classroom. If you are going to teach it in the Science class though, then don't use that as a convenient excuse to exclude the only possible counter argument. That's just Intellectual dishonesty. Evpolution as a non origin's study, if you can keep it that way, is perfectly acceptable in the classroom. It's not presented that way currently though, nor is there any discernable desire to do so.
You dont' know anything about evolution don't you?
Evolution is based on the principal that "traits that can be passed onto progeny(genes) that are also hetrogenious(not all members have the same genes) and mutable(mutations) in some way will result in groups of living things changing over time to response to selective factors(observed often)". The assumptions about god are immaterial. God may have started it, there may be no god. Neither possibility changes evolution.
Your idea about evolution is deeply deeply flawed. It doesn't reflect it's current form or any of it's previous iterations. You are operating under a deep logical fallacy. Evolution has nothing to do with denying a god, only explaining a mechanism for biological change. It is often used as evidence to refute the exsistance of a god how ever God is not an idea that can be directly refuted. I am in fact a christian but I don't beleive in this IS/creationist propaganda.
ID/creationism aren't scientific at all. They are a politically/religiously motivated PR campiagn to assert a certain religions dominance in the American society. They have nothing to do with science and outisde of the US they are not given any credience.
Like I pointed out, it doesn't matter if a alien species/God/FSM/cthulu/me came to earth, tampered with the genetic material and created man, because the basic mechanisms of evolution stand.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
We can observe that selection causes adaption and minor mutations, but we have never observed a whole new species evolving from another.
To my knowledge, nobody has attempted to do something like create a ring species of dogs. It may be because that would be horrifically expensive and take an age (literally).
Evolution is a theory supported by inductive logic, it is not an empirically observed fact such as the existence of dogs, the process of cellular replication, or nuclear fission.
Evolution has more supporting evidence than you give it credit for. It's made some very specific predictions about our genetic makeup which have been recently confirmed experimentally. Hell, the whole 'tastes like chicken' thing demonstrates a common ancestor.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Actually I've studied it a great deal. As I said... If you can teach it without going into how it is an explanation for origins then feel free to teach it without it's conterpoint. When you go into a school however and listen to the curriculum it is all about origins. And if you insist on teaching origins in that setting then you better be prepared for the counter arguments. Evolution does indeed exist as a method for biological change. It is observable. It is not however the only possible explanation for "the origins of all life" and if you intend to present it in the classroom as such then don't get upset if someone want's to present the only possible counter argument. I can see where you got confused though.
I wasn't referring to evolution the observed phenomena. I was referring to Evolution (The proof that we don't have a creator). If you don't think it's taught that way then your either blind or self-deluded.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
Bullcrap, evolution does not state there is no creator, it does state that no creator is actively involved in the evolutionary process. It is entirely possible to have a creator compatable with evolutionary theory, an example would be a creator who designed the universe to allow evolution to take place and evolve life as we know it (ie the creator made the rules, set the "random seed" and then set the universe going. Incidentaly if we believe that a creator is all powerful and knowing then setting the randomness to cause the interactions that form life exactly to create life exactly as the creator desires is trivial.)
No incompatability, no problem.
"Why is it more acceptable to make up a new type of matter, rather than deal with the idea that the fundamental forces may work differently than is believed?"
From the astronomical point of view, the answer is that both ways have been tried. Modified newtonian dynamics (MOND) is an effort to revise gravity (a failed one, it looks to me). Another one involved a much stronger galactic magnetic field (another failed attempt, since it does not reproduce available observations). And there are other attempts that involve magnetohydrodynamical effects to fool observers (the cited velocity measurements look at the interstellar gas, while the stars, with most of the galactic mass, might orbit at a very different speed).
On the other hand, the introduction of the idea dark matter have explained a lot of other observations, not only the flat rotation curve of galactic disks. It has succesfully predicted observations, and is able to reproduce results in other (quite independet) fields.
As a scientist, I do not like the idea of dark matter, at all. To me, it feels like a cheap hack. But the observational evidence is overwhelming. I just have to welcome the results presented in the article, and hope that they'll survive the challenges!
I've seen this sort of thing happen occasionally in widely used reference books and been guilty of it myself. With computer modeling so much more widely available and easy to use these days, there's less excuse for not being thorough.
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Within the jargon of science, "true" means "useful and predictive". Scientists sometimes forget that they have a nonstandard meaning for "true", especially if speaking casually. It's worth noting that this jaron definition of "true" is more useful and predictive than the standard meaning. :)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If it is indeed the case that all of the estimates of dark matter up until now were based on incorrectly calculated galactic rotational rates, then this was a monumental screwup. So noone was using general relativity for these calculations, and were relying on Newtonian physics? I am speechless. Just a quick Google search turns up about 10 experimental collaborations comprising about 200 physicists looking for dark matter, a topic which is funded so highly **because** of the galactic observations and not because of "gee whiz it would be neat to find dark matter". Assuming a cool $15M per experiment, that's $150,000,000.00 spent worldwide. And you'd a thunk some funding agency somewhere would have paid 0.01% of that for a study of galactic rotations in the full GR before plunking that down.
phase velocity with group velocity. Group velocity is c.
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In GR gravity is not a wave or a particle. gravity is curvature of space and time. thus the question speed of gravity is a non starter, it is like asking the speed of a stationary hill. The common way to illustrate this is to use a sheet and a bowling ball. Stretch the sheet taught, place the bowling ball in the middle then roll a tennis ball at a tangent. The ball will follow the contour of the sheet. Pretty simple and no big deal.
Now when you start talking about gravitational waves you're actually talking about the waves induced when something with sufficient mass is disturbed. what people are wondering is how fast the waves generated by the perturbance are travelling not the speed of gravity.
Or think of it as a lake. The lake has no speed (we have chosen our frame of reference carefully) toss a rock in and measure the result of the waves. You're not measuiring the speed of water...
Based on the moderation that followed, I would say that "some people" don't like it when popular theories get questioned. Which just goes to show you--once a scientific "fact" has been established, our attachment to it becomes as dogmatic as any theological notion...
I think some of the issue in resistance to change in the scientific community - by which I mean not only scientists, but others affliated with them, esp. lay people - is the vastly different burden of proof. In science, if there is one thing wrong with a theory, it gets tossed/revised. But in the rest of the world, if something does 100 things right and one thing wrong, we still think it's pretty good. I don't know how much sense that makes, but it has rung with me when looking at some of this stuff.
"That's because evolutions at it's heart is based on just one thing: "There is no Creator.""
:)) I therefore fail to see the supposedly religious imperitive to ban all study of creation.
Not even close to accurate. The question of the existence of a "Creator" deity is not even tangentially associated with evolution. "Evolution" is the change in individuals from generation to generation, and how that ffects procreation, roughly.
The scientific study of the origin of life is undertaken with the premise that life was not created in toto by a supernatural entity. The possibility that there is certainly exists, but in the abscence of any scientific observations of such, it is not possible to formulate a SCIENTIFIC theory that includes a deity. However this planet got here, and however it became overgrown with such dtestable creatures, it certainly is an interesting case study.
Suppose there IS a divine being that created the heavens and earth. What better worship than documenting and cataloging the scope of his creation? (if you want to bicker over the use of the masculine pronoun, might as well bicker over ships being called "her", as well
There is nothing wrong with teaching religion in schools. There IS, however, something wrong with confusing the study of historical writings with the study of creation. And perhaps something wrong with teaching one specific religion in the publicly funded secular learning centers, much less in an effort to obscure and discredit the teaching of scientific knowledge. Our nation relies on publicly funded education to ensure the continued growth and success of our citizens. Sabotaging that effort with public funds is counterproductive, and will never be popular or acceptable to thinking people.
Your #2 is as valid as your #1, #1 is bottom up, while #2 is top down. Both are acceptable.
Relativity is based on #2, it was a purely logical with very little to no emperical basis, and only through time has it acheived a high degree of empircal justification.
#3 is getting too common, which is sad for science. Everyone wants to be a sceince superstar now, and somewhere along the way forgot the rigor of the discipline. Sometimes #2 is almost indistinguishable from #3, but that is where Occham must come in, simpler is good. I have particular bones with the avant garde science stuff, like string theory and dark matter, which seem overly kuldgy, whereas STR and GTR were convincing in their utter simplicity, same with much of quantum/partical physics.
Back to my original point, please don't discount the analytic deductive methods from science, inference can only go so far. All that really matters in the end is the general methodic fare.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
If the only way we observe Dark Matter has now been explained by something else, and it interacts with the rest of the universe in NO OTHER WAY, surely we can just assume it doesn't exist, whether it actually does or not? If it does exist it's not making any difference so everything is occurring in the same way as if it didn't.
I wanted to suggest a couple ideas. First, dark matter is a well-favored theory because there is a lot of evidence that supports it. Galactic rotation speeds is one important piece of evidence, but I also think that gravitational lensing provides strong evidence -- which may also be explained by the GR work done in this paper. I don't know but it seems possible. I'm not an astrophysicist, and couldn't (or didn't waht to) follow all the details of the paper. Fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background is another piece of evidence for (cold) dark matter, though it gets complicated here. I don't think that the CMB directly requires dark matter, but dark matter models have been very successful here. I'm out of touch with recent CMB and cosmological accounting developments.
Anyway, the point is that the theory of dark matter kills a lot of birds with one stone. So it's very attractive from that point of view. And there are literaly dozens of yet-untested theories that can explain dark matter as exotic particles, compact massive objects, and so on. Many of these theories have been either disproved or damaged by careful experiments, but by no means all of them. So the existence of dark matter doesn't seem all that far-fetched either.
A second point is that a lot of this discussion has to do with scientific theories being "falsifiable", a term very much at the heart of the debate on creationism being taught in science classes. I don't think many people appreciate what the term means. Science cannot prove a theory to be true. You can only prove it to be false. Take "Newton's laws" example. It took somewhere around 250 years to prove those wrong, and relativity suffered a lot of ridicule from scientists still unwilling to let go of them.
Well, even though there's no way to really prove a theory to be correct, a theorist still has to start somewhere -- put their faith in some basic assumptions before any progress can be made. The choice of these assumptions is mostly a matter of taste, and a little bit of cleverness -- how can you keep your set of assumptions as small and palatable as possible?
General relativity is a really nice theory, and has stood up to a great deal of testing. It is thought to break down only on small scales far beyond our experimental reach, and there is no compelling reason to suspect its accuracy on even cosmically large distance scales. So it makes for a nice starting assumption for astrophysics. I guess the point of this paper is that some details have been forgotten about when modeling galactic rotation. It was thought that because of the small speeds involved, and weak gravitational field, that newtonian gravity (which is much easier to deal with computationally) was a perfectly good approximation. The author of this paper realized why it was not, and points this out.
I can only imagine that, if the math is correct, this will have a huge impact on the astrophysics community. For example, they mention why newtonian gravity works so well for our solar system still, but I'm not sure any more that it would work well for cloud collapse and star formation models. If it affects these models, it will probably also affect cosmologists modeling the evolution of structure.
Actually, about a month after this article was submitted another paper came out saying that the proposed model is not physical as it requires the disk generating the gravitational field to be singular. Although I did skim the Cooperstock article (he was my prof for GR, so I have a bit of a bias), I didn't read the other article.
I would be surprised if the Cooperstock & Tieu model completely dispells dark matter. For starters, we know that only about 5% of the mass (actually, density) in the universe is baryonic matter (normal matter) from Big Bang baryogenesis models and the match to cosmological observations (WMAP). We also have some confidence (also from WMAP, but also from BOOMERANG) that the Universe is very nearly gravitationally flat (this result is independent, IIRC, of assumptions about dark matter). This means that 95% of the mass/energy density in the Universe is something else. Current models and observation suggest that dark matter makes up about 35%; the remaining 60% is 'dark energy'.
However, if a simple re-application of GR can make at least some of that dark matter disappear from the models, that makes life interesting.
Again missing the point. If that was how evolution was taught in schools then there would be no problem. It isn't though. It is taught in the exact opposite fashion. Instead it goes far past that into the "lets discredit the idea of a creator" arena.
So, like I said, if you want to stray into the metaphysical in your science class don't complain if people follow you in. Regardless of how you put evolution, That is they way most curriculums put it. There is a definite bias present. If you think you can push through a trend to keep the question of origins out of your science classrooms then I wish you all the power in the world. Not much chance you'll succeed but hey go for it.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
Sir, you have earned the coveted "Virtual +6" for today.
And the distinction the followups are trying to make can be handled like this: Science teachers making this error taught the current generation of scientists, didn't they?
"an excuse to call the qestioner ignorant."
Especially when the questioner cannot spell questioner.
Actually I've studied it a great deal. As I said... If you can teach it without going into how it is an explanation for origins then feel free to teach it without it's conterpoint. When you go into a school however and listen to the curriculum it is all about origins. And if you insist on teaching origins in that setting then you better be prepared for the counter arguments. Evolution does indeed exist as a method for biological change. It is observable. It is not however the only possible explanation for "the origins of all life" and if you intend to present it in the classroom as such then don't get upset if someone want's to present the only possible counter argument. I can see where you got confused though.
I wasn't referring to evolution the observed phenomena. I was referring to Evolution (The proof that we don't have a creator). If you don't think it's taught that way then your either blind or self-deluded.
Here is your problem, you havent' assualted the theory, you only state you object to it's implications. This has nothing to do with the science behind it, only your inability to accept it as part of you belief system.
It does in fact give a possible origin of life. The exact origin is nebulous. Either life evolved here on earth, or else it evolved else where and was transported here via meteor. As far we know both cases are equally valid. There is somewhat mroe unlikely possibilities that is was intentially transported. Biologists/chemists have been workign on the viability of it just happening and according to our modern organic chemistry, over large periods of time it is very likely.
This does not say that god didn't create it all, since the universe is apparently deterministic and that at some point it was "created" he/she/it problably set it up so that life would be favorable. You can't prove or disprove that though so it has no place in science.
Your problem isn't with "evolution as a origin theory" your problem is that you need to have god directly intervene to create people or else your religion has somewhat less meaning. You can't just say "well evolution is a origin story so it must be lumped in with other origin stories". The chinese origin story abotu a lotus blossum on the sea of the universe is a quaint story, evolution is a well supported branch of biology. Not theory, it's a whole freaking branch. It's actually the lions share of biology.
I wasn't referring to evolution the observed phenomena. I was referring to Evolution (The proof that we don't have a creator). If you don't think it's taught that way then your either blind or self-deluded.
Evolution explains a mechanism. This mechanism removes the need to have a "origin" story or to have direct divine intrvention. This upsets you. This does not however change anything. God is God. Whether he used evolution to create things or he blinks them into exsistance with the wriggle of his/her/it's nose is of no consequence. You are argueing for confusing and denying a valid scientific idea because it doesn't fit with your particular brand of theism. This is stupid. Evolution should be taught, ID/creationism should not. If you deny there is a god and use evolution to support you claim fine, I'll simply state that god works in mysterious ways, and that since the universe is deterministic it meant that the liklihood of some external force causing it all to happen is not provable/disprovable and that I will continue beliving in a god thank you very much.
You however must have some sort of weak assed faith that folds like a house of cards when faced with uncomfortable facts. I suggests you try and find truth instead of comfort.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
the wikipedia entry linked in the story. The last paragraph is particularly insightful: "In 2005 two physicists from the University of Victoria released a paper[1] that suggested that the galaxy rotation problem is in fact due to inapproriate application of Newtonian mechanics, and is in fact not present if general relativity is used instead. This conclusion was quickly disputed as questionable, due to certain assumptions it made about the source of gravitational force in a galaxy. Neither of these papers have been peer reviewed." My conclusions are that this is: A) old news. B) not very widely credited. C) nothing to worry about, really.
I think this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of scientific research. Any real scientist will tell you they're wrong more than they're right.
You start with an observation, come up with a reasonable hypothesis to explain it, then test it.
Eventually your hypothesis fails at some level. So based on your observation, you create another reasonable hypothesis....
That's scientific progress. Each step along the way we learn more. And often, we get led down the wrong path, for any one of many reasons -most are not evil.
As a scientist, I can tell how I think many things work. Of course that leads to the question, "Don't you know for sure?" from a non-scientific public who wants to know that the levy will hold or the vaccine will protect them from disease and not cause it.
No, I don't know for sure. But that's not what anybody wants to hear. And that's not what anybody will report in the press. That's not what politicians base decisions on. The overwhelming majority of times you see science misused as you stated above its by companies/politicians/people taking scientific data and theory and restating it as scientific fact. Its rarely the scientist doing the study who says such things.
Dark Matter is far from an accepted Hypothesis, yet seemingly intelligent people defend it on the basis that it's the best thing going.
That's just stupid. Science isn't about being right, or falling into lockstep with "accepted theories", it is about continually asking questions.
True, to an extent. Science also involves moving from one piece of knowledge to the next. At some point, we have to regard a question as settled and move on. In science, though, "settled" doesn't mean cannot be questioned. It does mean that you better have some very, very good evidence to counter the piles of evidence already in place.
My question about dark matter has always been "Why is it more acceptable to make up a new type of matter, rather than deal with the idea that the fundamental forces may work differently than is believed?"
Why is one SO MUCH better than the other? There is precedent for both possibilities.
Yes, but we know about things like the laws of motion with much more certainty than we know the contents of the galaxy. When it was observed that the speed of rotation of galaxies is inconsistent with the amount of matter we saw, it was a very reasonable thing to hypothesize that there is a lot of matter we don't see. With all the talk of WIMPs and MACHOs and antimatter and so on, it makes the dark matter concept sound a lot more exotic than it need be. Maybe there's just a lot of cold stuff that doesn't radiate a significant amount, so we can't detect it.
But it's no good to just say "Well, maybe Kepler's laws were wrong, maybe all our physics is wrong," without offering a viable alternative. It's not like we just pulled that stuff out of our collective asses and decided to believe it; There's a huge amount of evidence in their favor, and there are good reasons to think we have the basics down very well. Could we be wrong? Sure, but usually it's not that we're wrong, we've just got a piece missing. That's why I hate it when people talk about how wrong Newton was in light of quantum mechanics. He wasn't wrong, he was absolutely right. He just wasn't complete, and his theory didn't work in certain instances.
Agreed. I wish I had mod points.
I am being schooled in philosophy right now, and my emphasis is in the philosophy of science and epistemology. I always loved the physical sciences, but find them to be overly dogmatic and non-questioning, or non-self-questioning. Philosophy must exist to keep an eye of the sciences to keep them on track, since the sciences do not meta-analyze themselves enough, or ever. Science seems to think it discovers certanty at certain junctures, which is hubris, since there were many historically certain theories which were later proven completely wrong, we might have to accept ANY of our current understandings as wrong as more emperical date comes in.
Emperical data is king though, no theory is worth much without a backing in reality.
One of my friends at ASU doing Physics/Math and I have very nice conversations about such things. Nothing is more intellectually rewardsing that conversations between scientific disciplines and philosophy (not to say that aspects of phi cannot be scientific). Through both we realize a grounding. Philosophy is here to teach others humility, and to show the limitations of logical systems.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Your view seems to be the majority view. Despite that, though, it just doesn't feel right to me.
The whole dark matter business plus the recent (sort of) revelation that the expansion of the universe is speeding up instead of slowing down tells me that our understanding of gravity is incomplete; that Einstein's equations are missing some sort of factor that is significant only on large scales. I have a sneaking suspicion that in the same way that Einstein's SR equations boil down to Newtonion equations when velocities are a small fraction of c, new gravitational equations will boil down to GR equations on "smaller" scales (or what we humans perceive as scale, anyway).
I realize that I have no justification for that statement; it's strictly intuition.
There is some proof (dealing with spins, I think) that say that QM MUST (logically) be true, to fit the emperical date. I don't have my material here in front of me, but I probably could find it.
This does not mean that it MUST be true, but that logically, given the emperical evidence, it MUST be true unless something else is discovered that throws the previous findings out. QM, for the moment, is a logical necessity that no other explanation can furnish. There might be bits of the vast QM that can be wrong, but as a whole it is true.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I think the bigger question in my mind is why hadn't someone tried to do this before now?
Science isn't truth, and it isn't fact. It's a process that, over time, results in a gradual and constant tendency towards truth.
If you get into a debate with religious folk about "creationism" versus "evolution", one of the tactics almost invariably tried is to disprove some facet or other of evolution through some form of deductive reasoning. The basic idea is to prove that Science is somehow wrong, and then assume that creationism wins by default once that's done.
It's easy to see the fallacy: disproving evolution (even if they can) doesn't prove creationism.
But, scientific theory is always undergoing review and clarification. Newtonian gravity works, in limited scopes. It was revised and improved with relativity theory, which is itself being revised and improved today with multidimensional, superstring theory. It's this recursive process of deduction, testing, and review that advances science.
We should be ecstatic! Despite our incredible efforts to find it, we've uncovered NO evidence that this has ever happened before in the multi-billion year history of the universe!
People are stupid, and we have to acknowledge that. Our intellect barely rises above our other urges, the urge towards sex, the blindnesses caused by our tendency to suspend reason (A.K.A. "Faith") and follow the leader 'cause it's easy. And, truly fresh/new approaches to problems are rare, and hard to find. Most any "new" thought is merely an extension of a previous thought. We're creatures of habit. But, so long as we continue to try, so long as we continue to be willing to challenge our assumptions, and take the time to do so when somebody DOES come up with something new, then the process of Science progresses, and life continues to get better.
Schools today don't teach science. They teach "facts", like "water vapor absorbs light, but absorbes blue light the least, and thus makes the sky blue". They don't ever teach the method of science, the passion of science, beyond making you recite the "gather facts, form hypothesis, test hypothesis, draw conclusion" which is only minimally how science works.
Children are BORN scientists. As they explore with their hands, and their minds, the world around them, they perform hundreds of experiments a day, every day. Where do you find frogs? What bug is making that buzzing noise? What happens if you clap your hands near a grasshopper? How many blocks can I stack up before they fall over?
So, what do we do? We lock them up in a sterile environment, where they're told not to question the teacher, and never to talk to the kids next to them. We prevent their natural curiousity, and instead, browbeat them into performing tricks like a circus animal. The apathy of the schoolchild is both detrimental and obvious.
And after that's done, after the child's natural, scientific curiousity has been conquered, that's when we introduce the wonders of science in the most boring, unimaginably unflattering way possible, by forcing him/her to regurgitate "facts" that they'd be ridiculed to question.
The real wonder? How does science advance at all in the face of this educational travesty?
It's pretty obvious that scientific curiosity is built into the very fiber of humanity, or how else could still be advancing despite our incredibly expensive social efforts to prevent it?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Based on the moderation that followed, I would say that "some people" don't like it when popular theories get questioned. Which just goes to show you--once a scientific "fact" has been established, our attachment to it becomes as dogmatic as any theological notion...
You're exactly right. This is also why our scientific ideas - like our theological ideas - haven't changed in thousands of years.
This comment is geared towards other professional physicsts, even though few might see it. The Cooperstock paper is clearly wrong, although the reason turns out to be subtle. See astro-ph/0507619.
OK, not really. Just thoght it would be fun.
Your reading things into what I wrote. All I said was that if you treat evolution as an origin theory don't complain if someone else comes offers a counter theory to yours. If you treat is as origin theory then you open the door to Intelligent Design. If you want ID to stay in the Philosophy or Religion Class then keep evolutions out of the origins discussion when teaching it in the science class.
Let me check.... Nope not upset. Just like a good stimulating intellectual discussion. Provided the other person in the discussion is interested in actually having one. Instead of saying "you idea of origins doesn't fit the scientific method" instead of coming up with a valid argument against it. The question of "how it all started" doesn't not belong in a science classroom. Let me say that again. The question of "how it all started" doesn't not belong in a science classroom. Biology curriculum insist on putting it there though then everyone complains when there answer to the idea gets challenged in that same classroom.
You brought it up. So expect other people to challenge you on it.
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Dark Matter is far from an accepted Hypothesis, yet seemingly intelligent people defend it on the basis that it's the best thing going.
I think you just answered your own question.
I've read a bunch of comments on this thread, and noticed that many of the highly rated ones share a common theme:
"Maybe it's just me, but when I first heard about dark matter, my immediate thought was the ether. I'm ever-so-smart."
Listen, morons:
History of the Ether: "Light travels. Anything that travels has got to travel through something. Let's call it ether."
History of Dark Matter: "Direct observation consistently reveals more gravitation than is explainable by plugging the currently detectable mass into the current equations. Either our current equations are wrong, or there's more mass than we can currently detect."
One of these is science. The other is a conclusion based on a false assumption which in turn was made with no backing evidence. Can you, being ever-so-smart, tell which is which?
Get over yourselves. You're not smarter than the physics community, no matter how many Slashdot nerds think that your post is "+5 informative".
I wonder how many other consistently used assumptions will end up being false as well??
Since when did scientists start behaving like fundies?
I thought it was roughly forever. It's the resistance that any revolutionary idea encounters before the revolution happens. But we shouldn't do away with it, as it's also the resistance that keeps out the zillions of bad ideas, and makes us confident that the few that make it through are worth keeping.
