Why Dark Matter is Even Weirder Than You Thought

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder
a reply to: Mastronaut

I agree that GR cannot explain everything, it's probably flawed in some regard which is why it's not compatible with QM. But our understanding of gravity is well enough established to know that our galaxy would fly apart were it not engulfed in some type of invisible mass. If our understanding of gravity were incorrect on such a fundamental level we'd be in big trouble.

In fact this is not logical reasoning. It starts from assuming we have the correct formula for gravity at galaxy scales, which is hardly provable (in fact it can be proved wrong exactly because of galaxy rotation). And we are in "big troubles", but we don't have anything farther than heliopause so we can live with it. Pioneer anomalies may simply be something tied to our theories after all.

Of course MOND must be able to explain the excessive gravitational lensing, ideally it should be able to explain everything that dark matter helps us to explain, but it doesn't. The fact that the mass derived from the lensing effect and mass derived from the rotational velocities agree with each other definitely show us that most galaxies contain much more mass than we can see. What is responsible for that extra mass is the question.

Gravitational lensing is another unfalsifiable thing. We see distorded images and we assume those are galaxies behind other mass. Because we know that lensing happens for stars behind the sun we assume the mechanism is absolute and correct, cause it's been theorized by a high priest of current paradigm: Albert Einstein. He can't be wrong, light must bend across every mass, except we can't find bending around the Sun outside of it's coronal extension (about 2 solar radius) and it should be linear so it begs the question "how much are we trying to DISPROVE current theories?" Probably much less than we should.

Anyway, gravitational lensing is an effect that in current model is due to invisible additional mass, it doesn't necessary need to be the same effect with a MOND-like theory (I don't think we have any comprehensive MOND, afaik there are only tentatives in galaxy dynamics). And even assuming light bending due to mass, on cosmological scales the effect of a dynamic gravity may well be able to explain lensing.

There is always matter where we see the distortions, the only objects large enough to produce a measurable effect are large galaxies and clusters. The problem is those objects we measure bend light far too intensely based on the luminous matter we can see in those objects.

But again we are assuming we are right and we didnt model another theory that explains that effect in another way. My point wasn't clear maybe, we do think we have proper ways of evaluating light bending based on mass, but we may simply be wrong. We also think we know age and distance of every object, but we have no way to prove redshift is really a measure of distance/age. Distance, luminosity and mass measurements are all made on the assumption of current models, and it doesn't really sound strange that if the theory isn't right we should have found much more matter/mass/luminosity in certain places. But nobody questions why we don't see einstein rings everywhere; given the large halos of galaxies and the enourmous amount of objects in space it's a statistical anomaly to find so few.

I think gravitational lensing is a scapegoat often used to not study more certain phenomenons, but it's a rather biased opinion, I know.

A lot of time has been spent on MOND and a lot of time is still spent on MOND, but not by serious scientists. I completely agree that we need to look beyond the standard model, that's what this whole thread is about, but modified gravity theories simply aren't going to cut the mustard.

Ye that's the issue. We have ONE mainstream theory and some minimal variance between competing theories, but we don't have different "foundations". In the distant past tectonics and earth expansion theory existed, steady state and expanding universe existed, wave and particle theories existed. And debated, argumented and improved thanks to difference and research of both "directions".
Now we have Big bang model and if you have a SS universe theory that explains everything it will take no less than 3 generations before it is accepted regardless if it is better than current models or even completely right!
We have debunkers who are nothing more than religious of this "scientism" that present themselves as skeptics, but they are just skeptics of others, like a muslim can be skeptic of some scientific theory. Their arguments generally end up with an authority and the discussion ends.

We can't rule out modified gravity theories at all, we love constants, but the universe proved itself to be much more dynamic and we have no real grasp for what IS gravity. We know some effects, but again it's a circular argument (we measure mass by gravity and we assume everything on top of other assumptions). Just because currently there is no MOND that can explain some features it doesn't mean it can't. We should put the same effort in destroying the foundation of our science as we do in alternative theories that are born because of lacks.

