Slashdot Mirror
Do Dark Matter and Dark Energy Cast Doubt On the Big Bang?
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "Back in the 1960s, after the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background, the Big Bang reigned supreme as the only game in town. But back then, we also assumed that what we consider as "normal matter" — i.e., protons, neutrons and electrons — was, along with photons and neutrinos, the only stuff that made up the Universe. But the last 50 years have shown us that dark matter and dark energy actually make up 95% of the energy composition of our cosmos. Given that, is there any wiggle room to possibly invalidate the Big Bang?"
And maybe dark matter isn't at all, but just a matter (bad pun, I know) of our misunderstanding of something.
Take the planet Vulcan. No, not THAT Vulcan. But also a fictional one. Astronomers noticed Mercury isn't circling the Sun as it should, so something had to account for this. In their understanding back then, there had to be another planet that causes that. But then uncle Albert came along and explained it with relativity and now we know that gravity is the culprit, not some planet we can't see.
What if this is a similar case? Like, say, (normal) matter having gravity properties that only become noticeable on a cosmic scale? Like, say, relativistic effects that take a DAMN LOT of gravity to become noticeable?
I'm not saying it is so, I just wonder if we're dead set on Dark Matter or whether we're actually still looking in other directions? Or rather, whether serious scientists actually look into different options aside of Dark Matter to explain the discrepancies, not just crackpots and snakeoil peddlers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We just have no clue as to what it is or how it works.
I'd like to point out that gravity is in the same category. Also time.
This.
When Newton was first discussing his theories of universal gravitation, the scientific community was rather skeptical, because it invoked spooky "unseen forces" acting at a distance (i.e., gravity). The previous Aristotelean model of physics asserted that "normal" terrestrial matter came to a nature place of rest (earth sinks down to equilibrium, air rises to equilibrium, etc.), since Newton's first law hadn't been realized yet. Instead, real-world friction, etc. tends to bring things to a state of rest, which accords with everyday experience. All motion had to be explained by a "cause," something that propelled it into motion, and ultimately the matter would stop moving once it came to its natural state of rest.
The motion of the planets could not be explained using this physics, so the celestial bodies were assumed to be of a different type of aetherial matter (or something) which was set in motion at the beginning of time or something.
That was the proper scientific theory of the day, and it accorded with empirical observation and common sense -- terrestrial bodies stopped, celestial ones seemed to go in continuous motion forever.
But Newton came along and equated the two -- and he developed a mathematics that described the motion. Unfortunately it depended on a "spooky" occult idea of forces acting at a distance. (Newton, of course, was really into the occult, alchemy, etc.)
So, scientists of the day were skeptical. Newton eventually even published an appendix with future editions of the Principia explaining that his model didn't depend on "real" unseen forces acting -- instead, he basically came up with the modern scientific ideal that says: if the math works and predicts the phenomena, that's enough for science. A scientific model need not be concerned with philosophical questions or ultimate causes of phenomena as long as it can actually make good predictions.
THAT, probably more than anything else, was the foundation of modern "science" laid down by Newton during the Scientific Revolution. People had been doing experiments and empirical investigations for millennia, but they always had to worry about ultimate "causes," which inevitably depended on somebody's pet theory of reality. After Newton, though, what matters is that the math works. Maybe the dark matter/dark energy model is hinting at some deeper aspect of reality and a more elegant theory that we will come up with many years from now... or not. But regardless, these ideas are exactly like Newton's "gravity" -- something which we observe, something we can have an accurate mathematical model of, but also something "spooky" that we don't understand completely yet.
That's what the modern scientific process is all about.