It's a shame that some are being jerks about it, but that's what you get for trying to do science with a bunch of monkeys who just have an extra layer of neurons wrapped around the primate core.
Scientists declare themselves openminded, but then they define "openminded" as accepting of anything that doesn't threaten their existing view and opinions about what they believe.
You really need to get out there and meet some real scientists instead of relying on what you see on TV to define them.
To a certain point as students. After that, going on to actually be a scientist is a mostly self-taught endeavor.
It's not really that Luminiferous Aether was constructed to have light fit our data. It was more so, just because we lacked the proper understanding of how exactly light can be a wave in a vaccum. We were operating under the disenlightened (pun intended) notion that a wave can only be through something, and that a wave can't be a particle at the same time, and thus "wave" through "itself". (very simplified explanation, I know how light works, don't try and correct this stuff because it's not spot on.)
But both share very much the idea that we can't explain something, so lets invent something that makes it fit with our current model of thinking. Let's not look for the real problem (that we're misunderstanding things), but rather let's just make shit up.
Personally I've never found the "make shit up" a good scientific practice in any field.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Since when is Stephen Hawking dead? Do you even bother to check facts before replying?
Most undergraduate students I've talked to about this idea say something along the lines of "Philosophy has nothing to do with science."
Wow! That demonstrates a pretty stunning ignorance of science itself. As I'm sure you know, all of what is now science used to be called natural philosophy.
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Maybe this dark matter only exists in some of those other 13 (were there 13? - stringtheory) dimensions and that we only see their gravitational effect.
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The "How long has he been dead" comment referred to Einstein, not Hawking.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
It's not like whoever coined the adaptations necessary to make reality fit calculations too seriously. 'Dark Matter', 'invisible elves' - they are the same thing? Could've called it 'mysterions' or 'galactic flux' but you got to call it something so ppl will know there's a problem.
Your reading things into what I wrote. All I said was that if you treat evolution as an origin theory don't complain if someone else comes offers a counter theory to yours. If you treat is as origin theory then you open the door to Intelligent Design. If you want ID to stay in the Philosophy or Religion Class then keep evolutions out of the origins discussion when teaching it in the science class.
If you review the last few posts you will find you are guilty of the same sin. If I treat gravity as a origin theory it does not invalidate nor modify gravity theory. You are using a logical fallacy to argue yoru point. Your tryign to recast the arguement. However evolution is the origin theory that is well supported. It can be used as such since it does have a valid scientific principal that does in fact relate to the origin of life. Combined with organic chemistry it provided a way and a means to start and perpetuate and modify life. ID/creationism/turtle all the way down/ect.. does not. Your attempt to equate the two are ridiculous.
Let me check.... Nope not upset. Just like a good stimulating intellectual discussion. Provided the other person in the discussion is interested in actually having one. Instead of saying "you idea of origins doesn't fit the scientific method" instead of coming up with a valid argument against it. The question of "how it all started" doesn't not belong in a science classroom. Let me say that again. The question of "how it all started" doesn't not belong in a science classroom. Biology curriculum insist on putting it there though then everyone complains when there answer to the idea gets challenged in that same classroom.
You brought it up. So expect other people to challenge you on it.
"The question of "how it all started" doesn't not belong in a science classroom. Let me say that again. The question of "how it all started" doesn't not belong in a science classroom."
why? The big bang/organic chemistry/bucky balls ect.. have no place in science? why? explain? whats your rationale?
"Instead of saying "you idea of origins doesn't fit the scientific method" instead of coming up with a valid argument against it."
actually, that is a valid arguement against it.
" Provided the other person in the discussion is interested in actually having one"
neither of us will change our ideas. It is simply an argument for the spectators.
"Biology curriculum insist on putting it there though then everyone complains when there answer to the idea gets challenged in that same classroom."
It belongd there, it is almost the entirty of biology. The principal trunk of the field. Evolution has been scrutinized, revised, assualted, and withstood. It is as far as we know the best theory about biological changes in life and organic checmistry provides possible answers into a origin of life. IS/creationism/ect.. are all politically motivated. Why do we need to equate them?
"You brought it up. So expect other people to challenge you on it."
I have challenged many many creationist/ID supporters and every single one has shut up and gone away. They dont' have any valid arguments so they use crutches like logically fallacies to argue their point. Evolution is like gravity, you can't assualt it scientifically. Your trying a more orthoganal arguement and trying to reason that it should not be taught because it is an origin theory however this doesn't make any sense. There isn't any rationale. You are argueing entirly from a politically/religiously motivated point of view and you don't care for the truth because it doesn't support your case. Should we stop teaching organic chem because it contributes to an orgin theory, how about quantum physics, statistics? geology? Eartha nd Atmospheric sciences? all of these contribute to one theory about the origin of life. Evolution also contributes but is not the whoel theory. What makes any of this non scientific? Whats yrou rationale for making such a absurd arguement?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Let's step back a minute. The point of bringing this article to light was to illustrate that the recent attention about global warming, and its proposed anthropogenic source, may be a bit precipitous, given the accuracy of the predictive modelling of global climate simulations. While I've seen results of global climate simulations that extend out 150 years, I've yet to see any good data that give me confidence that our accuracy is high enough to say more than "global warming is not much than a mildly promising theory." And specifically "global warming" = "anthropogenic causation of global warming". This was the claim that I was attempting to bolster.
Fair enough. It appeared that the linked article was meant as evidence to refute the accuracy of the historical temperature measurements.
However, the article says in closing:
"We need impartial research, funded neither by MNCs, governmental groups or NGOs with private agendas. And the media needs to stop highlighting disaster scares and ignoring exposes of the scares."
The groups mentioned include every organization capable of doing the proposed "impartial research". This is a false argument, allowing the author to simply discount any group which arrives at the inconvenient conclusion that action is necessary.
If there is any valid doubt that the activity of people is contributing to the warming trend (as there almost certainly is), then surely there are articles containing discussions of the actual data and methodology used to arrive at the questionable conclusions by people versed in the relevant sciences. This is simply not such an article.
I think you just proved my thesis about this being a religious fervor on both sides better than I ever could have alone.
s/scientists/Christians/g
Your bias is embarassingly obvious also.
I'm saying that using Evolutions as an Origin theory opens the door to other origin theories in the argument. You have in fact just proved my point. You assume that evolution can't be taught as anything other than an origin theory. If that is true then expect counter theories to be provided on origins. Whether those theories are intelligent design or a lotus blossom on an ocean. Because the Question of Origins is a metaphysical question not scientific. And you still haven't made an argument for it to be otherwise.
I haven't touched on any of the questions of whether ID, Evolution, Alien seeding, or any other answer to the question of Origin's are provable or logically valid. But if you wan't to diverge into those area's then feel free to do so. I'd be happy to meet you on those grounds too.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
Well, I think this article is rather weak.
...
First this is only a preprint, and this is a shame for the CERN gazette to present
as news a non-referred paper. Who knows, perhaps the authors have just made a
stupid calculation error by a factor 4 pi ?
Second, and typical from people not familiar with the complexity of astrophysics,
the authors are sufficiently ingenuous to think to solve all the dark matter
problem by considering only a small part of it: the rotation curve of spiral galaxies.
Even if the rotation curves were explained in the way the authors propose, the rest
of the problems for different structures would stay. Such as:
- How the universe starts making stars and galaxies after a few hundreds millions years
after the big-bang?
- Why gravitational lensing in galaxy clusters demands also lots of dark matter?
- Why spirals with similar rotation curves have different amount of dark matter,
and why elliptical galaxies have other amount dark matter?
- Why spheroidal dwarf galaxies have lots of dark matter while the only ~10 times
smaller globular clusters have no dark matter?
-
We know particles like neutrinos do exist and already neutrinos may make as much
matter as the usual ordinary detected matter. We also know that the standard model of
elementary particles is incomplete as a consequence of the neutrino tiny masses,
new class of particles of only roughly estimated mass are very likely to exist.
It is therefore very unlikely that these guys have solved the whole dark matter problem.
It was revised and improved with relativity theory, which is itself being revised and improved today with multidimensional, superstring theory.
I know this is a minor point in your post, and I agree with everything else you've said, but I couldn't resist. Superstring theory is an extremely tentative theory at this point. Really it's not even complete, and many people don't even think it's science since it has produced no testable predictions that aren't predicted by other theory. Maybe it's something someone should keep working on, but it's really surviving more on sexiness than actual science.
AccountKiller
I'm saying that using Evolutions as an Origin theory opens the door to other origin theories in the argument. You have in fact just proved my point. You assume that evolution can't be taught as anything other than an origin theory.
No, I'm saying evolution is part of a origin theory. However this particular origin theory is our best guest given the current evidence at what actually happened. The others are as well but with a lot less information. There is no equating them, the study of the origin of life is also a branch of biology and it has nothing to do with "metaphysics" since it is entirly about organic chemistry. Evolution is a lead off point for it.
If that is true then expect counter theories to be provided on origins. Whether those theories are intelligent design or a lotus blossom on an ocean.
Alright, so I have a well thought out theory based on reams of scientific evidence and somehow you would like me to equate it to "we were vomitted out of the great creator after he had some cheese". That rationale hodls any water.
Because the Question of Origins is a metaphysical question not scientific.
Metaphysics? why is that question metaphysical? what makes it so? it's a question that can be answered with enough evidence, so what seperate "how did we get here" from "why is the sky blue"? Why should we seperate them? What makes that question untouchable but the question of "why does my son have red hair when me and my wife are blonde".
And you still haven't made an argument for it to be otherwise.
Because it is answerable and thus not simply philisophy for the sake of philosophy. It has tangeable scientific value and it is something which we can eventually answer. It is part of the study of biology/physics. It contributes to our knowledge of the world in a meaningful scientific way while lotus blossums/adam and eve/turtles/ect are more abstract and contribute only in a philisphical/religious/historical way. Because unlike the other origin stories you can actually disprove/prove this because the story has implications you can investigate.
I haven't touched on any of the questions of whether ID, Evolution, Alien seeding, or any other answer to the question of Origin's are provable or logically valid. But if you wan't to diverge into those area's then feel free to do so. I'd be happy to meet you on those grounds too.
IS: unprovable
Evolution: provable/well supported
Alein seeding: depending on which theory provable
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Well, certainly ever since the neo-Darwinists claimed that all questions about evolution have been settled. I guess there is more than one branch of science where questions are not allowed.
But over all, I think that astronomy is doing a better job at it than evolution.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
I think the comparison between Luminiferous Aether and Dark Matter is one of the most prudent ones I've heard in a long while. Making something up to force your data to fit is a pretty bad idea. We can't be wrong.
Except this has happened many times in physics with successfull results. The neutrino was a predicted particle that interacts weakly with normal matter. It was predicted in 1931 by Wolfgang Pauli to explain the result of experiments measuring beta decay. The particle wasn't actually detected until 1956. Does this mean Dark Matter must exist? Obviously no, and if this new calculation pans out it most likely doesn't exist. But that doesn't mean that proposing something new to fit your data is bad science. It obviously is good science, just make sure your prediction can be falsified.
AccountKiller
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Dark Matter is far from an accepted Hypothesis". It is certainly not far-fetched to imagine that there is some quantity of matter, perhaps substantial, that does not "glow" like stars do. This is why it is "dark". The original problem was one of galactic rotation curves --- matter in the outskirts of galaxies rotated around the center in a fashion exactly mimicing what it would do if there was a spherical distribution of matter extending beyond the glow of the visible disk. The hypothesis that there was just such a distribution that we cannot see is not so far-fetched. It has been admittedly difficult to identify the "conventional" bodies that could be responsible for the lion's share of such a halo. Upper limits on the numbers of brown dwarfs, Jupiter-sized objects, and small black holes have shown that no one of these are primarily responsible. Still the search continues, as it would in any good scientific theory. Any of these possibilities are seen as a simpler approach than modifying our most basic models of gravitational behavior, especially when there is no similar pattern of deviation from known laws on different scales. And, as shown by the follow-up paper in the archives, there is a real possibility that the authors have made an honest mistake.
Your bias is embarassingly obvious also.
Is it? You might be surprised...
I'm mostly replying to how open-minded one must be to say,
Scientists declare themselves openminded, but then they define "openminded" as accepting of anything that doesn't threaten their existing view and opinions about what they believe.
Look up this: arXiv.org. It seems these guys made a crude mathematical error in their calculations.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
It seems these guys made a crude mathematical error in their calculation: arXiv.org.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
I'm assuming IS = ID Demonstrate how this is unprovable.