I'll end this saying that the worst problem for our society is the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. "Extraordinary" is just a biased arbitrary definition of some natural process. An extraordinary claim requires only the usual, normal, rational and scientifical proof and should be falsifiable. Something that cosmologists have no idea of.

Sorry if this seems a rant, but in general scientific articles have the tendency of explaining things like they were, while they are mathematical models that only must fit preconceived notions derived from other models, back until there is some unfalsifiable assumption or postulate (speed of light constancy, singularities, redshift). Dark matter may simply be a "fluke" and not a "thing". In any case it's surely convenient to explain galaxy dynamics and distortions in space without throwing away existing models.

I hope I'll seee the day where we will laugh about quantum mechanics and black holes, but I'm pretty sure I'll be fossilized that day

I think the theorists are looking at this the wrong way. I'm no expert, just my 2 cents.

Could it be that all matter contains dark matter? What accounts for the empty space inside an atom nucleus and its electron? Why is it not compressible or transparent to touch if it is 99,9% empty? Could it be compressive force from both the outside and inside? If vacuum creates virtual particles that pop in and out of existence, how does it treat real particles? Could it be that they are repulsed by the vacuum creating a compressive force around them that no virtual particle can form there? Explaining that differently, is this compressive force a cause for gravitational lensing since it orders the space around it as a function of repulsion. The residual effect of this repulsion is what we call gravitation and is caused by the minimization of compressive vacuum energy when more particles are in close proximity of one another. Thus the bigger the mass cluster, the more ordered is the space around it.

Redshift - every other thing in life needs a medium to propagate, why not light? Anything advancing in a medium will dissipate slowly, why cannot light get tired (lose energy = redshift) ? Who said the vacuum was empty if it is creating virtual particles?

a reply to: Mastronaut

Gravitational lensing is another unfalsifiable thing. We see distorded images and we assume those are galaxies behind other mass. Because we know that lensing happens for stars behind the sun we assume the mechanism is absolute and correct, cause it's been theorized by a high priest of current paradigm: Albert Einstein.

If gravitational lensing doesn't work then why does it produce the same answer that measuring rotational velocities will produce, how can you explain that? I agree with you in some regards, I'm skeptical of GR and other stuff like the nature of black holes, gravity waves, the higgs boson, etc, but it seems to me you are being overly skeptical in some areas where you simply haven't done enough research or haven't though about the problem hard enough. Maybe a modified theory of gravity will one day explain all this weird stuff, but do not hold your breath. The universe doesn't care about how you wished it worked and it tends to dislike simple solutions. I think it's high time people gave up on MOND and look at different alternatives.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Something is up with this, after reading everything I'm not sure if dark matter is matter at all or simply something else that happens to mess with gravity.

mat·ter

Physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (in physics) that which occupies space and possesses rest mass, especially as distinct from energy.

So my theory is that dark matter is incorrectly named and is something else, a.k.a. mind, spirit, energy or a fourth thing. Basically, it acts like it has mass but it isn't mass, just something that acts like mass. And it wouldn't occupy space, either.

No matter in dark matter. I'm almost 100% sure.

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Something is up with this, after reading everything I'm not sure if dark matter is matter at all or simply something else that happens to mess with gravity.

Indeed, that is what I was really trying to convey to readers, that all of this weird behavior when viewed together cannot be explained by a particle, it must be something much stranger. Some new theories suggest that dark matter could be a type of quantum fluid or Bose–Einstein condensate. My personal theory is that it's a gravitational illusion caused by the existence of negative mass. I posted a link to that thread on the last page.

What are your thoughts on the hypothesis around anapolar dark matter??

It may be this dark matter overlaps and is interleaved with regular matter, with a level of interaction even less than that of neutrinos. This particular hypothesized form also has some interesting qualities in how it may react to fields, and since I'm one for playing with magnets (electromagnets, as they're easiest to produce moving fields), no surprise that this is also a proposal for actual research..

