An Angle on Dark Matter

Space fascinates me, and I'm sure many of you here too. Sometimes, I have opinions on the subject matter, but I am a total layman. The only thing not lay about me concerning the topic, is the enthusiasm. I'm relentless and shameless in expressing views, even though I'm aware that my knowledge on space or physics is classic armchair expertise level, at best. I know jack sh** about what I'm commenting on, but I seem to draw my "power" from years and years of watching Star Trek reruns. My favorite movie genre is of course, SF. Why am I telling you this ?

Now that we've established my impeccable science credentials, I want to quote a text I stumbled on Facebook, by a guy named Bry Murray, and it concerns the thread topic. I asked the man if I can use his text for a topic on a forum (havent stated which one), and he agreed. So here it goes.

Dark matter and dark energy

Originally I had not planned to do much on Dark matter and dark energy, I haven’t got a great deal of enthusiasm for the subject and if I am brutally honest I think it is a pile of #e. When Dark matter was first proposed, probably by Fritz Zwicky, it was at a time when nothing short of miracles where happening in Physics. Dirac had proposed that there must exist a new type of matter. This was found and is now known as Anti matter. Neutron decay had been observed and appeared to break the laws of conservation of energy. Pauli proposed that there must be a new type of particle out there. This was discovered and became known as the neutrino. With the advent of more and more powerful particle accelerators, and detection of high energy particles from space, there was an explosion of new discoveries. Literally a week would not pass without a new discovery. There were particles everywhere. Even in the last 20-30 years or so we have had some beauties. Including the Tau lepton, which is a favourite of mine at the moment. I am fickle though and it will probably get kicked into touch when something new and exotic comes along. On the back of all these discoveries it seemed likely that some new form of matter to explain “dark matter” would be found eventually. Only it never has been. It’s been about 90 years since it was first proposed and sadly we have …. nothing. Even with the bigger and better accelerators and the greater understanding of particles and particle production we know nothing about dark matter, not a thing, and we have not found a single piece of real evidence for it. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely something peculiar going on out in the universe, lots and lots of peculiar things actually, we just don’t know what they are. In the literature there is often talk of the latest piece of evidence for dark matter, but what this is really saying is that we have made yet another observation on that weird thing going on. No one is able to say anything exact about its nature. Despite over 40 years of actively searching for a dark matter particle we have come up empty. So, let’s say it clearly so we have no misunderstanding…. Dark matter and dark energy have never been discovered. What you read in the papers and the magazines is mostly # and wishful thinking. Dark matter particles have NEVER been found. Not a single one. NEVER. So what we have now is a rather sad and pathetic (in the true sense of the word) dance of making it even more exotic and weird in the hope that it can be saved rather than accept that it may simply not exist. It puts me in mind of the poor bastard who has been stood up. Rather than accept things, he develops elaborate theories about why his date hasn’t shown up. First the bus may be delayed, or that they missed the bus. They are not replying to his text messages because their phone must have run out of power. Or maybe their mother has been involved in an accident, or they were involved in an accident, or there was an earthquake, a tsunami, a meteorite, they’ve been kidnapped, or suffered a brain tumour, been abducted by aliens, is an alien! who’s had to return to their own planet… when in reality they just changed their mind and went out with their friends instead. They couldn’t be arse letting him know because they had already tumbled that he was one of those mad #ers who clings on and on and won’t accept the truth that they didn’t really fancy him. Part of the problem of course is that just like our hopeful boy, if you have built a career on dark matter it is very difficult to walk away from it, you’re invested. May be it is time to shelve dark matter and start looking for another solution. That is what I am going to be looking at over the next few months, alternatives to the cult of dark matter, that is probably a bit harsh, but after so long you after wonder. If you have ideas, let me know, there is a winner out there somewhere. One final note, I could be wrong of course and if that happens I’ll hold up my hands and say yep, I was wrong about that one, my bad. My ego is not so fragile that I cannot admit that I was wrong. Been wrong about loads of things in my life. When the guys at CERN publish a paper identifying a dark matter particle candidate and a couple of independent researchers agree with the results, then the buttered toast is on me. Until then though, just like the date I described… not happening.

