Am I wrong to assume that science that is harder to prove will have less impact on human wellbeing? Electricity is easy to run experiments on and prove, meaning humans can manipulate it for our benefits easy. However, the Higgs Boson was extremely difficult to prove and I see no way that it could ever benefit humanity's wellbeing. Now how could humans improve our wellbeing by manipulating dark matter?
"It's of no use whatsoever. This is just an experiment that proves Maestro Maxwell was right—we just have these mysterious electromagnetic waves that we cannot see with the naked eye. But they are there." -- Heinrich Hertz
You're not "wrong" per se as you're entitled to your views, but a fairly common alternative view goes something like this.
Yes, while we sometimes do pursue scientific inquiry for its practical application to the betterment of humanity, we also recognize the value of scientific inquiry simply for expanding the endowment of human knowledge about the world. That is an "innate good". Moreover, if history is any guide, it's sometimes or even often difficult to predict what practical applications will or won't emerge from any given scientific endeavor. In the case of Dark Matter, it may not be exactly the case that we will ever directly manipulate it in any scientific application. However, it may be the case that by grappling with Dark Matter we will refine and deepen our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature, and that will unlock future practical applications. Then there is the topic of "human capital": training people to be scientists trains cadres of people with strong skills in science, math, engineering, and computer science, which is an investment in that human capital. Often, they're well-equipped to go on to fruitful careers outside of their initial field of inquiry, producing innovations that benefit humanity. Finally, if it's a matter of cost, many people feel that the societal cost (e.g. federal expenditures on science) are puny compared to other things which I need not name here. Consequently, "basic science" which includes fundamental physics and the study of Dark Matter, is always a great investment for society.
Or something like that...that's my understanding of how that argument goes. Make of it what you will.
Sometimes we don't know the improvements until we have done enough experiments to provide a model that aids in discovering improvements. Electricity was hard (even fatal) to experiment with before it was understood (and frontier work in electricity when running at extreme frequencies or energies is still difficult to understand, and if we're counting all EM in there it goes beyond being easy to manipulate and experiment with).
My guess? If we figure out how to detect dark matter we can get closer to figuring out how to interact with it (other than through the very very very weak gravitational force). Or maybe we figure out that it was a spinning universal frame or something that gives us a better Standard Model.
If, however, we figure out how to interact with it and can harness any potential energy from it, then by definition we won't see any interference in the electromagnetic forces. That would be incredible, that would be as good as having readily available superconductors.
To wit, consider the case of Charles Parsons, inventor of the steam turbine engine. He was able to do this because of the lifetime work of Henri Victor Regnault (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Victor_Regnault) characterizing the behavior of steam under pretty much every possible regime. At the time Regnault's work was largely ignored, and later forgotten, since it was only of minor academic interest.
It was only years after his death that Parsons would use his work to determine the necessary geometry of the rotors and stators in his new and revolutionary engine. Regnault certainly didn't see that coming, the people who overlooked his work didn't either, but that pure science for the sake of science helped to change the world.
So as you say, we often don't realize what we're going to do with the results of pure science until engineering catches up, sometimes decades or centuries later. Still without the pure science we'd never get the engineering.
Everything is hard until it's not. Invisible electromagnetic waves are invisible (hard) and frequently deadly (hard!), but now we have WiFi, cell phones, GPS, xrays, etc.
Superconductivity is absurd magic and took impossibly low temperatures until they weren't impossible, and now it's driving MRIs, massively improving medical research, and the realm of usability is constantly expanding. Absolute zero was known reasonably accurately for over 100 years before liquid helium was achieved, and superconductivity came only three years after.
It's the kind of thing you can frequently only judge accurately in retrospect.
I hope I am not wrong in imagining you may consider grouping quantum mechanics (QM) with research that has no way to ever benefit "humanity's well-being". (Even if I'd argue like art pure science & maths benefit humanity's well-being for it's own sake). This is relevant since accelerators like which was used for the Higgs Boson discovery are also used in general QM research:
> Quantum mechanics led to the development of things like lasers, light-emitting diodes, transistors, medical imaging, electron microscopes, and a host of other modern devices.
Additionally, it's ironic that you mentioned the Higgs-Boson, while perhaps many years before it's discovery and maybe not research CERN was anticipating in doing it did come up with the first webserver:
This is a weird thought, but maybe it depends on how far you allow yourself to imagine, and what "acceptable imagining" is? I can imagine a few things that Higgs may end up being useful for, sure, they're "insane" or "wild" or "100% not how things could work you're nuts" - but I can still see ways it could benefit humanity if I was right about my imagination, and I'm not going to bother stopping my imagination.
From an outsider's perspective who has studied the history of science, it does feel a bit like the majority of the cosmology community refuses to consider alternative explanations that may also be consistent with observations but don't assume dark matter.
For example, this relativistic MOND-inspired theory is supposedly consistent with observations from CMB and gravitational lensing: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/143
There is also Jonathan Oppenheim's body of work on stochastic spacetime which supposedly accounts for these observations without needing dark matter (and it also doesn't need dark energy): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/09/controversia...
It feels like the community is stuck in dogma, and is in need of a paradigm shift. I'd like to see more effort and funding towards testing alternative theories. I'd also argue strongly for more investment in space telescopes that could further our understanding, especially given how much JWST has already provided evidence against the standard model of cosmology.
About $6 to $11B have been spent trying to detect dark matter over the past 30 years or so, and nothing has turned up. Investing in testing alternatives and efforts to gather data that would help refine hypotheses seems like money well-spent to me.
> FWIU this Superfluid Quantum Gravity rejects dark matter and/or negative mass in favor of supervaucuous supervacuum, but I don't think it attempts to predict other phases and interactions like Dark fluid theory?
>> Dark fluid goes beyond dark matter and dark energy in that it predicts a continuous range of attractive and repulsive qualities under various matter density cases. Indeed, special cases of various other gravitational theories are reproduced by dark fluid, e.g. inflation, quintessence, k-essence, f(R), Generalized Einstein-Aether f(K), MOND, TeVeS, BSTV, etc. Dark fluid theory also suggests new models, such as a certain f(K+R) model that suggests interesting corrections to MOND that depend on redshift and density
There are appealing theoretical reasons to think an axion exists [strong-cp]; there are appealing theoretical reasons to think an axion does not exist [chiral]. What this device can do is explore. They may come up empty because dark matter is not axions; they may come up empty because dark matter is axions but the physical parameters are surprising. But people agree that if axions comprise any sizeable fraction of dark matter then its parameters should be between this and that, and this device can find it there.
I think many people are worried, but unless there is a good alternative theory, the particle is still the simplest explanation. Over last 20 years a lot focus was on WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), but those searches ruled out a lot of parameter space that was considered sensible. For axions, people have only recently started to design detectors, so if dark matter is an axion there is hope to detect it.
If we will not find anything, it remains to be seen what is the best path forward. In the end the dark matter just behaves too much like dark particle with little cross section, so it is hard to replace it by something else ...
I would guess, "It would take a very long time--possibly forever--because scientists don't typically become 'worried' by perceived shortfalls in theories, rather they become excited." Often, that excitement finds an outlet through modifications to the theory or to wholesale alternative theories. In the case of Dark Matter, there's no shortage of proposals to overturn Dark Matter. It seems like there's a new one on HN every day. But, "the more's the merrier", I say! If you ask me (nobody did), they're all welcome. The only catch is, they have got to surpass Dark Matter on all of the many independent lines of observational evidence supporting the theory of Dark Matter, yet in my limited experience they almost never do.
They'll just do what they've done for the past twenty years.
Adjust the theory to make it darker, lighter and more nebulous.
The end station of dark matter is that "we know it's real because computer models but due to a fluke there's no dark matter in the solar system so we can't detect it".
I can't agree with this. No scientist says, "we know it's real because computer models but due to a fluke there's no dark matter in the solar system so we can't detect it." No scientist says, "we know it's real..." about anything. What scientists say is something like, "so far this theory has not been ruled out by evidence." So far, the theory of Dark Matter has not yet been ruled out by numerous attempts to do so along multiple independents lines of observational evidence:
- galaxy rotation curves
- galaxy cluster dynamics
- gravitational lensing
- the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation
- large-scale structure
- Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
- X-ray emission in galaxy clusters
- galaxy cluster collisions
- mass-to-light ratios
That's a tall order for any competing theories. They're welcome to try, of course, but so far none have succeeded.
I guess you're not a scientist by your own admission because your entire post is just a big
"Ackshually, we know dark matter is real because computer models"
Though to be honest that's unfair to computer models as dark matter cannot be consistently modeled in a way that lines up with the observable universe.
So your philosophy is more accurately described as
"ackshually we know dark matter is real because it's a fundamental pillar of the scientism dogma, have faith in the cold dark matter that we will never be able to detect"
If we replace "dark matter" with "the will of god" as a mysterious force with arbitrary value and direction, we end up with the very same theory with only a changed name.
That anyone takes it seriously at all does as much good for cosmology as a field as Trump does good for politics.
> The AQ is designed so its frequency can be transmitted into space, a frequency that would match with the axion. When it identifies and 'tunes in' to that frequency, it will emit very small amounts of light. AQ operates at the highest terahertz frequencies, which many researchers believe to be the most promising place to look for axions.
Can someone explain this using an analogy that makes sense?
If that is what they wanted to say they did a very bad job. And spooky action at a distance is a term related to quantum entanglement, which has probably nothing to do with the phenomenon they tried to describe here.
You're right; this is nothing to do with spooky action at a distance.
But sympathetic response, or resonance, is how this device would work---just like a radio. Axions couple to electromagnetism; by listening in on different frequencies we can see if there is any "cosmic signal being broadcast" (meaning: axions suffusing the galaxy); the frequency of the signal corresponds to the mass of the axion.
In that sense, the search for resonances is a classic approach in particle physics; various particles were discovered by finding increased signals at particular collision energies. What's different here is that it isn't a resonance in a collision cross-section but an axion --> electromagnetism conversion.
Any chance this could lead to a resonance cascade? I saw some documentary where that happened at a remote corporate facility in the desert somewhere...Dark Table maybe. I was surprised to see such heavy use of a crowbar at a place doing advanced physics. ;-)
I’ve always felt like (as neither a mathematician nor a physicist) that “dark matter” is simply just something that suddenly makes a math problem work to model the universe-—and that in reality, that math problem just doesn’t work.
Is my theory even _possible_ here, or am I missing something. Really fundamental?
Dark matter is a proposition put forward to explain observations. It’s not a result of pretty math, it’s the result of a lot of different observations which don’t align with the current math unless you stick something like dark matter into it.
There are pretty math pathways to dark matter, though, and they tend to be more compelling reasons to believe there is something that fits the notion of a particle that we can't detect (or is very difficult to detect). Specifically, bariogenesis calculations, given the current standard model, actually require dark matter--it's the label we've arrived at--as a result. Observations led to the hypothesis, calculations led to more evidence.
So yes. It is a missing term that balances our models of physics against observations. The implications of that term and hypothesis as to its physical reality are what we are trying to figure out right?
99% of the evidence points to dark matter being a real thing. And yes, many many phds have thought of the "what if we're just completely wrong" aspect. It's not interesting
What is the proposed cost of this exploration? Is this more big dollar physics? Will the device see anything if the conjecture is wrong?
I have gotten skeptical of these “could be amazing” researches - I suspect success in academia is PR and funding as much as actual good ideas and it’s hard for an outsider to know the difference (or care?).
Increasingly theorists disagree that dark matter exists, as most of it's "proof" is already reductive. Can we discover things that dont exist? Reductively, yes.
Well, what's actually happening is, some people have proposed an experimental apparatus that is actually buildable. That's something that might be worth reporting.
But invention of gravity-wave detectors (laser interferometers) have been the most exciting thing and can't wait for them to build the space version, so maybe go for it?
Won't be funded in US this decade though, they are even cancelling space-telescopes ready to launch, sigh
Dark matter is a pseudo-scientific variant of the "God of the gaps". Rather of acknowledging an obvious (default) assumption that the laws of Universe (including all "constants") depend on local conditions, the community prefers spending inordinate amounts of money on nebulous ideas.
We do have a pretty substansive evidence that dark matter exists: from the cosmic background radiation, gravitational lensing, galaxy formation simulations, galaxy rotation curves, etc.
Why is it so hard for people to believe that there are some particles that are not interacting with electromagnetism that we haven't detected directly yet? It's not even a precedent, the neutrino is just like that.
I guess the name "dark" matter was a mistake because it implies something weird, when in fact it just means whatever this is, doesn't have electric (or chromo) charge.
I agree with you. "Dark Matter" (and "Dark Energy") are colorful (colorless?) names that I think helped these theories diffuse into the popular consciousness at a time when popular interest in science was at a high-water mark (remember when "chaos theory" was fashionable?). As I mentioned in another comment recently (it feels like a "Dark Matter" or "Dark Energy" headline trends on HN almost every day), this coded these theories as "exotic" or "weird" as you say, and invited speculation about Dark Matter and even an urge to overturn it among laypeople who equated "exotic" with "tendentious." But, as you suggest, personally I don't regard Dark Matter as all that exotic. We already know about some species of "dark matter": the neutrino is one, and before that there was the neutron. Oh, well. I suppose there will be another episode on HN in a day or so.
Yeah, but it might've tamped down any perceived controversy even among laypeople, which would've saved many priceless electrons being spent debating the issue on the internet.
We have concrete evidence that either a) a new type of matter and energy exists, or b) our theories need to be modified in some way.
The orbit of planets in our solar system have hinted at missing matter several times -- one time it lead to the discovery of a new planet (Uranus or Neptune, IIRC); one time it lead to the discovery of General Relativity.
Until we either detect dark matter/energy, or develop a theory that accurately predicts the behaviour we're attributing to dark matter we cannot say one way or the other which is the correct approach.
It could also be that we are not accurately modelling EM/SR/GR effects at a large scale, such as how they are warped by the different stars orbiting the arms of the galaxies. Or that when we extend QED/QCD to accelerating reference frames (general relativity) that dark matter won't be needed, just like how QED was formulated by extending electromagnetism/QM to special relativity (non-accelerating reference frames).
"We have concrete evidence that either a) a new type of matter and energy exists, or b) our theories need to be modified in some way."
a new type of matter is a modification to our theories
"Until we either detect dark matter/energy, or develop a theory that accurately predicts the behaviour we're attributing to dark matter we cannot say one way or the other which is the correct approach."
"We" the general public isn't in the business of saying one way or the other is the correct approach, and scientists aren't, either. Scientists conduct experiments and propose theories in whatever lines of inquiry interest them, subject to the constraints of getting somebody to pay for it. Many scientists have been interested in refining the theory of Dark Matter and subjecting those refinements to experimental tests, partly because the theory has withstood and only grown stronger by those refinements and tests. That's a success by any measure, and that success is partly why public funding agencies have been willing to pay for it. Like anybody else, they try to pick winners.
It could also be that we are not accurately modelling EM/SR/GR effects at a large scale, such as how they are warped by the different stars orbiting the arms of the galaxies. Or that when we extend QED/QCD to accelerating reference frames (general relativity) that dark matter won't be needed, just like how QED was formulated by extending electromagnetism/QM to special relativity (non-accelerating reference frames).
Not trying to be a mindless skeptic but your “why is it so hard” question seems bizarre to me. It seems quite understandable that it’s hard for people to believe there’s a particle responsible for a significant percentage of all matter in the universe that we have no direct evidence of and the only reason it’s believed to exist at all is because a lot of otherwise well-understood equations and observations require it to exist.
If people understood that the last 200 years of science has shown that we are still utterly ignorant about the underpinnings of the universe, they might accept it better.
But we are not very well educated so yeah, they will doubt it for no good reason other than "it doesn't feel right"
"If people understood that the last 200 years of science has shown that we are still utterly ignorant about the underpinnings of the universe"
That's a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think?
"But we are not very well educated so yeah, they will doubt it for no good reason other than "it doesn't feel right"
That's also an exaggeration. Laypersons are under no more obligation to understand the details of the scientific professions than scientists are to understand the details of, say, the legal profession. A healthy skepticism within the general public is harmless and even helpful if it maintains an interest in science. I would just gently urge people not to veer from skepticism into dogmatism.
"the only reason it’s believed to exist at all is because a lot of otherwise well-understood equations and observations require it to exist."
I mean...those are pretty good reasons. If a particular theory successfully predicts more out of "a lot" of observations than any other competing theory does, and is a smaller departure from "a lot" of existing theory than any other competing theory is, would you choose to spend your career researching those competing theories?
Am I wrong to assume that science that is harder to prove will have less impact on human wellbeing? Electricity is easy to run experiments on and prove, meaning humans can manipulate it for our benefits easy. However, the Higgs Boson was extremely difficult to prove and I see no way that it could ever benefit humanity's wellbeing. Now how could humans improve our wellbeing by manipulating dark matter?
You're not "wrong" per se as you're entitled to your views, but a fairly common alternative view goes something like this.
Yes, while we sometimes do pursue scientific inquiry for its practical application to the betterment of humanity, we also recognize the value of scientific inquiry simply for expanding the endowment of human knowledge about the world. That is an "innate good". Moreover, if history is any guide, it's sometimes or even often difficult to predict what practical applications will or won't emerge from any given scientific endeavor. In the case of Dark Matter, it may not be exactly the case that we will ever directly manipulate it in any scientific application. However, it may be the case that by grappling with Dark Matter we will refine and deepen our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature, and that will unlock future practical applications. Then there is the topic of "human capital": training people to be scientists trains cadres of people with strong skills in science, math, engineering, and computer science, which is an investment in that human capital. Often, they're well-equipped to go on to fruitful careers outside of their initial field of inquiry, producing innovations that benefit humanity. Finally, if it's a matter of cost, many people feel that the societal cost (e.g. federal expenditures on science) are puny compared to other things which I need not name here. Consequently, "basic science" which includes fundamental physics and the study of Dark Matter, is always a great investment for society.
Or something like that...that's my understanding of how that argument goes. Make of it what you will.
Sometimes we don't know the improvements until we have done enough experiments to provide a model that aids in discovering improvements. Electricity was hard (even fatal) to experiment with before it was understood (and frontier work in electricity when running at extreme frequencies or energies is still difficult to understand, and if we're counting all EM in there it goes beyond being easy to manipulate and experiment with).
My guess? If we figure out how to detect dark matter we can get closer to figuring out how to interact with it (other than through the very very very weak gravitational force). Or maybe we figure out that it was a spinning universal frame or something that gives us a better Standard Model.
If, however, we figure out how to interact with it and can harness any potential energy from it, then by definition we won't see any interference in the electromagnetic forces. That would be incredible, that would be as good as having readily available superconductors.
To wit, consider the case of Charles Parsons, inventor of the steam turbine engine. He was able to do this because of the lifetime work of Henri Victor Regnault (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Victor_Regnault) characterizing the behavior of steam under pretty much every possible regime. At the time Regnault's work was largely ignored, and later forgotten, since it was only of minor academic interest.