And if there's anything to that microwave drive that NASA still can't quite figure out, I suspect the microwave resonant cavity device may actually be a type of reaction drive that acts on dark matter with eddy currents acting upon the field moment. Sounds crazy, but if this is the case and could be understood a lot better - there is much potential to exploit this. It just might mean that we could get a viable propulsion method for space where you don't have to carry much if anything in the way of reaction mass on your spaceship. The dark matter would be an abundant working medium similar to air for jet engines, but the reaction with it would only carry across force via the field acting upon it. (Push or pull on it with magnets, but where no field transient is acting on it, it passes through everything like an ideal neutral and frictionless particle.)

originally posted by: pauljs75
What are your thoughts on the hypothesis around anapolar dark matter??

I feel that if dark matter is in fact made up of particles then an anaploar Majorana particle is one of the best candidates. However they mention in that article that "the model makes very specific predictions about the rate at which it should show up in the vast dark matter detectors that are buried underground all over the world". The fact we haven't detected dark matter after a decade of searching strongly indicates to me there are no dark particles to be detected and I'm fairly certain the predictions of that theory say we should have detected multiple dark matter particles by now, but I may be wrong.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

GREAT information! S&F. I think the discovery of "Dark Matter" and its application in physics will propel us to our next step in evolution. Wondrous times we live in.

Before I leave for a few hours I want to post this article for the MOND proponents:

But let me take this opportunity to lay out the problems with MOND. It’s a very clever idea, to start. In galaxies, dark matter seems to become important only when the force of gravity is not very strong. So maybe Newton’s famous inverse-square law, which tells us how the force of gravity falls off as a function of distance, needs to be modified when gravity is very weak. Miraculously, this simple idea does a really good job at accounting for the dynamics of galaxies, including — as this new result confirms — types of galaxies that weren’t yet observed back in 1983 when Mordehai Milgrom proposed the idea. Whether or not MOND is “true” as a replacement for dark matter, its phenomenological success at accounting for features of galaxies needs to be explained by whatever theory is true.

Which is an important point, because MOND is not true. That’s not an absolute statement; among its other shortcomings, MOND is not completely well-defined, so there’s a surprising amount of wriggle room available in fitting a variety of different observations. But to the vast majority of cosmologists, we have long since passed the point where MOND should be given up as a fundamental replacement for dark matter — it was a good idea that didn’t work. It happens sometimes. That’s not to say that gravity isn’t somehow modified in cosmology — you can always have very subtle effects that have yet to be discovered, and that’s a possibility well worth considering. But dark matter is real; any modification is on top of it, not instead of it.

Let’s look at the record:

* MOND is ugly.
* MOND doesn’t fit clusters.
* Even with MOND, you still need dark matter.
* MOND doesn’t even fit all galaxies.
* Gravity doesn’t always point in the direction of where the ordinary matter is.
* MOND doesn’t fit the cosmic microwave background.

Dark Matter: Just Fine, Thanks

Read the article for an explanation of each of those points.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

This is going out there...

What if life has a force associated with it and there is so much life in the universe that this force makes an impact on the galaxies and the way they rotate? It would be some kind of quantum interaction.

Basically every galaxy would be teeming with life and this life would have a force associated with it strong enough to change the rotations.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Thanks for the reply. Sorry I don't have the time I like right now to go into it.

If all the Universe were empty except for two atoms placed at each end motionless, relative to each other, blah blah.
Like light, gravity is all reaching.

Back to mass. The center of the Galaxy is what the whirlpool rotates around…

who cares how fast? Imo the (DarK) missing matter is at the heart of who knows how many or how massive black holes.

Funny this morning I was reading up on a subject.

Photon on Photon collisions creating matter.
Photon colliders
www.quantumdiaries.org...

Not a big fan of dark matter and dark energy.

Back to the reasearch, just giving some food for thought.

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder
a reply to: Mastronaut

If gravitational lensing doesn't work then why does it produce the same answer that measuring rotational velocities will produce, how can you explain that? I agree with you in some regards, I'm skeptical of GR and other stuff like the nature of black holes, gravity waves, the higgs boson, etc, but it seems to me you are being overly skeptical in some areas where you simply haven't done enough research or haven't though about the problem hard enough. Maybe a modified theory of gravity will one day explain all this weird stuff, but do not hold your breath. The universe doesn't care about how you wished it worked and it tends to dislike simple solutions. I think it's high time people gave up on MOND and look at different alternatives.

