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Astronomers Make Important Dark Matter Discovery
saudadelinux writes "To quote a press release on NASA's site, astronomers using the Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered 'how dark and normal matter have been forced apart in an extraordinarily energetic collision.' There will be a briefing at noon, August 21 ET, on this discovery, with streaming media provided by NASA, and some details of the research posted on Harvard's Chandra site just beforehand."
How about waiting for the 21st and THEN posting a story. There is literally nothing of substance yet. Oh wait, this is Slashdot. We'll just have it posted again in two days, then on the 21st, then on the 25th, etc.
So... Scientists can't explain how the universe works, without appealing to a mysterious phenomenon they can't observe and whose nature they cannot describe except in terms of its supposed secondary effects?
And this is different from believing in God... how, exactly?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Someone's giving us ADVANCE NOTICE on Slashdot and you're COMPLAINING?!?!?!
I can't count how many times I've read something on Slashdot about something cool that's already happened, just barely, and said "Once again, information I could have put to much better use YESTERDAY!!!
Zonk, pay no attention to the criticism; I for one WELCOME some in-advance info (might even vote for it for "overlord"...)
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
"And this is different from believing in God... how, exactly?"
We look for explanations of what's going on, not just saying "it's God. Don't go there." Think of dark matter as a placeholder, not the end product. Over time, we should find a reasonable explanation of what's causing the discrepancy, at which point it will just become part of the "normal" physics.
It's never been about how many planets are enough, and it's not just about Pluto. It's about how you define a planet.
It's, in a nutshell, about science: attempting to actually classify and understand the universe. Just proclaiming "ok, I hereby do dub Pluto a planet" is ok for everyday life, but a bit too vague for science. It's like you can talk generically about "radiation" in casual conversation or in super-hero comics, but to a scientist that's uselessly vague. A scientist will be more interested in what _kind_ of radiation (i.e., the exact particle), at what energies, etc.
The same happens in astrophysics. You can't just say "ooh, that's a pretty star", because that doesn't give you much to work with. Is it a planet? An asteroid? A comet? A star? A nova? A white dwarf? What? There are very good reasons to split hairs there, because out of such splitting hairs comes the understanding of what they are and how they work.
E.g., from the splitting of hairs as to how we classify stars came such categories as "white dwarf." In turn, that let us wonder about how big a white dwarf can be, which gave us the Chandrasekhar limit. In turn that told us that when a star goes over (actually it later it turned out that when it's just right under) that limit, it goes *KABOOM* in a spectacular Type Ia supernova. Since it happens at the exact same point, it tells us that every Type Ia supernova is exactly the same as any other one. Which in turn lets us use them to measure distances and velocities in distant galaxies. And from those came a bunch of other astrophysics stuff.
_That_ is why for science it's important to worry about such distinction. Sure, you can get through your everyday life without ever worrying about the difference between Pluto and an asteroid, or between a Type Ia and a Type 1b supernova. But for scientists, it's an entirely different situation.
The informal proclaiming which is what also doesn't scale. When you deal with a whole universe worth of stuff, you have a continuum of things, ranging from individual nuclei all the way to the super-massive black holes in the centre of galaxies. And there are trillions of trillions of them. You can't just go proclaiming for each and every single one of them if it's a planet, an asteroid, or what. You need some rule you can apply there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"And this is different from believing in God... how, exactly?"
There is no secondary 'effect' that infers the existance of god.
Be that as it mey, what this means is 'we have observed and effect, now we are looking for the cause.
They seem to be making head way.
Something falling is an effect of gravity. Oberving that effect is what lead to discovering all the cool stuff about gravity.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The only dark matter is in these guys heads.
Religionists, OTOH, believe in a Supreme Being a priori, and attribute whatever they cannot otherwise explain to the "mysterious ways" of the divine. The edifice of cosmology would withstand the discovery that there is no dark matter. Would religion be able to withstand the discovery that there is no God?
Scientist: There's something we can't explain. Let's try to figure out what it is.
Believer scientist: There's something we can't explain. Let's try to figure out what God did.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
And next year, even better.
And next century, better still.
You may now switch argument tactics to "How can you trust science if it keeps changing its answers! Religion has been giving the same answer for thousands of years!"
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Religion has had very little problem withstanding the discovery that there is no god.
It *is* possible that future advances in astrophysics and cosmology will nullify the dark matter argument. It's just as likely that there *is* some sort of mass carrying matter out that that we have yet to identify. Either way it just shows how much we have left to learn.
Why? Thanks for asking! I'll tell you.
/. readership nonetheless mods the few informative posts up high enough that I can see them and therefore actually learn something interesting.
Because, no matter how many people post pronouncements definitively proclaiming that they, as expert perl programmers or css jockeys or what-have-you, know *quite certainly* that the term "dark matter" is just meaningless mumbo-jumbo, demonstating their amazing mental superiority over the cretinous astrophysics community and its running-dog lackeys in the Mainstream Science Media, the emergent wisdom of the oft-maligned
So thanks to drxray, and thanks to riptalon, and thanks to the readers who modded them up into my view.
Not at all. Irrational people will continue to believe what they always have, and continue to be irrational, whether or not religon is involed. It just gets popularly scapgoated, by people who have some ax to grind in the first place.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant