Dark Matter mapped
-
It's not pseudo science, just because it hasn't been proven yet. Dark matter is currently the most creditable theory to explain the extra gravitation detected in galaxies
ed welch wrote:
It's not pseudo science
It's pseudo science when one "maps" what cannot be detected. What they mean to say is, "We've draw a map of where the dark matter should be, and how much of it there should be, IF AND ONLY IF (a) it exists in the first place, and (b) it has the exact properties we have theoretically attributed to it. If it has other properties than we've imagined, or if other unknowns interact with it, or if it doesn't exist at all because the problem can be solved without recourse to imaginary elements - as proposed by those other guys - then our map is nonsense. That's significantly different than the headline: "Dark Matter Mapped".
-
I don't trust anything that comes from MSN/MSNBC. I hate that news organization and I hate MSN.
█▒▒▒▒▒██▒█▒██ █▒█████▒▒▒▒▒█ █▒██████▒█▒██ █▒█████▒▒▒▒▒█ █▒▒▒▒▒██▒█▒██
Captain See Sharp wrote:
I don't trust anything that comes from MSN/MSNBC. I hate that news organization and I hate MSN.
Be as wary as you like; that's good. But don't reject true things simply on account of the source; that's bad. As the Apostle said, "Test all things; hold fast the good".
-
Assuming, of course, that there is such a thing as "dark matter". See here[^] for an alternative opinion. The existence of dark matter is an unproven theory - prehaps right, perhaps wrong - but certainly unproven. There is no known test for the detection of dark matter; it's composition is unknown; it is a purely theoretical construct. Which is why no one should speak of "mapping it"; such pseudo-scientific statements are simply misleading.
The Grand Negus wrote:
See here[^] for an alternative opinion.
Which if you follow the current dark matter evaluations, is no longer possible. Although it does not tell us "what" dark matter is, the usage of gravitational lens measuring shows that "something" is there, the first step to showing the evidence of a gravitational object that is unseen, or "dark matter." In the case of your explanation, the so-called alternative, there would be no gravitational lens effects because there is no "something" unseen and only motion feeds motion, thus gravitational effects are un-necessary in the explanation. The current study shows that there is, in fact, a gravitational effect present that can be measured through the gravitational bending of light. Unless there are a zillion elves out there bending the light to tease us, dark matter is the best explanation available. The current dark-matter measuring project does tell us that dark-matter is present, it simply does not explain to us what dark-matter is. Is it superstring objects in multidimensional form? is it compacted 4D objects or 3D objects that we are unfamiliar with? Measuring the existance of gravitation where there is no lit objects only shows that something is producing gravity without light/energy. That is the origin of dark matter, something we cannot see that emits gravitational influence. Now we know that "something" really is there through gravitational lens effects where there should be none. Your alternate explanation would have moved higher if no gravitational lens had been measurable, and dark matter would have moved down as less probable. Since gravitational lenses do exist, and are measurable, then "something is there", thus dark matter. People treat dark-matter like UFOs, automatically assuming it is some mystical convergence of something beyond our space-time, just as UFOs are automatically assumed to be little grey men from who knows where. UFOs are simply unknown objects, that is all, unknown, eventually they will be known. Dark matter is the same, it is simply an unknown object, that we have for the first time measured it by its affect of surrounding energy, the distortion of light through gravitational bending of light. We will eventually find out what it is, but not knowing what it is doesn't make it odd or bizarre, only unknown. Measuring dark matter in this instance would be akin to measuring firewalled computers by measuring their affects on the backbones of the internet.
-
Nice reply, thanks ..