There is no way to relate that one and the other are "the same answer". They try to stick enough invisible matter to satisfy both. However we don't find dark matter in the near universe to compare properly the data since rotational curves can't be measured precisely in the distant universe.
If you have any link to some resource detailing the way they measured rotational velocities and lensing for the same galaxy I'm happy to have a read, because personally I never found many detailed explaination of how much data were evaluated (if it's inference from a few pixels, well I am doubtfull it could be striking evidence).

I don't agree that universe dislikes simple solutions. Maybe advanced physics does, but nature is much simpler and we are overcomplicating it for the sake of "i don't know why".
But you are right that I'm overly skeptical, not because I'm not informed or didn't do research, but because there is no way to read arguments against current theories without people defending them like religions.

I don't know who is right and we may never be, but you can bet whatever you want that current theories are wrong. And motivations for supporting current theories ONLY is not due to scientifical reasons, but academic and political/financial reasons. I guess it would be very difficult to justify the billions spent on some reaserach if it was proven useless.
It takes time, but we'll progress from this dead point we are in, the solution isn't quantum gravity, it's very likely classical. This philosophy of "nature is random" because we don't have a theory that let those parameters emerge rather than being spoon fed is detrimental.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

The problem is that main stream science has become like any other religion. Follow the creator and his beliefs.
New ideas are the same as blasphemy.

Why is it that there are so many discoveries being made, where they can't explain/understand or didn't expect it could even happen.
If your theories are correct than surprises can be eliminated to some point. You would basically know the outcome.
The fact is, they twist and turn their theories and calculations only to fit the ''creators beliefs''.
Making stuff up isn't a way to solve problems.

dark matter/energy?blackholes?bing bang?E=mc2?
and this ought to be real science?
what a joke
maybe they need to go back to kindergarten.

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder
a reply to: YouSir

Wouldn't it then be logical to assume that perhaps this dark matter and gravity are one and the same...a graviton perhaps...or as in dark matter is the "particle" and gravity the energetic effect of the particle as it relates to other particles both dark and visible...?

Interesting idea, I haven't thought of that before. It may possibly work although I suspect it would have problems similar to MOND. I'll have to think about it some more. I do also have my own theory of dark matter which I posted on ATS some time ago: Unmasking Dark Matter and Dark Energy (with simulation results). It's a bit outdated now though, there are aspects of the theory which need correcting, but I believe it's the only theory capable of explaining all the weird properties of dark matter.

I personally think dark matter is gravity. The source of gravity (according to general relativity) is due to the existence of an energy dense medium which is displaced and contorts in such a way in the presence of mass to produce such effects that the masses in spatial relation to one another follow the paths of the displaced field contours.

Imagine filling every 'tiniest scale unit' of a fish tank up with grains of sand, so that not another grain of sand could possibly fit (the sand representing the average density of gravity field), and then imagine placing a bowling ball in there.

The analog to something like the sun existing in its gravity field, would be that, whereas it is commonaly focused on the aspect of gravity "now that an object is altering the local geometry of gravity field it exists in, objects in relative spatial relation to this object will be compelled towards this object, and that is mass, and gravity", what is ignored, and what i think what dark matter might be, is, the energy, the actual physical medium, of gravity field, that is displaced.

For the bowling ball example, according to the thought experiment it is established that it would not work, the glass would break, etc. but if we imagine that as we are trying to squeeze this bowling ball in, that tiny bits of particles are squeezed out through the glass (this has nothing to do with anything of importance, just an established attempt to express the relation of what i think black matter might be to this analogy) so that in theory there might be a chance eventually to get the ball in the tank, we would agree that there would be a change in sand density (though maybe the analogy is ruined because i first seemed to have established that the average density of the sand in tank was at the highest possible density, oh well) relative to the space the ball took up, compared to the space surrounding the ball.

