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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?"
Do Dark Matter and Dark Energy Cast Doubt On the Big Bang?
I have no idea! You should probably ask a physicist.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Well, the fact that we can still hear the universe ringing at the exact range and frequency curve predicted by George Gamow nearly twenty years before Wilson and Penzias "discovered" it (see the cosmic background radiation - look it up), I'd say no.
Also, the farther out we look, the faster galaxies are moving away from us. Run that backwards in time and we're all in the same place about 13.7 billion years ago. Again, I'd say no.
Also, the balance of H, He and Li that was predicted...
Also, the evolution and make-up of stars and proportions of heavy elements in near and far galaxies...
Etc. etc.
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.
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If a headline ends in a question mark the answer is always no. If the answer was yes they wouldn't ask, they'd tell.. The question mark is how shitty opinion pieces trying to push a view point try to masquerade as news.
As stated below by others, just because it's "dark" doesn't mean it's not just ordinary matter. It's just that we can't actually see it.
Repeating the ignorant doesn't make it true, that "dark matter" is simply ordinary matter we couldn't detect was a good first guess. Very strong evidence indicate it's not because that would create other interactions as well that aren't there. There's some small fraction that is regular matter and some is neutrinos, but without some other form of particles it just doesn't add up.
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we'd like to have non-baryonic fairly massive (so relatively cold) particles. Dark matter is anything that doesn't interact with regular matter via the strong or gravitational interactions. Neutrinos don't.
More and more I'm getting a feeling that science has been down this road before. That our understanding of subatomic particles and the distant edges of the Universe is similar to the pre-Copernican use of epicycles to understand astronomy. That the search for dark matter (and probably string theory too) is a search for that final missing epicycle that will make the model work just right.
I think we need to look for a Galileo or Copernicus who has some whacky, undeveloped alternate concept that if only we could change our point of view, we would see that it makes everything so much more clear.
Will
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.
I'm probably a bit biased here, but also an expert, since I am a physicist who studies dark matter for a living.
The title's question doesn't even make sense! Big bang theory, and in particular studying the exact power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background, is by far the strongest evidence we have for the existence of dark matter and dark energy. All those pie charts you've seen showing the divisions of baryonic matter, dark matter, and dark energy? If they're properly cited, I guarantee every single one of them comes from data from WMAP or PLANCK: CMB experiments! You can't say that dark matter gives you room to invalidate the big bang, because without that we don't have really any strong evidence for non-baryonic dark matter in the first place...