I have to say, based on my long standing Star Trek expertise, this sounds "true" and "rational". The whole Dark Matter thing always sounded to my uneducated mind, like mambo jumbo...or "magic" if you want. A placeholder for unknown variable, which we humans like to "fill in", so our equations can work. I share the sentiment of this man, especially when he touched on the career Dark Matter - ists.

Link to Facebook post

Eager to hear expert opinions, as well as non expert ones

*shrugs*
Well, there are indescripancies and irregularities in the sky, but they can usually only be detected at the size of galaxies, and their tendencies to not scatter under the huge angular velocities of their observable stars.

Go and present a better theory, until now all we know is that there is "something" (dark, mysterious, energy or matter-like) which holds *all* the galaxies together.

Yes, even DF2. Which is indeed just much closer than we thought, so Dark Matter once again.

If someone does not like this theory or has doubts, science allows to offer alternatives.

Every thing dark in modern physics is to hide lack of understanding...

I would've assumed that if dark matter does indeed exist, it wouldn't be to hard to find, just look for any areas of space where mass annihilation is in the process of destroying all existing matter and anti-matter in a vast orgy of cosmic devastation.
Shouldn't be hard to miss, yeah?
The only other way I can see for dark matter to exist is for there to be a third force/kind of matter that keeps the positive and negative matters apart from each other, preventing them from ever interacting in what we are told would be the largest release of energy possible.
Of course I have only a slight grasp on the science explaining matter/anti-matter so this represents nothing more than considered opinion.

"Dark matter" is a catch-all term for the movements and interactions of celestial bodies that can't be explained through conventional means. It may be a force or a particle, but the fact is, SOMETHING causes unexplained movement in the residents of the universe.
Instead of thinking about it as some mysterious, undetected starship fuel, think of it as something we don't know how to "see" yet. Akin to explaining electrons to Mayans, or infrared light to a medieval court.

Yes, Dark Matter a placeholder for a process as yet not understood by humankind.

In the same way that our notion of a 'singularity' is merely a theoretical construct that represents one possible explanation for the observable effects created by a black hole, so too Dark Matter is a theoretical construct which represents one plausible explanation, however it is as yet unproven.

a reply to: MarioOnTheFly

Your instinct is correct. And I love that term "Dark matter cult" because that's exactly what it is. Many scientists are no different than political folks who get their news from one propaganda machine or another, they don't question their 'leaders'.

There is a growing group of scientists who have been having lots of success, in both simulation and real-world lab experiments, explaining the forces in the universe that shape solar systems, galaxies, and the whole universe. They don't need an imaginary dark matter to make their equations fit because it is all explained by electric and magnetic fields.

We are finally starting to measure magnetic and electric fields that stretch between galaxies, between black holes, between stars, and between planets. Those fields are the reason for the universal structure. Magnetohydrodynamics holds our galaxy together and is the reason why it turns as a disk and not as individual stars. That observation started the whole dark matter theory, just another way of saying "we don't know why" at the time. But new data shows the existence of these universal fields, something scientists from years past just couldn't imagine.

The classical scientists who push back on the electric/plasma universe theories are no different than the democrats who still believe the collusion narrative which is very similar. A fabricated narrative to explain something that they couldn't understand.

Simulations by Cal Tech, MIT, and other great universities are proving this. It's time for the true scientists to break their programming and get on board. Data should be your master, not the politics of the science community.

Thunderbolts

Suspicous Observers

a reply to: MarioOnTheFly
If you have any interest in this topic, I'd suggest a much better source is a video made by Matt O'Dowd at PBS space-time. I was planning to make a thread about it over the weekend but I didn't have enough time then, so I just made it now. There's an interesting new development in the research which he discusses:

Does the Failure to Find Dark Matter Prove the Existence of Dark Matter?

nvm

Heres my take on dark matter
Dark matter is matter from parrallel universe and as such can only react with our universe through gravity. Its as good an explanation as any. And just as unproveable.

originally posted by: Kaleshwarfj
Heres my take on dark matter
Dark matter is matter from parrallel universe and as such can only react with our universe through gravity. Its as good an explanation as any. And just as unproveable.

Not unprovable... we just haven't figured it out yet

Your premise is not at all unreasonable. Duality is prevalent throughout nature. Could that apply to the universe itself? I don't see why not.