Moving through time now as well, it may be that a body traveling through the gravity field is constantly disturbing new areas of the gravity field, thus creating a type of wake or at least trail, or at least to give the idea of how there is an extra component of energy other than just the body to body in displaced area gravity we are familiar with, but the body to medium, medium being physical somethingness, effected by another physical somethingness, being the altering of geometry and transferal of energy, meaning greater than average energy values in areas away from masses, but due to masses,...etc.

I know i got muddled there at the end

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder
The fact that the mass derived from the lensing effect and mass derived from the rotational velocities agree with each other definitely show us that most galaxies contain much more mass than we can see.

Replace word mass with space-time curving source term.

The lack of any supersymmetrical particles at CERN leads me to believe, like you, the answer could be in something deep that we're missing in physics, more than just another ordinary particle species. MOND isn't it of course, but it's hardly the unique perturbation to current physics.

What's the effect of the unknown quantum gravity corrections to GR? Are we sure there is no macroscopic effect?

There is always matter where we see the distortions, the only objects large enough to produce a measurable effect are large galaxies and clusters. The problem is those objects we measure bend light far too intensely based on the luminous matter we can see in those objects.

Based on the luminous matter we can see in those objects plus unmodified general relativity.

But how much research time has been devoted to DM and how much to MOND-like theories?

A lot of time has been spent on MOND and a lot of time is still spent on MOND, but not by serious scientists. I completely agree that we need to look beyond the standard model, that's what this whole thread is about, but modified gravity theories simply aren't going to cut the mustard.

What kind of "modified gravity" Something simple? Definitely not.

I dunno,
You would think there is something wrong in the way these galaxies are measured to calculate the mass.

I don't get this bit though,

"The new, relatively high-resolution WSRT measurements suggest that VIRGOHI21 is indeed a single object, ruling out previous suggestions that its rotation was an illusion caused by two passing gas clouds.
But they do confirm a mystery raised by previous studies. The object's normal matter weighs a few hundred million times the mass of the Sun. But its dark matter - inferred by studying the rotation speed of the cloud - appears to weigh at least 100 times as much.
That ratio is much higher than expected - in all other galaxies, dark matter outweighs normal matter by a factor of only 10. "Even if this is a dark galaxy, it is not what you expect to find. The number of baryons is too low," says Michael Merrifield of the University of Nottingham in the UK, who was not on Minchin's team. "
I thought that so-called "dark galaxy" turned out to be debris from a galactic collision, possibly Messier 99.

Great article BTW, and I see it mirrored later elsewhere, and linked back to ATS.

a reply to: mbkennel

Why can't it be simple? Maybe gravity isn't what we think it is.
Gravity looks a lot like magnetism, maybe gravity doesn't exist and we are simply experiencing magnetism?
Another problem hmm, we have no current understanding/explanation of magnetism, only a description of what it does.
Maybe start with that before trying to explain the universe.

It's just the same with earths geological history. We don't know what lies beneath the oceans, yet we have these theories about the origin and creation of the earth and continents.

I could certainly be wrong, but I think people are confusing interactions with various unseen dimensions as "matter." A magnet pulling on a ferrous metal may appear to have more mass than it does, but it's really only the interaction of the metal with the transdimensional "holes" in its matrix, pulling at the metal, that makes it appear so.

The effects of the apparent velocity measurements and the lensing is only a byproduct, a clue to the existence of these additional dimensions. Not proof of the existence of an actual, physical (in our reality), somehow non-interacting form of matter.

originally posted by: intergalactic fire
a reply to: mbkennel

Why can't it be simple? Maybe gravity isn't what we think it is.
Gravity looks a lot like magnetism, maybe gravity doesn't exist and we are simply experiencing magnetism?
Another problem hmm, we have no current understanding/explanation of magnetism, only a description of what it does.

In physics, we a description of "what it does" is the same thing as an undersatnding/explanation. What are you expecting?

Maybe start with that before trying to explain the universe.

That part we know extremely well. The electromagnetic field is fully integrated into the Standard model to exceptional experimental accuracy. And elementary particles have intrinsic magnetic moments. We know what we need to know to predict all magnetic effects.

There isn't any mystery with magnetism, and it isn't gravity because it operates only on charged particles, unlike gravity.