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
Also things change as we are watching them
wasnt that a Heisenberg principle - very roughly for us laymen, the more you observe something the more you are likely to interfere with whats happening ?... Ive suggested the same thing in monitoring real-time message flows at 'my shop' 'g'
Garth J Lancaster wrote:
wasnt that a Heisenberg principle - very roughly for us laymen, the more you observe something the more you are likely to interfere with whats happening
wellllll.... now you get into some of the iffy conjectures of quantum physics. I seriously doubt mapping the 2x2 degrees of the night sky in any way affected the obverved objects. Rather it is like trying to take a live backup of your computer as you use it. Every page you visit generates more files, every file you delete or move changes things around. A static image of one location can be taken, but when dealing in fine measurements, things are changing when you are not looking at them, and when you look back they are changed. Thus taking images of any object is a constant changing background of information. Comets are often detected using this mechanism. Take a long exposure of an area, move on the next until you map the entire sky, say over a 100 day period. Then you come back and repeate and look for differences. The differences over a period of only 100 days, would have to be a local object or REALLY fast distant object. Since physical speed is limited by the speed of light, we can basically set our measurment cycle to rule out anything outside our solar system by limiting our compare frequency. Objects that move from measure cycle to measure cycle are found, measured over longer periods and cataloged. It is a never ending cycle as we get finer equipment we can measure smaller and/or more distant bodies, even measuring to oort cloud. I wasn't meaning the quantum observation theory (by viewing you affect outcome), but rather that you are viewing a living changing thing that you have to measure in tiny pieces over a long period of time, when you look away something is still happening though very slow, you simply cannot see everything at once.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
-
Garth J Lancaster wrote:
wasnt that a Heisenberg principle - very roughly for us laymen, the more you observe something the more you are likely to interfere with whats happening
wellllll.... now you get into some of the iffy conjectures of quantum physics. I seriously doubt mapping the 2x2 degrees of the night sky in any way affected the obverved objects. Rather it is like trying to take a live backup of your computer as you use it. Every page you visit generates more files, every file you delete or move changes things around. A static image of one location can be taken, but when dealing in fine measurements, things are changing when you are not looking at them, and when you look back they are changed. Thus taking images of any object is a constant changing background of information. Comets are often detected using this mechanism. Take a long exposure of an area, move on the next until you map the entire sky, say over a 100 day period. Then you come back and repeate and look for differences. The differences over a period of only 100 days, would have to be a local object or REALLY fast distant object. Since physical speed is limited by the speed of light, we can basically set our measurment cycle to rule out anything outside our solar system by limiting our compare frequency. Objects that move from measure cycle to measure cycle are found, measured over longer periods and cataloged. It is a never ending cycle as we get finer equipment we can measure smaller and/or more distant bodies, even measuring to oort cloud. I wasn't meaning the quantum observation theory (by viewing you affect outcome), but rather that you are viewing a living changing thing that you have to measure in tiny pieces over a long period of time, when you look away something is still happening though very slow, you simply cannot see everything at once.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
thanks - your explanations and analogies are better than my lame ones cheers, 'g'
-
ed welch wrote:
It's not pseudo science
It's pseudo science when one "maps" what cannot be detected. What they mean to say is, "We've draw a map of where the dark matter should be, and how much of it there should be, IF AND ONLY IF (a) it exists in the first place, and (b) it has the exact properties we have theoretically attributed to it. If it has other properties than we've imagined, or if other unknowns interact with it, or if it doesn't exist at all because the problem can be solved without recourse to imaginary elements - as proposed by those other guys - then our map is nonsense. That's significantly different than the headline: "Dark Matter Mapped".
The Grand Negus wrote:
It's pseudo science when one "maps" what cannot be detected.
you misuse the phrasing. We have mapped dark matter by detecting its gravitational influence. Thus it is detected. It is simply unseen. Just because it does not emit energy does not mean it is not measurable. This series of measurements was to see if there was gravitational influence, thus it was looking and measuring and mapping gravitational affects on surrounding energy emitted from other visible objects. This showed that there was extra measurable/detectable/quantifiable gravitational influence in the area, we simply cannot "see" it because it emits no energy in a currently visible spectrum to our instruments. Therefore this is not "imagined" but measured through gravitational influence. Unless you are declaring that gravity does not exist? or cannot be measured?
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
-
thanks - your explanations and analogies are better than my lame ones cheers, 'g'
Garth J Lancaster wrote:
your explanations and analogies are better than my lame ones
nothing you said was lame. There are no lame questions. I tried to explain as best I could. It is possible I could have been talking about quantum viewing theories. So you questioned, I answered. :-D the disadvantage in any spoken language is that several meanings could be found. You found one I had not intended so I explained better. :) no harm, no foul. :)
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
-
It's not pseudo science, just because it hasn't been proven yet. Dark matter is currently the most creditable theory to explain the extra gravitation detected in galaxies
ed welch wrote:
It's not pseudo science, just because it hasn't been proven yet.
That's so funny. Do you use that same reasoning when talking about god or angels? And yet religion is scoffed at because it falls in to the realm of dark matter--completely unprovable, at least for now. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh Smith -
Chris Losinger wrote:
i don't believe it. it's just a theory. nobody saw it happen.