Evolution: the question of whether this is well supported (regarding its occurence on a macro scale) is hardly settled. Even among the rank and file of your Biology Experts. Many people have come up with proposed mechanism's but no one has been able to prove the mechanism occured. The most they can come up with is "the pieces of this mechanism exist in nature. Therefore this mechanism is a possible explanation for our existence." No one has been able to point to any definitive proof that they did occur. Only as to their relative likelihood. And no, Assuming that since life exists is proof that they did occur doesn't logically follow. You can prove life exists. You haven't been able to prove how it got here yet though. So any idea is fair game. Even if that idea can't yet be proven. I'll make you a deal: you show how Macro Scale Evolution can be proven to the same degree that gravity can. And I'll accept your argument.
Gravity is directly observable and has directly observable effects. Macro Scale Evolution in Biology does not. (just a hint: saying complex lifeforms exist doesn't count as an observable effect) We already know they exist the question is how they got here. No circular reasoning allowed. There is no fossile evidence of it. There is no observable species change occuring today.
Micro scale evolution is a whole other ballgame. It is an easily provable method of biological change. It, however, has observable limits on what it can do.
Alien Seeding: I'll agree with you there. Given the right theory it is provable with evidence. (Aliens showing up and telling about our ancestors in the stars for instance.) Of course ID is provable in roughly that same way so I guess you could say it is just about as provable.
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I'd always hoped Dark Matter didn't exist.
But i'm still depressed about the Universe expanding.
Beta tested, Mother Approved
About -3.58832912 × 10-9 pounds force. Assuming you weigh 100kg, the board weighs 2 kg, and your centers of mass are 3 ft apart.
:)
Check the calculation
(I love Google calculator. So many constants and unit conversions built in.
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I'm assuming IS = ID Demonstrate how this is unprovable.
Intelligent design does not make any predictions, does not have any premises that can be disproved or supported thus it is unprovable.
Evolution: the question of whether this is well supported (regarding its occurence on a macro scale) is hardly settled. Even among the rank and file of your Biology Experts. Many people have come up with proposed mechanism's but no one has been able to prove the mechanism occured. The most they can come up with is "the pieces of this mechanism exist in nature. Therefore this mechanism is a possible explanation for our existence." No one has been able to point to any definitive proof that they did occur. Only as to their relative likelihood. And no, Assuming that since life exists is proof that they did occur doesn't logically follow. You can prove life exists. You haven't been able to prove how it got here yet though. So any idea is fair game. Even if that idea can't yet be proven. I'll make you a deal: you show how Macro Scale Evolution can be proven to the same degree that gravity can. And I'll accept your argument.
actually no. Macro evoltuion/micro evolution are not concepts in evolutionary theory. They are ideas introduced by the ID/creationist camp after they could not directly assault evolution. It is a rhetorical trick. Split the definitioninto and disprove one side of yoru split. Outside of the US macro/micro evolution are almost unheard of. There is no differences, macro vs micro are entirely a american construct made to partially support creationism/ID.
Alien Seeding: I'll agree with you there. Given the right theory it is provable with evidence. (Aliens showing up and telling about our ancestors in the stars for instance.) Of course ID is provable in roughly that same way so I guess you could say it is just about as provable.
ID is not even close.
If we were seed from alien life, then
1- we would find meteors with organics molecules/life in them. We have.
2- Meteorites would have to survive intact and not obliterate the organisms/organic molecules inside. We have proved they can.
3- We coudl one day find life elsewhere with a similiar make up, this would hevily support this idea.
If ID were true, then
1- err... nothing because it doesn't have any implications, it's a rationalization.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
This result is very very solid. If Einstein were here he would be absolutely ecstatic. The math is very simple (the velocity profile ends up being a bessel function) and the reason why the Newtonian virial theorem fails in the case of galaxies is clearly explained: the problem is not at all linear. Physics people all over the world are kicking themselves right now.
The dark matter hypothesis was always circular. First it was hypothesized, then that untested hypothesis was used to explain, and then supporting evidence was found for the explanation, and it was always a house of cards. It might have been right, but still so far most of what there was was a string of flaws in logic tying together non-parsimonious conjecture.
Newton's therey never was a theory and he said so. He merely described, and people used that description as though it were a law. Einstein explained. It's about time someone took the explanation and used it instead.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
"Which just goes to show you--once a scientific "fact" has been established, our attachment to it becomes as dogmatic as any theological notion..."
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Religious dogma hasn't changed in 2000 fucking years. Science may be slower to change but it does change. Your comparison of scientific orthodoxy to religious dogma is just just pure and unadulterated bullshit. It's like saying there is no difference between shaquille O'Neil and the empire state building because they are both tall.
You do realize that there are people who still think the earth was created in six days right? You compare a fundie who believes that the earth is 3000 years old to a scientist who still thinks dark matter exists? What the fuck kind of an idiot are you?
evil is as evil does
I'm pretty glad to hear of your experience. The Copenhagen institute has a mythical quality for those of us looking at the last 100 years of science. Niels cast a pretty big shadow. I'm glad that it's still pretty open and free.
I've been following cosmology for ages, and the current mainstream ideas seem like an exercise in being exotic for exoticness' sake. I've been singularly unsurprised at information coming back from Spitzer and the like that we're still finding normal galaxies 13.3 billion light years away. I've been reading some of the material from the 30's and 40's, and quite frankly, we haven't addressed their concerns very well in the intervening 65+ years. But I digress :)
Quantum Mechanics is pretty amazing, all things considered. No matter what weird experiments have been thrown at it, including Einstein's objections, it just works. It's freaky and awe-inspiring that the universe has an utterly "invincible" underpinning that isn't about actual waves or particles of matter or energy, but probability. Do your probability wave math, run the experiment, and watch the statistics pile up. I must admit, I still don't know how to absorb the fact that you can get individual electrons seemingly "interfering with themselves".
It's a little embarrassing that we really have no idea what quantum mechanics means. If Nick Herbert's summary is still valid, we have four, completely separate mathematical ways of looking at quantum mechanics and eight major camps of interpretation. All of the mathematical means (Feynman's sum-over-histories, Heisenberg's matrices, etc.) are utterly indistinguishable. It's an embarrassment of riches in the 'possible explanations' department.
Personally, though, I'll take the options that don't require some airy-fairy "consciousness" as the only observer that can 'collapse the wave function', making consciousness mystical instead of an extremely complicated but theoretically understandable biological process, and options that don't prevent further questioning (I don't want any "the theory is all there is" bits like with, ironically named considering the open atmosphere, the Copenhagen interpretation :).
Nick Herbert's book, albeit some 20 years old now, is still excellent. I just finished it recently, and reviewed it on my blog.
It's a sobering thought that so many 'realities' could describe what's going on in quantum mechanics.
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
What is it about close association with other nucleons that keeps a neutron stable? This has always seemed quite odd to me. It's not intuitive that either the strong force or the weak force could be the mechanism for stability.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In my experience in conversations between philosophers and physicists. The philosopher is always looking for evidence that either 1) there is no truth or 2) philosophy and physics are basically the same and therefore the philosopher could have been a physcist if they had really wanted it. And the physicist is always bored out of their skull and just humoring the philosopher. You'd do well to consider that your case may not be entirely different.
How exactly does the question of who introduced the concept make a difference as to it's validity? There most certainly is a difference. It's a clarification of terms to define the argument. They don't dispute that you can have mulitple breeds of dog (or cat or elephant or any other species) We do dispute that you can have large irreversible shifts in a population resulting in the introduction of a significantly more advanced species genetically. That is the crux of the argument. And it required a definition of terms to keep the discussion on target. The fact that you can't allow for the difference demonstrates the flaw in Evolutionary theory.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
Wow, how lucky we are that you're around to point out to us that all those so-called astrophysicists and cosmologists with their fancy book-larnin' don't know nothin' bout anything. Sheesh, what are you wasting time posting to Slashdot for, when you could be picking up the Nobel Prize for Physics?
So someone points out that Dark Matter is a fudge factor and you respond with sarcasm? You must be soo fun at parties.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Actually, there is a rival theoretical framework -- MOND (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics), an extended form of GR. Which said that for very low accelerations (less than the gravitational acceleration any body in the Solar System would experience), speed would be faster than in standard GR.
Explaining the differences between say empirical claims and deductive proofs in upper-level philosophy/political science/etc classes is a real pain. I hate to be a philosophical asshole, but I think these critical thinking skills are quite essential for a person who wants to actually use their brain the rest of their lives.
Plus Phil of Science courses can piss off all the science majors when they get around to causation and reading someone like David Hume; that is always fun.
Every post I make begins with the assumption P=~P.
Perhaps, the more gravity the less the speed of light and the more gravity the slower the speed of light is.
Sort of. The more gravity, the more space is curved, which makes light travel a longer path and thus appear slower. Once gravity exceeds a certain limit, light is curved in on itself.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
As far as I know, it is done with doppler spectrometry of neutral and ionized gas, mainly the 21 cm and H-alpha lines. I am aware of a couple of (unsuccesful) attempts at using stellar lines, where the idea was to look for differences between the gaseous and stellar velocities.
Eew, dark matter is simply intergalactic santorum?
No stupid mysterious hypothetical, but never directly observed, anti-gravity forces. No accelerating universal expansion. This might return some sanity to cosmology. (I know, I know. Who says nature has to be sane?)
:evilgrin:
No more dark forces.
(Other than than the Bush Family Evil Empire, that is.)
What the fuck kind of an idiot are you?
Actually religion has changed in 2000 years. We have two new major religions, Sikhism and Islam. Christianity has grown from a few followers to around 2 billion followers, splitting into at least three major denominations and countless subdenominations. (As you mention it, only a minority of these subdenominations translate genesis as you do - perhaps around 5% of the non-US western population). Most pagan religions have died. Even religions that did exist 2000 years ago, such as Budhism, have changed considerably. This is not just a difference in name, the different religions do represent different ideas as to how people live. Some modern religions view science as a symbiotic non-contradictory viewpoint. To call someone an idiot for making the same type of mistaken associations that you yourself are making strikes me as somewhat hypocritical. I would advise that you find out about these things before shooting your mouth off.
It's quite possible that something along these lines is happening between quantum mechanics and string theory. Although string theory is not anywhere close to being able to suplant quantum theory, string theory does have some of the hallmarks of the kind of paradigm shift that happens when a mature theory has "run it's course."
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1) Deduction - you've got the proof for your theory.
2) Induction - you've found what you believe is true and now have to prove it.
3) Spat - when 2 ends up being upset by 1 after a decade, you have a good old battle royal. All too often spills into the public arena, unfortunately.
No, I don't know for sure. But that's not what anybody wants to hear. And that's not what anybody will report in the press. That's not what politicians base decisions on. The overwhelming majority of times you see science misused as you stated above its by companies/politicians/people taking scientific data and theory and restating it as scientific fact.
Thank you!
To add to this: I think a lot of the aversion against science by parts of the population stems from the misinterpration of "true" in the scientific sense not only as common-sense "true" (as the other poster said), but with an inherent opinion.
This may be a bad example, but consider the fuss about whether man descends from the apes. People attack this (scientific fact) - they feel that they are somehow worth less because of this link. It seems that those people feel degraded to animals by the 'arrogant scientist'.
This doesn't explain why the neutron does a beta decay, but it does suggest that once in a nucleous the strong force's contribution to increased binding energy prevents the decay...
I like your "Faith" in the scientific community. I assume you're basing that statement on some proof?
Scientists are people, and no matter how much you train people, you can't take out their own biases and self interest. If you could train people as such - then we could have the perfect government, the perfect church, the perfect scientific community - and perhaps a perfect world.
Science is seen to be improving all the time, because it is at least partially wrong a lot of the time. Sure there are those fundamental theories that are nigh 100% correct, but there are multitudes of others - like Dark Matter - that come and go without too much noise over the duration that is human existance.
The church's main concern is not science as such. And so is always on the backfoot in arguments with scientists that contradict it (or at least the people involved with the church are usually on the backfoot) due to their difference in world focus, and the difference of their training.
The church is 'meant' to focus on the well being of people, and offer a relationship with God, often with the two entwined. The theory on what increases a person's wellbeing, is one of these fundamental theories that is nigh 100% complete (food, shelter, acceptance, honesty, selfcontrol, fairness etc) and that has been more or less understood church from inception. (If not followed, for again - personal self interest can come to the for of any organisation - look the politics that goes on in universities - when education & research is meant to be their concern - they haven't burnt anyone at the stake AFAIK - but they do ex-communicate in a manner of speaking and being taken to task by some of the 'scientific' printed press can be as good as a public flogging).