It was only years after his death that Parsons would use his work to determine the necessary geometry of the rotors and stators in his new and revolutionary engine. Regnault certainly didn't see that coming, the people who overlooked his work didn't either, but that pure science for the sake of science helped to change the world.
So as you say, we often don't realize what we're going to do with the results of pure science until engineering catches up, sometimes decades or centuries later. Still without the pure science we'd never get the engineering.
Everything is hard until it's not. Invisible electromagnetic waves are invisible (hard) and frequently deadly (hard!), but now we have WiFi, cell phones, GPS, xrays, etc.
Superconductivity is absurd magic and took impossibly low temperatures until they weren't impossible, and now it's driving MRIs, massively improving medical research, and the realm of usability is constantly expanding. Absolute zero was known reasonably accurately for over 100 years before liquid helium was achieved, and superconductivity came only three years after.
It's the kind of thing you can frequently only judge accurately in retrospect.
I hope I am not wrong in imagining you may consider grouping quantum mechanics (QM) with research that has no way to ever benefit "humanity's well-being". (Even if I'd argue like art pure science & maths benefit humanity's well-being for it's own sake). This is relevant since accelerators like which was used for the Higgs Boson discovery are also used in general QM research:
https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsquantum-mechanics
> Quantum mechanics led to the development of things like lasers, light-emitting diodes, transistors, medical imaging, electron microscopes, and a host of other modern devices.
Additionally, it's ironic that you mentioned the Higgs-Boson, while perhaps many years before it's discovery and maybe not research CERN was anticipating in doing it did come up with the first webserver:
https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web/short-history-...
This is a weird thought, but maybe it depends on how far you allow yourself to imagine, and what "acceptable imagining" is? I can imagine a few things that Higgs may end up being useful for, sure, they're "insane" or "wild" or "100% not how things could work you're nuts" - but I can still see ways it could benefit humanity if I was right about my imagination, and I'm not going to bother stopping my imagination.
*well-being
From an outsider's perspective who has studied the history of science, it does feel a bit like the majority of the cosmology community refuses to consider alternative explanations that may also be consistent with observations but don't assume dark matter.
For example, this relativistic MOND-inspired theory is supposedly consistent with observations from CMB and gravitational lensing: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/143
There is also Jonathan Oppenheim's body of work on stochastic spacetime which supposedly accounts for these observations without needing dark matter (and it also doesn't need dark energy): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/09/controversia...
It feels like the community is stuck in dogma, and is in need of a paradigm shift. I'd like to see more effort and funding towards testing alternative theories. I'd also argue strongly for more investment in space telescopes that could further our understanding, especially given how much JWST has already provided evidence against the standard model of cosmology.
About $6 to $11B have been spent trying to detect dark matter over the past 30 years or so, and nothing has turned up. Investing in testing alternatives and efforts to gather data that would help refine hypotheses seems like money well-spent to me.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376759 :
> FWIU this Superfluid Quantum Gravity rejects dark matter and/or negative mass in favor of supervaucuous supervacuum, but I don't think it attempts to predict other phases and interactions like Dark fluid theory?
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42371946 :
> Dark fluid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fluid :
>> Dark fluid goes beyond dark matter and dark energy in that it predicts a continuous range of attractive and repulsive qualities under various matter density cases. Indeed, special cases of various other gravitational theories are reproduced by dark fluid, e.g. inflation, quintessence, k-essence, f(R), Generalized Einstein-Aether f(K), MOND, TeVeS, BSTV, etc. Dark fluid theory also suggests new models, such as a certain f(K+R) model that suggests interesting corrections to MOND that depend on redshift and density
how long would it go without finding dark matter before physicists would get worried?