That doesn't sound like the kind of attitude that helps advance technology and science. X|
█▒▒▒▒▒██▒█▒██ █▒█████▒▒▒▒▒█ █▒██████▒█▒██ █▒█████▒▒▒▒▒█ █▒▒▒▒▒██▒█▒██
-
Garth J Lancaster wrote:
are there still things that we cant see because we dont have the correct technology/viewpoint
Yes - the 'ether' for one. And the gluons that hold everything together are invisible, too.
"...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9
Roger Wright wrote:
Yes - the 'ether' for one
;P
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
-
Garth J Lancaster wrote:
are there still things that we cant see because we dont have the correct technology/viewpoint
Yes - the 'ether' for one. And the gluons that hold everything together are invisible, too.
"...a photo album is like Life, but flat and stuck to pages." - Shog9
I thought the idea of "ether" has long since been dismissed by virtually all physicists (except a few, who are still claiming that the earth is flat). :)
-- Nominated For Three Glemmys
-
ed welch wrote:
It's not pseudo science, just because it hasn't been proven yet.
That's so funny. Do you use that same reasoning when talking about god or angels? And yet religion is scoffed at because it falls in to the realm of dark matter--completely unprovable, at least for now. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithNo Marc, religion does not fall into the same category as dark matter. Theism, the basis of religion, falls under its own weight - it's not even logically self consistent! Furthermore, if anyone comes up with a better and more accurate way of describing the world as we know with ordinary matter, then scientists will drop the dark matter theories. I wish one could say the same about theologians...
-- LOADING...
-
i don't believe it. it's just a theory. nobody saw it happen.
image processing toolkits | batch image processing | blogging
I never saw you type this post! (And nobody saw me replying to it) :-D
-- For External Use Only
-
Nice reply, thanks ..
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
Also things change as we are watching them
wasnt that a Heisenberg principle - very roughly for us laymen, the more you observe something the more you are likely to interfere with whats happening ?... Ive suggested the same thing in monitoring real-time message flows at 'my shop' 'g'
Garth J Lancaster wrote:
wasnt that a Heisenberg principle
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle has to do with specially related properties of a quantum particle. You can measure the position in the x direction and in the y direction as accurately as you want at the same time. However, there is a fundamental limit to the accuracy you can measure the position and the velocity of the particle at the same time, because position in different directions are unrelated, but there is a fundamental relationship between a particles position and it's movement in that direction. It is a simple relationship in the mathematics of quantum mechanics, but there is no analogous object in human experience.
Garth J Lancaster wrote:
the more you observe something the more you are likely to interfere with whats happening
That sounds like a common statement about quantum measurement which has to do with another strange mathematical operation in quantum mechanics. In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, each particle has two states, observed and unobserved. Depending on it's state it will actually exhibit completely different behavior. For example an observed electron will only exist in one point in space, however unobserved it can be in multiple places at once. It's the weirdest damn thing in the world.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
-
No Marc, religion does not fall into the same category as dark matter. Theism, the basis of religion, falls under its own weight - it's not even logically self consistent! Furthermore, if anyone comes up with a better and more accurate way of describing the world as we know with ordinary matter, then scientists will drop the dark matter theories. I wish one could say the same about theologians...
-- LOADING...
-
Garth J Lancaster wrote:
wasnt that a Heisenberg principle
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle has to do with specially related properties of a quantum particle. You can measure the position in the x direction and in the y direction as accurately as you want at the same time. However, there is a fundamental limit to the accuracy you can measure the position and the velocity of the particle at the same time, because position in different directions are unrelated, but there is a fundamental relationship between a particles position and it's movement in that direction. It is a simple relationship in the mathematics of quantum mechanics, but there is no analogous object in human experience.
