Travelling through a wormhole in space

[freyar]

Thanks for the overview - I wasn't aware of some of the older stuff you mentioned. With that in mind I will concede that the focus of research on the dark matter theory is not as unreasonable as I had thought. The danger of self-directed literature search is that it's tough to get even a good overview if you don't know where all to look in the first place. The postulating of dark matter still seems different to me than the particles you mentioned. IRC they either fell out of the math or were directly observed in some manner rather than invented to explain a theory's shortcomings, but that's just quibbling at this point.

Hey, thanks for listening. My point about the other particles is that there are a lot of them without much "point" in some sense, so it's not a stretch to add more, really. The other thing I should have mentioned but forgot (because I was way past my bedtime) was that people worked really hard to explain dark matter as normal matter that we just didn't see. There was a huge research program at one point to look for brown dwarfs (small stars that couldn't quite start nuclear burning and never really became stars). There aren't enough. And the CMB data really directly tells us that whatever dark matter is, it can't be normal matter (by comparison to the math describing the behavior of normal stuff in the early universe).

 

[Bullgrit]

Coincidentally, I've just started listening to an Einstein biography on CD.

Bullgrit

 

[Umbran]

I just saw a lecture this evening by Miguel Alcubierre, discoverer of the warp drive spacetime...

*ENVY!*

 

[Umbran]

How is it that a wormhole thread comes around to dark matter so much?

I think it is because:

1) Physicists like dramatic words, and to the general public they begin to bleed into each other. "Dark Matter", "Exotic matter", and so on.

2) Wormholes lead to Relativity leads to cosmology leads to dark matter.

 

[Morrus]

I think it is because:

1) Physicists like dramatic words, and to the general public they begin to bleed into each other. "Dark Matter", "Exotic matter", and so on.

2) Wormholes lead to Relativity leads to cosmology leads to dark matter.

I think it's because the very phrases dark matter and dark energy sound like magic. And then you get tons of folks who use a basic layman's description they found somewhere, mistake that for the actual science, and declare that they know better than the folks who actually did the equations.

Then again, on another board, I frequently see people proclaim Einstein was wrong because they found a weak analogy somewhere and applied what they considered logic to it (the analogy, not the equations) and arrived at a different conclusion.

 

[Umbran]

Then again, on another board, I frequently see people proclaim Einstein was wrong because they found a weak analogy somewhere and applied what they considered logic to it (the analogy, not the equations) and arrived at a different conclusion.

True. Though hardly a physics-specific phenomenon. My wife is a veterinarian, and you should hear some of the arguments people give her, to her face, about proper and effective medical practice for animals.

Someone recently asked her if they could clean their dog's ear infection with Listerine. Because, apparently, it kills germs, so it should be fine, right?

 

[Bullgrit]

I think it's because the very phrases dark matter and dark energy sound like magic. And then you get tons of folks who use a basic layman's description they found somewhere, mistake that for the actual science, and declare that they know better than the folks who actually did the equations.

Then again, on another board, I frequently see people proclaim Einstein was wrong because they found a weak analogy somewhere and applied what they considered logic to it (the analogy, not the equations) and arrived at a different conclusion.

To be fair, sometimes people receive questions as challenging an idea's legitimacy rather than as merely requesting clarification on the idea. This is why I try very hard to explain that when I'm asking science questions here, I'm not poking holes and saying, "Aha! Explain that eggheads!" I assume science is right and I'm just not understanding something when I poke and say, "Um, hey, what's up with that (eggheads)?"

For instance, elsewhere, I asked "What's wrong with the American immigration system?" I meant the question to get an explanation of what is wrong with the system (because I've had no interaction with it), but nearly everyone took it as "I challenge you to tell me there is something wrong with this system (because it is perfect)."

Bullgrit

 

[Umbran]

For instance, elsewhere, I asked "What's wrong with the American immigration system?" I meant the question to get an explanation of what is wrong with the system (because I've had no interaction with it), but nearly everyone took it as "I challenge you to tell me there is something wrong with this system (because it is perfect)."

Well, it also happens that fairly often, challenges are made in the form of questions. In text format, the tonal nuances are lost, and you have to go a few extra steps to make the connotation clear.

 

[Bullgrit]

Well, it also happens that fairly often, challenges are made in the form of questions. In text format, the tonal nuances are lost, and you have to go a few extra steps to make the connotation clear.

Yep, understood. But who is at fault for the misunderstanding? The person who asks the question or the person who assumes the question means something beyond the words? I mean, if you text someone, "Is it raining at home?" Are you inquiring about the weather, or are you hinting that they need to get up off the couch and finally go cut the grass before it starts raining? The tonal nuances and body language would tell you whether the question had deeper meaning, but without those, it's the fault of the listener to infer more meaning to neutral/non-contextual text.

I'm just saying that people should sometimes give a person the benefit of the doubt when there is no tonal context. Questioning science isn't the same as doubting science -- heck, it *is* science to question science.

Bullgrit

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Scientific "fact" should be poked at. Just because someone does some work or claims they're an expert doesn't make them omniscient. Frex, we've been taught for the last 30? 40? years that eating eggs is unhealthy because of the cholesterol. Guess what, just kidding! The latest study shows that's not true at all. There's an idea that should have been poked at a lot earlier. That's what you get for blind faith in the experts.

When you get an insider's view of how scientific facts are made it's different than what the public thinks. Sure there are facts and experiments. There's also politics, personalities, rivalries, social dynamics, obfuscations, and sometimes (rarely) downright lies. Leading views and direction of research are sometimes determined more by who has the biggest reputation than who has the best data. The process is pretty good overall, and we do generally come up with results we can trust, but it's tough to tell when it's done, and blind faith in the results is never a good idea.