The church contains a lot of ignorant fools, but that's part of the churches role - to accept such fools, and help them to not be so foolish. To help them not leave a wake of broken relationships and hurting people. Unfortunately, since people aren't perfect, the church isn't perfect, and people (yes - a lot of people) get into power who should not be there. They are still fools & I wish it wasn't the case.
Science is somewhere else. And yes - the church often 'intrudes'. But usually on matters that should be unimportant when it comes to the church's main focus.
How do you compare Carl Sagan to Mother Teresa? Who is the most self serving there? Who would you rely on to help you when you're poor and sick, lying in a gutter? Is this an unfair comparison? Good. So is the honesty of the scientific community vs the church.
This article being the most obvious example. :-P
Do you have evidence for this? References???
Making the data fit the equation isn't necessarily always as bad as it sounds, assuming the equation tends to accurately predict the results. Many times in physics, the equations will predict the existence of particles that aren't yet known about and only through asusming they exist, they are later found. It goes further than particles as well, Einstein assumed his equations were wrong because two particles couldn't possibly be connected and have instantaneous "influence" on each other at any distance... sure enough though quantum entanglement was discovered and proven to exist, and is now performed all the time now in universities and corporate labs working on next generation research. If it wasn't for the scientists assuming that the equations were right, they would have never discovered quantum entanglement.
Regards,
Steve
Besides being great reading, it's appropriate here because of an important point made in the article: there are very few scientific reports about speciation events, and they are not well organized, and it ISN'T because they don't exist; it's because "it appears that the biological community considers this a settled question." The majority of scientists don't bother reporting these things, because they don't see the need -- even though it's precisely this kind of evidence that a thinking fundamentalist needs to make any headway in seeing some degree of truth in evolutionist thinking. So there is a gaping divide between the two camps, and as usual in American society these days, neither side really wants to reach any kind of compromise or detente; they both want to obliterate their opponent.
I think the reason that Americans get hung up on "macroevolution" is this: although any thinking person can understand the observable processes of variation and selective pressure, it does require a logical leap to claim that those processes are sufficient to explain ALL of what we now see, and a separate leap to conclude that it did in fact occur that way. Most people whose ideas about human origins come from an evolutionary standpoint in school (say, the majority of Europeans) don't even see that any leap is needed. However, in America the religious fundamentalists are many and vocal, and their children are educated to see a dichotomy between the origin story presented at school and the one presented at church.
king-manic, it's interesting that you keep on bringing up the idea of aliens delivering human DNA to the planet from outside. As an intellectual concept, it seems almost equivalent to the idea of a God shaping humans out of dirt. It doesn't say anything more than the God theory about where the contents of the meteorite (or whatever) might have come from, it just posits that "one day, it wasn't here, the next day, it was." To the degree that evolution is compatible with alien delivery of DNA, it (a) is similarly compatible with Intelligent Design and Creation by Divine Fiat, and (b) isn't really proving anything about what actually did happen.
Even though this is disappointing from a philosophical point of view, the result that the model is unphysical is good because it saves astronomy a lot of trouble. I think that it is really important to stress here that the evidence for dark matter does not come only from flat rotation curves alone, but that there are many independent methods to determine the presence of gravitational mass, many of which do not depend on any Newtonian assumptions. Had the original result been true, the non-existence of dark matter halos of galaxies would have implied that most of these other independent experiments showing the presence of dark matter, e.g., in galaxy clusters, are be wrong as well. And that would have shaken the foundations of most of modern cosmology.
Evolution has more supporting evidence than you give it credit for. It's made some very specific predictions about our genetic makeup which have been recently confirmed experimentally. Hell, the whole 'tastes like chicken' thing demonstrates a common ancestor.
Name one prediction that has come to pass. Of course we are similar to other mammals. Couldn't it merely be that instead of a common ancestor, we have a common creator?
Again, until evolution is demonstrated in some fashion, that will always be the response.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Have a look at this: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0508377 which refutes the original paper. The title is "Singular disk of matter in the Cooperstock and Tieu galaxy model" Although it is possible in science that models researched on for years (or even decades or centuries) are proved wrong by a single paper, it is better to be cautious when judging them initially.
On the other hand, although it explains some of the peculiarities of the current universe theories (black matter, inflation etc.), it does not provide any testeable predictions, yet.
Actually if I may make a clarification. (thanks for the link to the article by the way it was very interesting reading)
As I term it the macro/micro evolution seperation is not one of scale but of mechanism. With the exception possibly of the cases of polyploidization listed in the article (I would have to look into those more closely) The speiciation events described are caused through a "specialization" to the point that interspecies breeding becomes impossible. No one is disputing that such events occur. Specialization however often occurs through the shedding of characteristics not the gaining of new ones. To completely make the case of course you would have to have a complete understanding of the organism's genetic code and determine whether (for lack of a better term) more information was added, or whether information was shed through lack of use. I believe in most cases of documented speciation it is caused by each population losing traits the other carries. Given enough time these losses can result in a biological incompatibility on the genetic level causing insterility in the offspring. This to me is micro evolution. It is in essence a loss of genetic information. Much like what causes problems when inbreeding occures.
For instance if you take a small enough population and isolate it you will have a non viable population that is for a while at least markedly different from the population you took them from. The reason is because they have lost access to too much of the genetic code necessary to maintain viability. Intbreeding occurs eventually and you have "mutations" most of which are fatal. These changes in morphology are not caused by new genes however. They are caused by a lack of genes.
Only on the single cell level do you see any real evidence of the addition of useful genetic information and I'm not sure it can apply beyond that level. Especially since the barriers between interbreeding of various types of microbes are so low. Going so far in many cases as to allow them to share and trade genes back and forth. That type of thing has not been demonstrated possible in more complex systems. For anything at the muticell level the trend is heavily weighted toward losing genes rather than gaining them. A trend that seems to contradict the idea of speciation causing the type of massive change Evolution proponents require.
Unless you start out, not with less complex but more complex creatures to speciate from. If, for instance, the proto-dog was more complex than current dog breeds speciation through microevolution would possible without going against the observable trend. Of course just like evolution needs it's missing link. I need my proto-dog. So we are back where we started. Believing what we think is true with logical models that can explain how it is possible.
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We're basing all our work in this area on the red shift of cosmological objects. What if our understanding of red shift is wrong? A recent scientific study found a galaxy that was very old (had a very large red shift and hence was near the birth of the universe) yet was far too large to fit in at that time (was in the scientific press in the last few weeks).
Name one prediction that has come to pass.
Here's the one I was talking about: link. Just because you don't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Also, I'm not aware of any competing theories.
Couldn't it merely be that instead of a common ancestor, we have a common creator?
Who cares? You can't test that, falsify it, or make predictions based on it.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The point is that it is being revised, that it's not finalized, and possibly never will be. The so-called "Standard Model" is well proven, it's just disjointed and complicated. (EG: The math behind field theory) The mathematics of Superstring theory apparently explain all currently known phenomena, while signficantly reducing the complexity of the basic assumptions, and unifying the disjointed pieces of the standard model, in particular the heretofore unresolvable rift between relativity theory and sub-atomic theory.
It underscores dynamic nature of Science - the acknowledgement that absolute truth is not in our grasp. It requires humility, and it's just not the lazy path, even though following it is far easier than not doing so.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I'm out playing Skee-ball and don't have that password handy at this public terminal. Sorry. --God
>We took a stab and said that there were phantom particles that we couldn't see and they were causing our observations to be different from what they should be.
That could also be a description of the prediction of the neutrino. Collisions were apparently violating the laws of conservation of momentum and energy. The physicists of the day decided to blame it on an invisible, neutral, massless particle carrying away the missing energy and momentum. Oh, and it couldn't interact substantially with anything else, because then it would be observable.
Carl Sagan might have compared the hypothetical neutrino to the invisible dragon in the garage.
We've directly observed neutrinos now, so it's not an *exact* parallel to dark matter theories, but there's a parallel.
The groups mentioned include every organization capable of doing the proposed "impartial research". This is a false argument, allowing the author to simply discount any group which arrives at the inconvenient conclusion that action is necessary.
I agree. And even if the conclusion reached is contrary to the views of the author, it should be able to be debated on scientific merits alone.
If there is any valid doubt that the activity of people is contributing to the warming trend (as there almost certainly is), then surely there are articles containing discussions of the actual data and methodology used to arrive at the questionable conclusions by people versed in the relevant sciences. This is simply not such an article.
I think you're right. I know for a fact that there are less inflammatory articles that question the source of global warming, since I have read many myself. Honestly, the article I liked to was the first one I googled up as a counterexample of the "prevailing wisdom." I wanted to give a rapid response, so I turned quickly to google.
Wow, My university is on Slashdot. Cool
How long until the authors have a response?
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
king-manic, it's interesting that you keep on bringing up the idea of aliens delivering human DNA to the planet from outside. As an intellectual concept, it seems almost equivalent to the idea of a God shaping humans out of dirt. It doesn't say anything more than the God theory about where the contents of the meteorite (or whatever) might have come from, it just posits that "one day, it wasn't here, the next day, it was." To the degree that evolution is compatible with alien delivery of DNA, it (a) is similarly compatible with Intelligent Design and Creation by Divine Fiat, and (b) isn't really proving anything about what actually did happen.
I actually only bring it up because it is a fringe theory that is more valid that ID. Although ID doesn't actually say much. ID is the kludge that keeps intelligent Fundementalists from packing up and folding. Divine fiat is fine, I actually beleive god made it all, however I don't beleive that he would salt the evidence so we would come to the wrong conclusion or he would create life in a way that we would intuitivly want. He doesn't play dice. "He plays some strange card game where only he knows the rules and he smiles a lot"-Neil Gaiman. I myself do not put too much credience into the alien seed theory of life.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
How exactly does the question of who introduced the concept make a difference as to it's validity?
It doesn't except the arguement is over evolution which is a scientific concept. It would be like a two having an conversation over cars and the one suddenly says that all red sedans are macro cars and all blue sedans micro cars and that blue sedans can be easily observed but red sedans is questionable because it's different.
First off, there is no scientific basis for this differentiation, the people who coined the terms and support the split are not scientists or have done any work int hat field. It's tantamount to having a career mechanic come into a surgury room and start cutting and proclaim he has fixed the mans leaky heart valve. He might have done so but chances are he killed the patient. The differentation is a cosmetic thing used to put to questiont he theory of evolution. It works onyl to those who know little about biology.
There most certainly is a difference. It's a clarification of terms to define the argument. They don't dispute that you can have mulitple breeds of dog (or cat or elephant or any other species) We do dispute that you can have large irreversible shifts in a population resulting in the introduction of a significantly more advanced species genetically.
First off, evolution is not about advancement. It is about adaptation. You don't change to get better, you actually almost never change. It's the population that evolves and changes. You have a population, they live for a while. Some new selective force comes and kills certain individuals. Those genes are no longer passed on. Over a short or long time (both happen) the population as a whole differs. Accumaulations of these changes leads to speciation when the species cannot or will not mate with other closely related individuals. IE. we biologically can't mate with a ape. Certain birds won't mate with other closely related birds even though artificial means can create viable young. The source of differences are mutations. Mutations occur at a regular rates with soem more common then others. most mutations are fatal or non-sensical (do nothing), some entirely detrimental, a rare few are detrimental but carries some benificial phenotypic change. For instance I have alpha thalasemia, which has some health setbacks but makes me virtually immune to malaria, an important trait in south west asia. If for some reason this muation made my skin horribly acned and non-afflicted peopel wouldn't mate with me while other afflicted people would we would speciate as well as look different.
The Macro/Micro split is that creationists want to introduce the idea that this can't or isn't how things like an arm form. How ever many creature have vestigual features that suggest this is exactly how they lost them, and it's not a leap at all to figure this is how they got them. it's like claiming that you may be able to code a calculator in C but you can't program a 3d game engine because it's too complex. No real rationale is given. The difference is time span and complexity of accumulated changes, not mechanism.
That is the crux of the argument. And it required a definition of terms to keep the discussion on target. The fact that you can't allow for the difference demonstrates the flaw in Evolutionary theory.
This is what you do when you have the weaker position in a debate, you introduce terms (macro/micro) to partly confuse the judges (they happen to be idiots) and try and wittle your opponents case away. It's a logical fallacy, your no longer argueing about the same thing. The creationists use it to mitigate a iron clad case to say "wait, you proved that. I can't disprove it. But I'll just confuse the case and I'll win anyways". Also known as the chewbacca defence. To people who know the subject you sound liek an idiot but the jury of the american press/people don't know it that well and in the idea of "fairness" they give both side equal credit. But it's grossly unequal. Evolution is the theory
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Since when did scientists start behaving like fundies?