Garth J Lancaster wrote:
the more you observe something the more you are likely to interfere with whats happening
That sounds like a common statement about quantum measurement which has to do with another strange mathematical operation in quantum mechanics. In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, each particle has two states, observed and unobserved. Depending on it's state it will actually exhibit completely different behavior. For example an observed electron will only exist in one point in space, however unobserved it can be in multiple places at once. It's the weirdest damn thing in the world.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
thanks Andy
Andy Brummer wrote:
Heisenberg uncertainty principle
Im not sure I was referring to 'uncertainty' or maybe something to do with 'observability' (which between yours and Jeffry's replies will get me to do some more reading, which cant hurt :-) ) And maybe it was a different Heisenberg or the context I was given on one of his principles was just plain wrong thanks anyway to you both, its been an interesting read
-
The Grand Negus wrote:
It's pseudo science when one "maps" what cannot be detected.
you misuse the phrasing. We have mapped dark matter by detecting its gravitational influence. Thus it is detected. It is simply unseen. Just because it does not emit energy does not mean it is not measurable. This series of measurements was to see if there was gravitational influence, thus it was looking and measuring and mapping gravitational affects on surrounding energy emitted from other visible objects. This showed that there was extra measurable/detectable/quantifiable gravitational influence in the area, we simply cannot "see" it because it emits no energy in a currently visible spectrum to our instruments. Therefore this is not "imagined" but measured through gravitational influence. Unless you are declaring that gravity does not exist? or cannot be measured?
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
We have mapped dark matter by detecting its gravitational influence.
The correct version of this statement is, "We have mapped an apparent gravitational influence. We do not know the cause. It may be dark matter, as we currently understand the term, or it may be something altogether different. In fact, it may not be a gravitational influence at all; it may be something else that appears to be a gravitational influence but is actually quite different. We simply don't know."
-
Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:
Theism, the basis of religion, falls under its own weight - it's not even logically self consistent!
Care to elaborate?
C# / DHTML / VG.net / MyXaml expert currently looking for work![^]
Right now, no. It's 2.37 am, and I have to get to work tomorrow morning. Theology tries to define the knowable (that which can be observed) by means of the unknowable (that which cannot be observed, or even defined: i.e. gods). From there on you can expand a bit further.. I suggest reading anything by George H. Smith for a fully fleshed out explanation.
-- This Episode Has Been Modified To Fit Your Primitive Screen
-
Assuming, of course, that there is such a thing as "dark matter". See here[^] for an alternative opinion. The existence of dark matter is an unproven theory - prehaps right, perhaps wrong - but certainly unproven. There is no known test for the detection of dark matter; it's composition is unknown; it is a purely theoretical construct. Which is why no one should speak of "mapping it"; such pseudo-scientific statements are simply misleading.
I was just as skeptical of it as you a year or so ago so I got some basic textbooks on cosmology and dark matter. There are a lot of observations which rule out a simple explanation like the one you gave. Most galaxies have a uniform distribution of dark matter which produces the rotational pattern described. However some galaxies have a different distribution of dark matter which can be measured. Also the distribution in general depends on the type of galaxy. The distribution for our galaxy has been measured as well and it is non-uniform. There is a lot of evidence for some substance that pervades space called dark matter, true nobody knows what it is just yet, but there is nothing wrong with trying to figure out what and where it is. It looks like there is some new information in this study with dark matter showing up without matter. I agree that science reporting for the general public is pretty lame, since the press only cares about stories that bring readers, and very few reporters understand what they are reporting on. I think it's worse in health reporting though.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
-
thanks Andy
Andy Brummer wrote:
Heisenberg uncertainty principle
Im not sure I was referring to 'uncertainty' or maybe something to do with 'observability' (which between yours and Jeffry's replies will get me to do some more reading, which cant hurt :-) ) And maybe it was a different Heisenberg or the context I was given on one of his principles was just plain wrong thanks anyway to you both, its been an interesting read
Garth J Lancaster wrote:
Im not sure I was referring to 'uncertainty' or maybe something to do with 'observability' (which between yours and Jeffry's replies will get me to do some more reading, which cant hurt :) )
The uncertainty principle is often confused with the not-quite-so-bizarre "observer effect". The observer effect essentially says that the only way we can observe a thing is to smash some other thing into it and see what happens, which will necessarily change the behavior of the observed item. The uncertainty principle is more forceful - it says that even if we could measure the state of some system infinitely precisely, and in the process modify exactly nothing about the system's state, our calculations regarding the state of the system would still be off by at least a small unknowable factor. The weirdness comes from the math involved in the system, not from some hypothetical inaccuracy in measurement or a "bump" to the measured system. Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on the uncertainty principle. Lots of layman literature about it tends to mix it up with the observer effect, though... BTW: I'm no physicist, nor do I play one. If my statements above are incorrect or improperly skewed in one direction or another, I'd appreciate a slap from a real physicist :)