"Everything has its pair of opposites"

- old Hermetic axiom -

My personal opinion is that "dark matter" is actually energy dropping into one or more directly undetectable / unseen dimensions. It looks like a gravity effect, because in a sense it is. Gravity is essentially the same thing with a kind of event horizon of matter/energy clogging up the pipe, as it were. Basically pushing a square peg into itself.

originally posted by: Kaleshwarfj
Heres my take on dark matter
Dark matter is matter from parrallel universe and as such can only react with our universe through gravity. Its as good an explanation as any. And just as unproveable.

But it has ALREADY BEEN MATHEMATICALLY PROVEN. Get yourself up to date.

It was proved by theoretical physicists Witten and Horavia earlier this century when they showed that E8xE8' heterotic superstring theory was the mathematical consequence of the 10th spatial dimension predicted by supergravity theories being a segment, so that matter is confined to two parallel 10-d space-time sheets, with E8-singlet states of these superstrings being confined to one sheet and E8'-singlet states confined to the other sheet. Only gravitational forces act across the gap between the two sheets. Dark matter is simply E8-singlet states of E8xE8' heterotic superstrings. It is invisible, being singlet states of E8 symmetry governing all the forces (including the four forces of the Standard Model) and interacts with ordinary matter (E8'-singlet states) only gravitationally.

originally posted by: micpsi
It was proved by theoretical physicists Witten and Horavia earlier this century when they showed that E8xE8' heterotic superstring theory was the mathematical consequence of the 10th spatial dimension predicted by supergravity theories being a segment, so that matter is confined to two parallel 10-d space-time sheets, with E8-singlet states of these superstrings being confined to one sheet and E8'-singlet states confined to the other sheet. Only gravitational forces act across the gap between the two sheets. Dark matter is simply E8-singlet states of E8xE8' heterotic superstrings. It is invisible, being singlet states of E8 symmetry governing all the forces (including the four forces of the Standard Model) and interacts with ordinary matter (E8'-singlet states) only gravitationally.

That seems like a lot of angels dancing on the heads of pins, but I suppose it's correct in a way. Mathematics is a lousy way to describe reality, maybe even more than with words.

And I bet you in a time and space not far away at all, there's a woke humanities' Professor, who doesn't have a clue what this is all about, but she will insist that the term "dark matter" is racist, xenophobic, fascist and Neo-colonialist.

"Dark matter" is a white male construct misrepresenting the dark-skinned Other as the threatening unknown.
Find another term.
Once it goes viral, in six hours all the science journals and channels will have changed it.

originally posted by: bluesjr
a reply to: MarioOnTheFly

Your instinct is correct. And I love that term "Dark matter cult" because that's exactly what it is. Many scientists are no different than political folks who get their news from one propaganda machine or another, they don't question their 'leaders'.

There is a growing group of scientists who have been having lots of success, in both simulation and real-world lab experiments, explaining the forces in the universe that shape solar systems, galaxies, and the whole universe. They don't need an imaginary dark matter to make their equations fit because it is all explained by electric and magnetic fields.
We are finally starting to measure magnetic and electric fields that stretch between galaxies, between black holes, between stars, and between planets. Those fields are the reason for the universal structure. Magnetohydrodynamics holds our galaxy together and is the reason why it turns as a disk and not as individual stars. That observation started the whole dark matter theory, just another way of saying "we don't know why" at the time. But new data shows the existence of these universal fields, something scientists from years past just couldn't imagine.

The classical scientists who push back on the electric/plasma universe theories are no different than the democrats who still believe the collusion narrative which is very similar. A fabricated narrative to explain something that they couldn't understand.

Simulations by Cal Tech, MIT, and other great universities are proving this. It's time for the true scientists to break their programming and get on board. Data should be your master, not the politics of the science community.

Thunderbolts

Suspicous Observers

I wish I could give you more than one star... There is grant money to be had with the search for Dark Matter.. Money is a strong motivator even after 90 years of looking with no results. "Just give us more money cause we know it is there; we just need a bigger better experiment and money to fund it".

a reply to: Kaleshwarfj

Funny to see you say this when I said this yesterday in a diff thread...

I have not read that thread. Besides i have been saying that matter from parrallel universes can interact gravitationally since before dark matter was a thing

a reply to: micpsi

I have been saying that since before the notion of dark matter was widespread.
Now they go ahead and prove it lol.