Since the citation mafia took over and politics and Good Ol' Boy network connections started deciding who's hired to research faculty positions. Research ability means NOTHING and politics means EVERYTHING in the cosmology and high-energy theory community these days.
That said, the paper in question is a numerical general relativity paper. I'm sure the GR guys are working on this now to see if there's any merit. Those people are pretty good. They know what they're doing and haven't been corrupted.
-M
Ok so what do we have here: using an unproven theory to prove another theory, which - wait a minute - they do not prove with their theory. This is no science. This is nonsense. But of course you want to believe it, because the alternative (THE) alternive is too painful for many.
In other words, when the "stone" definitions don't present themselves scientist find themselves in the land of fudge factors, dimensional analysis and curve fitting observation...or as Einstein himself would have called it...the "wood".
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Well...I'll stake my PhD in course 8 from the 'Tute that this paper is just plain wrong. If their result really depended on some non-linearity of GR that isn't present in Newtonian physics then they should recover the Newtonian case when c (the speed of light) goes to infinity. The fact that they don't says that they're modelling something other than what they thought (which is what the previously mentioned rebuttal article says as well).
As for the meta-discussion on intelligent design and other silliness... This is what the peer review process is all about folks. Scientists get it wrong plenty but by having each other blast away at each other we usually uncover our mistakes as time goes by and new evidence comes to light...
Ah but "we don't know" is true, but not testable. Saying, "the fairies cause it with their magic dust", allows you to test whether there are correlatiions between color of pixie dust and outcomes. The bullshit theory is bullshit, but it is a step towards developing a Law, whereas saying, "well, it's a mystery" is just standing still.
Please actually repeat the proof for anyone in english. I am not willing to write the explanation--I have read the published paper...and I only have been using calc for a little while. There's no point of having theoretical views of this, if one is not willing to do the homework of seeing WHY the equations work out in the field equations.
I don't know about the rest, but a URL that starts with "xxx" and ends with ".gov" just plain freaks me out. (The URL for the "paper" link is "http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0507619")
That ain't right, folks.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Well but that is exactly what has happened here. The "how those forces would work differently" is general relativity. He asked exactly the right question, and if people had tried to answer it they might have found the answer then.
I'd like to suggest that questioning is not attacking. Asking "why is A better than B?", is not an attack on A. It also doesn't have anything to do with "belief".
There seems to be an acceptance of QM as the guiding light of modern physics, with an unspoken undercurrent suggesting that while relativity is useful, since QM and General Relativity aren't compatible, then eventually the mistake with relativity will be found.
Modified newtonian dynamics (MOND) is an effort to revise gravity (a failed one, it looks to me).
It'll be interesting to see if TeVeS can recover from this paper.
Which is exactly the problem with science education in this country today. As a former scientist (biochemist) who left industry to teach H.S. chemistry, I know that the vast majority of science teachers are teachers who took a few science courses, but who don't really understand how real experimentation works. They are more concerned with teaching facts, because they are evaluated on how well students regurgitate those facts on standardized tests (insert NCLB rant here). It is more intellectually demanding and time consuming to teach critical thinking skills, and many teachers simply don't have the time, desire or ability.
ID (not IS you silly dumb fuck) is just as unprovable as evolution, and saying otherwise doesn't help your case at all.
Prove evolution then, make it happen, right now. Let's see your trite theory can do.
Oh, what's that? It takes MILLIONS of years, so you just have to believe it? Hmmm....
Nice rant, and I'm not even sure if this correction supports or opposes your position, but...
You wrote:
They teach "facts", like "water vapor absorbs light, but absorbes blue light the least, and thus makes the sky blue".
This isn't even a fact-in-inverted-commas. All together now: "Air scatters light, but scatters blue light the most, thus making the sky blue."
If you were taught the above "fact" in school then your complaints are the least of your worries about your science education! :)
We can observe that selection causes adaption and minor mutations, but we have never observed a whole new species evolving from another. You don't have to see a new species to observe evolution. That was the parent's point. Genetic drift and natural selection explain the evolution of anti-biotic resistant bacteria from ancestors that weren't resistant, but the simple observence is that these bacteria show up. You can't say it hasn't been observed.
Making something up to force your data to fit is a pretty bad idea.
Is it? Or is that exactly what science is about? Afterall, relativity came about when people found the existing models didn't exactly fit the data. So, they made up a new theory to cover the gaps.
no one has figured out that massive bodies indent spacetime. imagine a planet rotating around it's sun and creating a nice indented ring in spacetime. It's curve trails the planent but eventually fades away - never creating a full ring. imagine a big sun, sort of indenting a large hole in spacetime that will exist after the sun dies. or the massive and deep pits left by black holes. affecting spacetime long after the black hole.
Even still, wrong. Evolution says nothing about the existence or not of God. Even in terms of origin of life, this says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of God. It would seem to be as though you are suggesting that any suggestion that contradicts your beliefs in regard to a specific God (and His historical actions) must mean that there is no God. It is possible that God exists, and yet man evolved from molecules. The unthinkable thought is that Genisis could be myth, and yet God could still exist.
Your use of the title "Creator" would still be appropriately applied to a God who initiated the Big Bang (or who otherwise created Reality).
Many statements in astrophysics, meteorology, and many other fields fall into your category 2. (Verifying hypotheses about, say, supernovas, through controlled experiements, is a long way off.)
As for your category 3, there is a distinction between "we don't have all the facts but can still apply critical thinking" and "we don't have all the facts but we're smart so our theories are better." Critical thinking can be used in many philosophical fields where the scientific method does not apply; and good scientists should understand themselves as a class of philosophers (i.e., critical thinkers). ers for a living and our theories are worthier than your theories.if the argument is "we
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The mathematics of Superstring theory apparently explain all currently known phenomena, while signficantly reducing the complexity of the basic assumptions, and unifying the disjointed pieces of the standard model, in particular the heretofore unresolvable rift between relativity theory and sub-atomic theory.
Actually the mathematics is far more complicated than even general relativity. The big problem though is lack of testable predictions. If a theory isn't falsibiable it's philosophy, not science.
AccountKiller
I think the thing about dark matter that most of us don't understand is why scientists think that it's got to be made up of either large pieces or exotic new components. I mean, look at the make-up of the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud -- just lots of small(ish) pieces of rock. And it seems like the whole "dark matter" conjecture is just the result of an incorrect assumption regarding how much matter is in "empty space". Maybe those 2 things are saying the same thing, but the way that dark matter is presented makes it seem like something new.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
There are a lot more theorticians than there are observing astronomers.
Just to remind, at the beginning of the last century, many people considered atoms and their particles a mere abstraction, not necessarily representing the way things actually work, but rather serving as a model close enough to do meaningful calculations. You could say the same about dark matter here.
"seemingly intelligent people defend it on the basis that it's the best thing going."
I had and M.D. (Medical Doctor) defend the Body Mass Index by saying, "Well, that's what everyone is doing, now" implying my questioning it was unimportant.
Dark matter vs. Oort cloud matter is a really bad comparison. In the case of the Oort cloud, yes it is there but it is so little of it doesn't significantly influence our calculations of Neptune and Uranus. Even the recent findings of objects as larger or larger than pluto weren't predicted, they were just noticed as changes in photos of certain sky regions.
But the (former) argument for dark matter was specifically about the influence it it had on the visble/known objects on the outskirts of every spiral galaxy. The scale of the difference in mass between what we saw and what we predicted was enormous.
If you haven't heard of it, I think you'd find The Underground History of American Education interesting. John Taylor Gatto puts forward the hypothesis that forced schooling is designed to produce just the kind of mindless robot you speak of (or at least keep the children away from the streets). The few that do manage to rise to the top can be trusted with the keys to the kingdom as they've proven their non disruptive nature before, and hence pose no threat to the powers that be. While that might not be that fresh a point of view, he's done a lot of research into the issue, and presents his case well. I'll be damed if I believe it (at least to the extent he argues) but it's a worthwhile read. And it's avaliable for online reading.
Stefan Axelsson
If we can barely see things the size of Pluto in our own solar system, what makes us think we should see any of what's at the outskirts of the galaxy (besides bright stars)? So if the data shows that there's probably a lot of stuff out there, wouldn't the simplest explanation be that there's a lot of ordinary matter floating around in "empty" space? Especially given that there's quite a lot of junk floating around in our solar system, even after the sun's gravity has "cleared out" probably a substantial portion of what used to be here.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I stand corrected, to my surprise. I always assumed that when astronomers talked confidently about galactic rotation curves, they were actually talking about galaxies. Silly me. Sure, stellar winds ought to couple pretty strongly to the interstellar medium and drag it along with the stars, but that is not the same thing as measuring the stars. Magic pixies dragging the gas around are not much more preposterous than invisible gravity pixies.
It's still bizarre to me that we still don't have any direct proof that there's an Oort cloud out there. Except for long-period comets, everything else we've discovered has been within so many degrees of the ecliptic.
Could be the same observability problem with dark matter (though dark energy is, IMO, a crock :). It could also be that there's no Oort cloud, but discs of material stretch out a lot further than we think, not just for solar systems, but perhaps for galaxies as well.
Who would have predicted the Kuiper belt?
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
Hey, it just struck me: since vacuum actually has nonzero energy, it ought to have equivalent nonzero mass, too. It is also transparent and nonreflective. I'd say its description comes very close to that of the ellusive Dark Matter.
Well, when it comes to QM we're only taught (what else?) the Copenhagen interpretation - the rest aren't even mentioned, except maybe for some graduate courses which is really a shame. Not that I mind the Copenhagen interpretation, it works for me, and AFAIK the interpretations are equivalent anyway.
P.S. Drop by sometime. You can see the library where Heisenbergs office used to be - we know exactly where he discovered the uncertainty relation ;-)
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Making up a new theory to fit a problem is not a problem. Making theories to fit given data is the purpose of science. Making up a new theory that involves a lot of statements like: "you can't see it", "radiation travels through it", "it's invisible", "the only interaction it has is to make this equation fit", "it exists as a halo around the galaxy", "it works in mysterous ways" is a problem.
Making up a theory to fit given observations is a good idea. Making up an extra theory when the predictions of the old theory fail is a fairly poor idea. It seems even more silly when you consider the "old theory" they were using was Newton (under the assumption it wouldn't matter much).
It's not wrong to make a theory, or improve a theory, but typically it's a poor idea to concoct another theory to explain why your first theory didn't explain things properly.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Ha, you think I get invited to parties, with a like in debilitating cynicism, sarcastic abuse and snide innuendo like that? Why do you think I'm so gnarly in the first place? ;)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Actually, this seems to be counter to evidence - we've lived for about 200,000 years (counting mitochondrial DNA) without developing science. Instead, everything has been based on magical thinking. Science comes from the debate, originating in Greece about 2000 years ago, and just barely surviving through hardship from there. "Uncommon Sense" by John Cramer does a very good job of tracing/arguing this.
The cultural meme of debate seems to be fairly well entrenched in our present society - and I hope that it will keep that way. Whenever I see people talking about "energies" and overriding science for their "feelings", I feel scared for it, though.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Well, when it comes to QM we're only taught (what else?) the Copenhagen interpretation - the rest aren't even mentioned, except maybe for some graduate courses which is really a shame.
I may not have all the nuances of the Copenhagen interpretation, but it always struck me as a "dead end" in the search for reality. Not that there necessarily is a reality "behind" QM, but even with Bell's nonlocality proof, strange things like the neorealists' pilot wave theory seem like they open up more avenues of investigation even if they do end up wrong or misguided. QM is too incredibly strong and counterintuitive to stop at 'just' using the probability equations.
Well, in my humble opinion, etc. :)
P.S. Drop by sometime.
We live in Canada, and actually won a trip to Switzerland this summer. We went to Geneva and rode the #9 down to CERN. Couldn't get a tour booked in under a year, never mind the few months we had, unfortunately, and when we got there, even the Microcosm exhibit was closed, so my attempts at getting to a scientific "mecca" were foiled (though I did eat in the cafe and had the Menu Proton special :)
There are so many things over there - it's a shame we're at such a distance. At least my fiancée-soon-to-be-wife, who's a high school science teacher, has a lot of Danish heritage - which might make a good excuse to visit. I trust you don't have to book campus tours or anything too far in advance? :)
We also picked up, some time ago, an odd little 'graphic novel' about Niels Bohr's life called Suspended In Language. I'd be surprised if they didn't sell it on campus - it was a mighty nifty book, something that belongs in a collection next to Gonicks' Cartoon History of the Universe :)
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
> if you are a scientist you had better have pretty thick skin if you want to challenge the status quo. There is no room in scientific circle for multiple leading theories, there is "one true religion" and the rest are all crackpot theories.