There are appealing theoretical reasons to think an axion exists [strong-cp]; there are appealing theoretical reasons to think an axion does not exist [chiral]. What this device can do is explore. They may come up empty because dark matter is not axions; they may come up empty because dark matter is axions but the physical parameters are surprising. But people agree that if axions comprise any sizeable fraction of dark matter then its parameters should be between this and that, and this device can find it there.
[strong-cp] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_CP_problem [chiral] https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.02024
I think many people are worried, but unless there is a good alternative theory, the particle is still the simplest explanation. Over last 20 years a lot focus was on WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), but those searches ruled out a lot of parameter space that was considered sensible. For axions, people have only recently started to design detectors, so if dark matter is an axion there is hope to detect it. If we will not find anything, it remains to be seen what is the best path forward. In the end the dark matter just behaves too much like dark particle with little cross section, so it is hard to replace it by something else ...
I would guess, "It would take a very long time--possibly forever--because scientists don't typically become 'worried' by perceived shortfalls in theories, rather they become excited." Often, that excitement finds an outlet through modifications to the theory or to wholesale alternative theories. In the case of Dark Matter, there's no shortage of proposals to overturn Dark Matter. It seems like there's a new one on HN every day. But, "the more's the merrier", I say! If you ask me (nobody did), they're all welcome. The only catch is, they have got to surpass Dark Matter on all of the many independent lines of observational evidence supporting the theory of Dark Matter, yet in my limited experience they almost never do.
There are already a growing number of astrophysicists who don't buy into dark matter/energy.
How is that number measured if I may ask?
They'll just do what they've done for the past twenty years.
Adjust the theory to make it darker, lighter and more nebulous.
The end station of dark matter is that "we know it's real because computer models but due to a fluke there's no dark matter in the solar system so we can't detect it".
I can't agree with this. No scientist says, "we know it's real because computer models but due to a fluke there's no dark matter in the solar system so we can't detect it." No scientist says, "we know it's real..." about anything. What scientists say is something like, "so far this theory has not been ruled out by evidence." So far, the theory of Dark Matter has not yet been ruled out by numerous attempts to do so along multiple independents lines of observational evidence:
- galaxy rotation curves
- galaxy cluster dynamics
- gravitational lensing
- the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation
- large-scale structure
- Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
- X-ray emission in galaxy clusters
- galaxy cluster collisions
- mass-to-light ratios
That's a tall order for any competing theories. They're welcome to try, of course, but so far none have succeeded.
I guess you're not a scientist by your own admission because your entire post is just a big
"Ackshually, we know dark matter is real because computer models"
Though to be honest that's unfair to computer models as dark matter cannot be consistently modeled in a way that lines up with the observable universe.
So your philosophy is more accurately described as
"ackshually we know dark matter is real because it's a fundamental pillar of the scientism dogma, have faith in the cold dark matter that we will never be able to detect"
If we replace "dark matter" with "the will of god" as a mysterious force with arbitrary value and direction, we end up with the very same theory with only a changed name.
That anyone takes it seriously at all does as much good for cosmology as a field as Trump does good for politics.
Rubbish
> The AQ is designed so its frequency can be transmitted into space, a frequency that would match with the axion. When it identifies and 'tunes in' to that frequency, it will emit very small amounts of light. AQ operates at the highest terahertz frequencies, which many researchers believe to be the most promising place to look for axions.
Can someone explain this using an analogy that makes sense?
Sympathetic resonance. Two guitars in a room, pluck the A string of one, the other A string will vibrate. “Spooky action at a distance”
If that is what they wanted to say they did a very bad job. And spooky action at a distance is a term related to quantum entanglement, which has probably nothing to do with the phenomenon they tried to describe here.
You're right; this is nothing to do with spooky action at a distance.
But sympathetic response, or resonance, is how this device would work---just like a radio. Axions couple to electromagnetism; by listening in on different frequencies we can see if there is any "cosmic signal being broadcast" (meaning: axions suffusing the galaxy); the frequency of the signal corresponds to the mass of the axion.
