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Dark Matter: Exotic Possibilities Considered


Waspie_Dwarf

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Dark Matter Search Considers Exotic Possibilities

As observations fail to pin down the so-far undetectable stuff, explanations once considered fringe are now getting another look

Ever since astronomers realized that most of the matter in the universe is invisible, they have tried to sort out what that obscure stuff might be. But three decades of increasingly sophisticated searches have found no sign of dark matter, causing scientists to question some of their basic ideas about this elusive substance.

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Would it be a bit flippant to suggest "non-existent" and/or "we might be wrong about this assumption" is a form of exotic matter?

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Oh there is something out there all right, too many measurements of the way things move about confirm it. It is just that many of the suggested possibilities have been ruled out, but not yet all of them.

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Would it be a bit flippant to suggest "non-existent" and/or "we might be wrong about this assumption" is a form of exotic matter?

Frank is right, this is not an assumption, it is the result of observation.

If there is no dark matter then it seem that our entire understanding of gravity is wrong.

If our entire understanding of gravity is wrong how are we able to send spacecraft to planets at the furthest reaches of the solar system with such precision?

Dark matter is currently the only way to make sense of observation.

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Oh there is something out there all right, too many measurements of the way things move about confirm it. It is just that many of the suggested possibilities have been ruled out, but not yet all of them.

Frank is right, this is not an assumption, it is the result of observation.

If there is no dark matter then it seem that our entire understanding of gravity is wrong.

If our entire understanding of gravity is wrong how are we able to send spacecraft to planets at the furthest reaches of the solar system with such precision?

Dark matter is currently the only way to make sense of observation.

I'm not suggesting there is not a phenomenon that has been observed that has led us to question our understanding of the universe, or that proposing dark matter is not a means of addressing that observation.

I am suggesting it is not the only possibility (as Frank has also suggested) - or even necessarily the best possibility. But there seems to be a fixation upon dark matter being "the answer". It has become almost a dogma - which is anaethema to science.

And ruling out (or, more properly, not fixating on) dark matter as the reason for this phenomenon would not invalidate our understanding of what gravity is, but it might require us to reassess what we have assumed our universe appears to be. We are trying to make of our observations something to fit what we believe the universe to be, rather than hypothesising a universe to fit our observations. Again, this is unscientific methodology.

Edited by Leonardo
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I did not mean to suggest there is something other than "dark matter." What we observe is something that responds to and causes gravity. That is our definition of matter. We don't see it. That is our definition of "dark."

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I did not mean to suggest there is something other than "dark matter." What we observe is something that responds to and causes gravity. That is our definition of matter. We don't see it. That is our definition of "dark."

I agree with that; it's like "The Dark Ages". It wasn't really dark; it's just that there weren't many records kept.

The realm of "Dark Matter" may very well be a wondrous world of light unseen, as far as we know.

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The problem introduced here has been the focus of my thoughts lately.

I remember someone, somewhere published that all the stuff we can detect might only be about 3% of what was created at the Big Bang. The rest that creation was an equal quantity of matter and antimatter-matter that combined supposedly annihilating each other.

Therefore the pertinant questions became, "Does nature favor the creation of matter to antimatter in a ratio of, like,

1 : 0.949? If so why?" Experiments confirmed that nature is so prejudiced.

I also remember someone, somewhere, much earlier, while in search of the movements of mass in the universe, published that there has to be, like, 95 to 96% more mass in the universe than we had before realized. That missing mass/energy became know as dark matter.

My exotic spin on the topic would be to point out the similarity of 3% in the first paragraph to the 4 to 5% remaining in the third paragraph, then ask questions as:

  1. Could the combined matter and antimatter be the mysterios dark matter?
  2. Could it be true that after combining the original gravities of the particles remain/combine?
    (This may be answered in the new experiment concerning if antimatter has gravity or antigravity.)
  3. If 97% more matter and energy were created at the Big Bang wouldn't the energy still be a part of the universe?
  4. What happens to the energy of the elevated states of electrons and positrons? Is it always given off in the glowing kinds of photons? Perhaps some becomes dark energy?
  5. Right after the Big Bang and the creation of dark matter in the hodge-podge of the early universe, is it possible that dark matter was evenly enough distributer to be a part of space and matter--freely available in space; not so freely available, after becomming a part of matter?
  6. Perhaps gravity is not a part of creation but a result of annilation. That might explain its peculiarities as compared to our other forces.

Well, so much for my thoughts. Please feel free to debunk them. Maybe in so doing we will come across some answers from working with it in another perspective.

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Frank is right, this is not an assumption, it is the result of observation.

If there is no dark matter then it seem that our entire understanding of gravity is wrong.

If our entire understanding of gravity is wrong how are we able to send spacecraft to planets at the furthest reaches of the solar system with such precision?

Dark matter is currently the only way to make sense of observation.

Emphasis mine: You can thank Johannes Kepler for that, without the need to have any understanding of gravity. In fact it is Kepler´s Laws that are used in Orbital Mechanics, with Newtons Proofs used for precision. In fact you can just use Kepler´s Laws for Planetary Orbit Insertion.

Edited by keithisco
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That is exactly how science should work: you make several alternative hypothesis and perform reality check to see who survives.

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We assume that science = reality. In other words, every part of reality should be able to be tested and described scientifically.

But science is a human invention and reality is (ahem) not.

So I submit that it's a matter of time that science runs into elements of reality that it is not equipped to explain.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I submit that it's a matter of time that science runs into elements of reality that it is not equipped to explain.

Indeed! Perhaps it has already...

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We assume that science = reality. In other words, every part of reality should be able to be tested and described scientifically.

But science is a human invention and reality is (ahem) not.

So I submit that it's a matter of time that science runs into elements of reality that it is not equipped to explain.

So some things should not be explained because they are unexplainable?
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We assume that science = reality. In other words, every part of reality should be able to be tested and described scientifically.

But science is a human invention and reality is (ahem) not.

So I submit that it's a matter of time that science runs into elements of reality that it is not equipped to explain.

They do that all the time, then they build a new instrument to help them. Then Voila! Higgs Boson.

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I am suggesting it is not the only possibility (as Frank has also suggested) - or even necessarily the best possibility.

Are there alternative theories? i find this highly fascinating, though i am a total layman...

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  • 2 months later...

From what I understand, if you have the existence of higher spatial dimensions, you don't need to have "dark matter" to explain things, you just realize that you can only see a "slice" of those higher dimensions at a time, and when you put it all together, and account for those other dimensions, you can unite all the forces of the universe and explain them as vibrations in that higher dimensional space.

What then is our experience of those higher dimensions of space, including our own bodies?

That's where the VRI (Visual Reorientation Illusion) comes in. We can see the universe, and ourselves from those other higher dimensions using them.

Well that's my alternative theory anyways. :)

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