You obviously don't know what goes on among scientists. Articles challenging prevailing opinion - such as this one - are published quite regularly in scientific journals.
> A perfect case in point is the current debate over teaching evolution in public schools. You'd think that it was a religious debate on both sides, the way they act. Since they currently have the upper hand, they are determined not to give any ground, the mere mention that evolution has some competing theories is completely unacceptable
Evolution doesn't have any competing theories. The much discussed "Intelligent Design" movement is transparently a political movement disguised as a religious movement disguised as a scientific movement.
> We simply can't allow young impressionable minds access to any facts that might contradict evolution
If you know of any facts that contradict evolution there are lots of scientists that would like to know what they are.
What scientists - and a lot of theologians - object to isn't the idea that evolution might have some competition as an explanation, but rather to the idea that we should introduce pseudoscience into the public school curriculum in order to advance a religious/political agenda.
> It could be done in a way that is not endorsing any particular "religion" and would certainly lead to some interesting class discussions.
Yes, if I were a school teacher I'd find an excuse to start a discussion of the anti-evolution movement, to help the students understand the difference between science and pseudoscience.
Ditto if there was public pressure to introduce "2+2=5 Theory" into math classes.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> That's because evolutions at it's heart is based on just one thing: "There is no Creator."
Are you unaware of how many people, including scientists, accept the reality of evolution and also believe there is a Creator?
> And since using "God" as a counter argument doesn't fit into the Scientific Method you have the convenient fall back of dismissing the only possible counter argument as "not science."
God is excluded from scientific explanations for the same reason Invisible Pink Unicorns aren Flying Spaghetti Monsters are. The notion that an unevidenced power of unlimited capability and unknowable intentions did something is compatible with any observation, and thus explains nothing. In CS/IT Geek terms, it's like explaining an observation by saying "a * made that happen".
> So, if I may, I'd like to point out that the question of "where it all started" doesn't belong in a Science classroom.
If it can be treated scientifically it's certainly reasonable to include it in the science curriculum.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Actually I've studied it a great deal. As I said... If you can teach it without going into how it is an explanation for origins then feel free to teach it without it's conterpoint. When you go into a school however and listen to the curriculum it is all about origins. And if you insist on teaching origins in that setting then you better be prepared for the counter arguments. Evolution does indeed exist as a method for biological change. It is observable. It is not however the only possible explanation for "the origins of all life"
Evolution doesn't explain "the origins of all life". It's what happens to imperfect self-replicators, such as life.
However, the study of evolution does indicate that all known life on earth had a common ancestor, regardless of where that ancestor came from.
> I was referring to Evolution (The proof that we don't have a creator). If you don't think it's taught that way then your either blind or self-deluded.
Evolution doesn't prove that we don't have a [Cc]reator, but it does prove that some specific religious beliefs are wrong.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> All I said was that if you treat evolution as an origin theory don't complain if someone else comes offers a counter theory to yours.
Well, due to the lack of competing theories no one is complaining anyway.
> If you treat is as origin theory then you open the door to Intelligent Design. If you want ID to stay in the Philosophy or Religion Class then keep evolutions out of the origins discussion when teaching it in the science class.
You misunderstand: ID isn't kicked out of science classes because it's an origin theory, but rather than because it's pseudoscience.
> The question of "how it all started" doesn't not belong in a science classroom. Let me say that again. The question of "how it all started" doesn't not belong in a science classroom.
Why not? Let me ask again, Why not?
If something is amenable to study by the methods of science, it's legitimate fodder for science classes. The only reasonable filters for keeping stuff out are (a) how solid vs. tentative are the results on that topic, and (b) how important is that topic in comparison to other topics, since we don't have time to teach everything.
Re (a), the basics of evolution are incredibly solid.
Re (b), if you're going to teach biology at all, evolution is one of the first things you should teach, since it explains so incredibly much of everything else we'll teach in a biology class.
> Biology curriculum insist on putting it there though then everyone complains when there answer to the idea gets challenged in that same classroom.
Again, there aren't any challenges to evolution that are any more respectable than alchemy, astronomy, and "electric universe theory". Creationism is a traditional belief, completely unsupported by evidence. ID is a pseudoscience used as a disguised for a religious/political agenda.
If you can come up with a real challenge to the idea of evolution, you'll make yourself one of the most famous scientists of all time.
But for some reason evolution deniers prefer to claim they're persecuted instead of doing the competitive science. Why do you suppose that is?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This paper shows that the model used by Cooperstock and Tieu to describe galaxy rotation in General Relativtiy was unphyisical:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0508377/
> I'm saying that using Evolutions as an Origin theory opens the door to other origin theories in the argument.
You have been vague by what you mean by "origin theory". Evolution is only concerned with the origins of biological structures, behaviors, and species. The big bang is concerned with cosmological origins. We have other theories that address the origins of galaxies, stars, planets, mountains, canyons, volcanos, hurricanes, etc. And all are taught in the apropriate science classes.
You appear to be inventing an ad hoc category to support your argument.
> Because the Question of Origins is a metaphysical question not scientific.
There you go again. And you're completely wrong. To whatever extent science can investigate [Oo]rigins, it's perfectly appropriate to do so.
> I haven't touched on any of the questions of whether ID, Evolution, Alien seeding, or any other answer to the question of Origin's are provable or logically valid. But if you wan't to diverge into those area's then feel free to do so. I'd be happy to meet you on those grounds too.
Ok. "ID is utter bunkum." Comments?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Macro evoltuion/micro evolution are not concepts in evolutionary theory. They are ideas introduced by the ID/creationist camp after they could not directly assault evolution.
Actually, the biologists on t.o. say that it was biologists who originally made the distinction. They just represent looking at the process on different scales.
Not that that's any help to evolution deniers.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> I think the reason that Americans get hung up on "macroevolution" is this: [...] However, in America the religious fundamentalists are many and vocal, and their children are educated to see a dichotomy between the origin story presented at school and the one presented at church.
Evolution deniers have latched on to the macro/micro distinction because their position is increasingly untenable as science progresses and various procedures such as gene sequencing and paternity tests become familiar to more and more of the public. The macro/micro distinction lets them admit that lots of evolution really does happen, while holding on to the belief that it does not go beyond some taxonomic level.
It isn't rare these days to hear even the most knee-jerk of evolution deniers allow evolution "within a kind", where "kind" is as high as family.
Of course, a lot of that backpeddling has as much to do with trying to rationalize the Noah story as it does with accepting science.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Name one prediction that has come to pass.
Every time a new species' genome is sequenced a prediction of evolution is fulfilled.
Unless you know of a species with a genome unrelated to the rest of us.
And that's not the limit of it. For example, the existence and general nature of intermediate species in the whale's family tree was predicted. In fact the paleontologist making the predictions also predicted the approximate time one of the intermediates should have existed, approached geologists to find where on the planet ancient seabeds from that time are now exposed on the surface, visited one such site, and found the fossils literally lying on the ground there.
If you want more, ask on talk.origins.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I read their paper and it is surprisingly accessible (on a high level) even for the non-initiated. From the face of it, it seems this explains the rotational speed problem of galaxies related to their mass - but that is only one of the reasons Dark Matter was proposed.
Another problem is the seeming existence of Very Large Scale Structures in the universe, linking galaxies together into clusters - which could not have happened in the available time since the birth of the universe with the current model of gravity.
It seems the last part of the challenge of Dark Matter still remains.....
Here at the universities in Belgium, this is the case (well at least at the one I went through, but I heard of similar curricula from others): every scienctific study includes philosophy of science in the last years. Even in Computer Science which I studied.
The difference is not one of scale or complexity but of mechanism. You point to mutation as the method for the introduction new traits. However there is no evidence that such events have occured on the scale necessary for evolution to occur. Speciation through the loss of traits is however both observed and documented. Saying, well we know it's theoretically possible and therefore it must have happened that way is not proof. I happen to think that it happened in reverse. We started out more complex and lost traits as time went on resulting in speciation. And there are reputable scientists who agree. It's like you have this blind spot to an entire area of research just because you "assume" that evolution through mutation and specialization is the way it must have occured. Your world view won't allow for any other options. Science may start out with an assumption but ignoring other options isn't a valid way to conduct research.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
We can place an upper limit on the *number* of objects that may compose a massive halo by carefully observing "microlensing" events --- tiny fluctuations in the brightness of distant halo stars due to matter passing in front of them. Many of these events have been observed, but not enough to account for the mass responsible for the so-called anomalous galactic rotation curves. We then think that perhaps there are a lesser number of more massive objects, or something else we haven't thought of yet. In any case, the standard Big Bang model predicts an upper limit on the amount of baryonic matter ("regular" matter, protons/neutrons) in the Universe, so if the massive galactic halos exist, they should still fall under this limit, or there'll be trouble.
"It might as well have been the law of invisible elves of slow rotation."
If your proposed IESR law can predict the rotation of randomly selected galaxies of various shapes and sizes better than Newtonion, Relativistic or any other laws, then it is a shoe-in for a Nobel prize.
Perhaps this paper is correct and others have simply been using the wrong equations. Sounds plausible and I am sure it will be followed up given all the interest in this long standing puzzle. This is how most good ideas end up, in fact it's highly likely that some of the "shinny pebbles" on Eienstien's imaginary beach turned out to be wet turds. Imagination and curiosity can discover things like black-holes and bent spacetime decades before anyone observes them in nature. Eienstien, Newton, Maxwell,... are all immortal because they discovered stanger and more useful models than IESR(as it currently stands).
PS: Rename it to IEFR at least that would reflect the observations it is attempting to explain.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think you support him, as he is pointing out the "fact" is wrong.
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
It's simple. The force is strong in this one.
The difference is not one of scale or complexity but of mechanism. You point to mutation as the method for the introduction new traits. However there is no evidence that such events have occured on the scale necessary for evolution to occur. Speciation through the loss of traits is however both observed and documented. Saying, well we know it's theoretically possible and therefore it must have happened that way is not proof. I happen to think that it happened in reverse. We started out more complex and lost traits as time went on resulting in speciation. And there are reputable scientists who agree. It's like you have this blind spot to an entire area of research just because you "assume" that evolution through mutation and specialization is the way it must have occured. Your world view won't allow for any other options. Science may start out with an assumption but ignoring other options isn't a valid way to conduct research.
You haven't read many scientific papers have you? Gaining features is rare, losing them also equally rare. Speciation is a accumulation of changes. Gain or loss, and it isn't always losss. It is often some distinct change. There is ample evidence, sift through nature.com and read up on evolutionary research.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I thought they already used the general relativity since it's a more accurate theory than Newtonian physics...
There is general relativity who is a terrorists. We will require all sorts of funding to fight this mad man. And if not him, then all this dark matter that is so evil that it is unseen. I forsee trillions of dollars being expended and almost certainly we will have to declare military law in the next 2 years to fight these scourages of the world.
That should work for the average voter.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Very well, let's call it like it is.
I made a typo, which can be easily corrected.
You're a colossal asshole, and you're stuck with that forever.
I guess I got off lucky.
1. perhaps "its" been too long in the lab tonight
Should be "it's", contraction for "it has", no apostrophe is incorrect.
2. "But he y, thats just me"
Obvious
3. "begining"
Again, obvious
4. "similar systems are setup at other institutions."
Should be "set up"
That was 4 in your last 5 posts. Are you sufficiently chastised yet jackass?
I could say the same to you. How exactly do you support the statement that losing features is rare? Compared to gaining its anything but rare. Anytime a sub-population is isolated traits are lost. It's goes hand in hand. That is why inbreeding poses such a danger. It's hardly a rarity. More a law of nature and genetics. Seperation from the larger genetic pool by necessity causes a loss of traits. Some of those losses aren't immediately visible morphologically but it's still there.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
The way I've understood it, vacuum has a non-zero energy because matter is constantly being spontaneously generated within it in particle, anti-particle pairs, then simply anhilating themselves.
I could be way off base (and if I am, please correct me). Just I "know" that this spontaneous generation happens, and to me it explains why vacuum has non-zero energy.
Especially because in the simplest understanding, it's not really possible for a pure vacuum of nothing to have non-zero energy, since there is no mass there to *have* energy. Of course, the spontaneous generation of particles and conservation of mass and energy even in these situtations should then allow for it.
I doubt though that this amount of spontaneous mass could possibly be our "dark matter", since the fudge factor needed for the dark matter is significantly greater than something that could be spontaneously generated in a vacuum.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Try this: The Observational Impetus for Le Sage Gravity
IC XC NIKA
Since matter can pull on other matter, why would it be impossible for matter to start pushing back on other matter after a certain distance? Like say 2 items pull on one another through gravitation but a minute force from the same items does the inverse effect. Now think that this pushing force keeps its strength a bit more per distance than gravitation does. Seperate the two items far enough and they'd start pushing and accelerating in different directions.
Since when did scientists start behaving like fundies?
Undergrads aren't scientists, just mildly promising future scientists.
I've seen the exhibit and you didn't miss very much except maybe the chance to buy souvenirs. When I went there we managed to see quite non-public stuff through a combination of the right contacts and downtime from a power-outage :-) If I'm lucky I might get the chance to go again and see the LHC detectors before the beams are switched on.
There are so many things over there - it's a shame we're at such a distance. At least my fiancée-soon-to-be-wife, who's a high school science teacher, has a lot of Danish heritage - which might make a good excuse to visit. I trust you don't have to book campus tours or anything too far in advance? :)
When you know you're going, try to contact the Niels Bohr Archive. They might be willing to show you a couple of the interesting rooms and tell funny anecdotes. You can also drop me a slashdot message. I don't know how long I'll be staying at the institute but if nothing else I might have suggestions on how to get in and who to talk to.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
It was pretty disappointing to waste my once-in-almost-a-lifetime opportunity in Geneva on eating at the CERN café I'm glad I didn't miss too much.
We don't do a whole lot of 'science vacationing', though I take in science centers and botanical gardens whenever I can. In Vancouver, I take in the science center in the big Olympic golf ball. Last time I was there, there was a China exhibit with papermaking and a spouting bowl (I loved these so much, I ordered one from Acme Klein Bottle :) The observatory on Vancouver Island near Victoria has some fantastic little tours and a great visitor center, including a nearly-portable planetarium (seriously, it seats maybe 8 people) and some displays (I got a chuckle out of the Big Bang exhibit, which was shut down with an appropriate sign "Still Working The Bugs Out" :)
We did get some CERN postcards and send them off to people, and took pictures in front of all the used equipment anyways :)
Thanks for the kind offer of a tour! The probability of us going that way is small, and we're likely to interfere with ourselves *grin*, but if we do happen to be by Denmark in the next few years, we'll look you up, and if it's later, we'll try anyhow!
Kind regards,
-- Ritchie :)
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
The difference is that "Dark Matter" is not any sort of model that allows them to make predictions. At this point, isn't it just extra numbers thrown into the equations to explain the observations?
I could say the same to you. How exactly do you support the statement that losing features is rare? Compared to gaining its anything but rare. Anytime a sub-population is isolated traits are lost.
? it's apparent you haven't read any then. When a population is isolated the rate of mutation is the same as if they weren't. So your not going to suddenly lose/gain a genotype/phenotype just because their isolated. Speciation happens when that isolated population just can't mate with the other popylations. The rate of muatation is eviromental. The reason isolated populations speciate mroe is because often the selective factors are different leading to a change in gene frequency, not loss of features.
That is why inbreeding poses such a danger.
It magnifies any type of genetic diseases already in the population, it's a urban myth that it causes deformities in and of itself. IT only magnifies anything that is already int he pool. Do some punnet squares. It doesn;t magically weaken the speceies. Many many species actually do inbreed regularly.
It's hardly a rarity. More a law of nature and genetics. Seperation from the larger genetic pool by necessity causes a loss of traits. Some of those losses aren't immediately visible morphologically but it's still there.
yeah, strange theory, completely unsupported by facts. Speciation is not loss or gain of features it is reproductive incompatability which happens for many reasons. The pool might not be diverse and in this way you "lose" traits. But it simply means individuals with those traits aren't in that group. This isn't a change in the genes of individuals, just a reduction in the diversity in the pool. This doesn't cause sepciation and you can actually have a 100% representative group isolated as well. Sometimes it results in greater diversity. For instance the galopagos islands and the numerous varieties of finches. Isolation has lead the finches to find their own niches, having a variety of phenotypes greater then the population it comes from.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The following article might be illuminating. Pay close attention to the use of the term heterozygosity which is a reference to the measurement of the presence of different alleles of a gene at one or more loci. A decrease of heterozygosity in a poplutation is a decrease in genetic traits available to that population. In other words genetic "traits" are lost.
t ml
Here is the link: http://www.geocities.com/farmcollie1/inbreeding.h
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
The following article might be illuminating. Pay close attention to the use of the term heterozygosity which is a reference to the measurement of the presence of different alleles of a gene at one or more loci. A decrease of heterozygosity in a poplutation is a decrease in genetic traits available to that population. In other words genetic "traits" are lost.
Yeah you just said that a smaller population has less traits. it has nothing to do with inbreeding. heterozygosity is having 2 types of alleles in one organism like me. I'm a hetrozygous for alpha thalasemia, having 2 alpha thalasemia genes is lethal, having only 1 result in malaria immunity. In a inbred population the % of hetro zygotes drops because more coupling have homogenous traits. This does not diminish traits, it simply means reccessive traits surface more often in the population. This isn't nessacarily good or bad. some benign recessive traits like red hair or blue eyes would show up more often, some advantagious traits like my alpha thalasemia as well and some bad traits like hemophelia woudl happen more often. This doesn't remove traits/genotypes/phenotype from the pool. It only magnifies the occurance of reccessive traits. Recessive traits doesn't mean it's good or bad, just that you need two recessive genes to create the phenotype.
check here for more info.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
As for the lack of testable predictions.... I would disagree with that, string theory actually makes quite a few predictions, the trouble is that the amount of energy required to see the effects are beyond anything we are currently capable of. It is testable in principle, it's just not within our practical means to do so. Now we can argue about the practicality of devoting resources to a theory that is completely beyond our ability to test, but that doesn't put it into the field of philosophy.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
It does indeed diminish traits compared to the population the subpopulation was taken from. the reason recessive traits surface more often is because dominant traits are less frequent and in some cases not present. This is by definition a loss of traits for the population as a whole.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
does indeed diminish traits compared to the population the subpopulation was taken from. the reason recessive traits surface more often is because dominant traits are less frequent and in some cases not present. This is by definition a loss of traits for the population as a whole.
i gence
Actually no, the traits don't disappear, if they were in the smaller population and are not selected against they still appear but the frequency changes. Left on it's own nothing diminishes. If the isolated sub population had all the traits of the main population and was big enough then all traits will continue to exsist. If you did some punnett squares you'd understand how silly your argument is.
If the isolated sub population had only 1/2 of the traits, then those traits would still continue on. It has nothing to do with losing traits. Selection that makes certain traits unfavorable will change the ratio as well, possibly removing certain traits. This is evolution. But your under the mistaken belief that this diminishes the complexity of individuals in this population. It doesn't. Each individual is just as complex as the larger population unless some fairly radical mutation occur. It only reduces the frequency of certain phenotypes(expressed genes). Reduction or increase in complexity of a creature happen at a fixed rate. Isolation doesn't change this rate. Selection for or against traits also happen regaurdless of how isolated the population is. The addition of new traits also happens at a fixed rate regaurdless of the "isolation" of a population.
All I need to refute yrou claim is one counter example:
Ashkanazi jews. In the 11th century they were estimated to be 10% of the jewish population. They were part of the jewish diaspora and are the nothern european jews. These people are essential a seperate breeding population because they had a religious ban against marrying gentiles. They had a selective factor thrust upon them (jews were only allowed in certain jobs). This selected for people who were smarter because the jobs they were forced to do all needed intelligence. 900 years later ashkanazi jews are more successful then any other group of jews, makign up 90% of the jewish population. They also have a much higher average IQ then the other caucasian groups, and marginally higher then even east asians (who also had a selective factor for intelligence). This was because their closed population and selection for intelligence favored any mutations that gave more/better intelligence. This trait was introduced via mutation into population and spread because it was advantagious. Over as little as 900 years the ashkanazi jews are now significantly smarter.
see here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intell
Did being a isolated population diminish anything? are jews less complex then caucasians? no. They just have a different pool of traits because they were a seperate population, and they even gained a set traits that is not normally found in other populations.
Isolation did not diminish the pool of traits. the fact that it was a seperate pool means it both didn't have traits other pools did, and had traits other pools didn't. Your idea that isolation intrisically reduces the number of traits is ridiculous.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Been saying this for how many years now? They are using it incorrectly, or that it's just plain wrong.GR has some issues, but most physicists refuse to recognize them, because no one else agrees. I am a physics student BTW.
Yes, I said it.
You have just made my point. if two pools have traits that the other doesn't have and those pools came from a larger pool that had those same traits. Then the isolation has removed those traits from those populations. Your logic doesn't follow. The traits were accessible before isolation and now after isolation they aren't. Ergo the population lost traits.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
You have just made my point. if two pools have traits that the other doesn't have and those pools came from a larger pool that had those same traits. Then the isolation has removed those traits from those populations. Your logic doesn't follow. The traits were accessible before isolation and now after isolation they aren't. Ergo the population lost traits. ... Look at it this way, The pool won't lose anything. traits aren't things like "an arm" it's something like blonde hair. You have this idea that for some reason an isolated population will lose this feature. It won't if it's included. The population is simply a subset of the larger population and is ussually a fairly representaive group. There may be soem triats that only reside in one pool or another but this has little to do with you idea of reduced complexity, features aren't lost, traits don't spontaniously disappear without being selected against. Your initial idea was that as time goes on creatures have becoem less complex and lost traits however this is gibberish. The loss of a trait ussually comes from selection against it, A trait is something like blonde hair, or black hair. It's not something liek "hair in general". The population is ussually just as complex. the origin of new traits comes from mutations. Complexity stays the same in the local time span, which isloation and speciation lead to more diversity and generally more complex systems and individuals.
Then the isolation has removed those traits from those populations.
Isolation doesn't remove anything, it all up to what traits are in the population. IT's not the isolation that removes anything. If it happens that the new pool didn't have a few traits the old one did it's just chance. It doesn't change the traits already in those individuals only what individuals happened to go. The Complexity of the creatures didn't change.
Ergo the population lost traits.
This is true, the pool may lack some genotypes. However this isn't due to the isolation. IT's due to which individuals form this seperate group. As well there may be traits in the new pool that didn't happen to also occur in the bigger one. By yoru logic isolation has now suddenly spawned these?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
You have just made my point. if two pools have traits that the other doesn't have and those pools came from a larger pool that had those same traits. Then the isolation has removed those traits from those populations. Your logic doesn't follow. The traits were accessible before isolation and now after isolation they aren't. Ergo the population lost traits.
What I'm trying to say is your confusing cause effect and your even drawing the wrong conclusion.
1- Isolation of this population does not cause a loss or addition of features, this was done when what ever event seperated the population. if the split is 100% representative then nothing is different. the isolation is independant.
2- Creatures don't get more less complex overtime, there have been documented cases of both.
3- Traits aren't like "has arm" it's things like height, eye color ect..
4- Your ideas abotu inbreeding are common but wrong. Inbreeding cause mroe homogenous individuals to be born because it's more likly peopel with the same genes breed. It doesn't cause a loss or gain of anythging. The total ratio of each allele is the same.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I see your misunderstanding my use of the term lose. I totally agree. But my point still stands. The loss that occurs when the seperation occured is a driving force of speciation.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
The loss that occurs when the seperation occured is a driving force of speciation.
Loss isn't the driving force in speciation, change is.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I would dispute that this would be possible. If the traits are present in the isolated population then they had to be present in the larger population. With the very rare exception of mutation.
Anyway I think we have pretty much exhausted this discussion. It was a pleasure discussing the subject with you. I'd be happy to continue but I have a feeling we would just start repeating ourselves after this.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
I would dispute that this would be possible. If the traits are present in the isolated population then they had to be present in the larger population. With the very rare exception of mutation.
It's the luck of the draw, sinc eyour drawing members fromt he larger pool to create a smaller one it may end up that all the ones in the smaller pool have rare traits that don't happen to be in the larger one.
Anyway I think we have pretty much exhausted this discussion. It was a pleasure discussing the subject with you. I'd be happy to continue but I have a feeling we would just start repeating ourselves after this.
Pretty much we wont' agree, you have your severally wrong slant on the information and I have my 2.5 years of university genetics.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I read this article and it looked like a homework problem in a General relativity course. People have known how to do these problems for almost 100 years.
General relativity came out in 1915 and the Scharzchild solution in like 1919. Dark matter started cropping up in 1933 or so. What amazes me is that no one even tried this - even for kicks - for 90 years.
I guess the fact that the average galactic gravitational field is so weak and the velocities of stars are small compared to the velocity of light caused generations of us to talk ourselves out of trying a GR model.
But damn!
Anyway, my prayers tonight are with the hundreds of brilliant physicists who staked thier whole careers on dark matter.