In that sense, the search for resonances is a classic approach in particle physics; various particles were discovered by finding increased signals at particular collision energies. What's different here is that it isn't a resonance in a collision cross-section but an axion --> electromagnetism conversion.
Any chance this could lead to a resonance cascade? I saw some documentary where that happened at a remote corporate facility in the desert somewhere...Dark Table maybe. I was surprised to see such heavy use of a crowbar at a place doing advanced physics. ;-)
I’ve always felt like (as neither a mathematician nor a physicist) that “dark matter” is simply just something that suddenly makes a math problem work to model the universe-—and that in reality, that math problem just doesn’t work.
Is my theory even _possible_ here, or am I missing something. Really fundamental?
Dark matter is a proposition put forward to explain observations. It’s not a result of pretty math, it’s the result of a lot of different observations which don’t align with the current math unless you stick something like dark matter into it.
There are pretty math pathways to dark matter, though, and they tend to be more compelling reasons to believe there is something that fits the notion of a particle that we can't detect (or is very difficult to detect). Specifically, bariogenesis calculations, given the current standard model, actually require dark matter--it's the label we've arrived at--as a result. Observations led to the hypothesis, calculations led to more evidence.
So yes. It is a missing term that balances our models of physics against observations. The implications of that term and hypothesis as to its physical reality are what we are trying to figure out right?
99% of the evidence points to dark matter being a real thing. And yes, many many phds have thought of the "what if we're just completely wrong" aspect. It's not interesting
> 99% of the evidence points to dark matter being a real thing
If you mean particle dark matter, that's an exaggeration:
From Galactic Bars to the Hubble Tension: Weighing Up the Astrophysical Evidence for Milgromian Gravity, https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/14/7/1331
Well you have things like the bullet cluster that can't be explained by math being wrong.
Of course they can. The whole reason you think they can't is just more math.
I posted this literally yesterday:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43726217
What is the proposed cost of this exploration? Is this more big dollar physics? Will the device see anything if the conjecture is wrong?
I have gotten skeptical of these “could be amazing” researches - I suspect success in academia is PR and funding as much as actual good ideas and it’s hard for an outsider to know the difference (or care?).
> I suspect success in academia is PR and funding as much as actual good ideas...
That is kind of just how the job works unfortunately.
Unless the way research funding changes (I don't know how) you need money to do research and to get that money you need to be good at selling an idea.
Increasingly theorists disagree that dark matter exists, as most of it's "proof" is already reductive. Can we discover things that dont exist? Reductively, yes.
A headline using the word "could" implies "but probably won't". Report on things when they happen. Don't speculate.
Well, what's actually happening is, some people have proposed an experimental apparatus that is actually buildable. That's something that might be worth reporting.
"15 years" seems like an oddly specific number?
https://m.xkcd.com/678/
But invention of gravity-wave detectors (laser interferometers) have been the most exciting thing and can't wait for them to build the space version, so maybe go for it?
Won't be funded in US this decade though, they are even cancelling space-telescopes ready to launch, sigh
Dark matter is a pseudo-scientific variant of the "God of the gaps". Rather of acknowledging an obvious (default) assumption that the laws of Universe (including all "constants") depend on local conditions, the community prefers spending inordinate amounts of money on nebulous ideas.
We do have a pretty substansive evidence that dark matter exists: from the cosmic background radiation, gravitational lensing, galaxy formation simulations, galaxy rotation curves, etc.
Why is it so hard for people to believe that there are some particles that are not interacting with electromagnetism that we haven't detected directly yet? It's not even a precedent, the neutrino is just like that.
I guess the name "dark" matter was a mistake because it implies something weird, when in fact it just means whatever this is, doesn't have electric (or chromo) charge.
I agree with you. "Dark Matter" (and "Dark Energy") are colorful (colorless?) names that I think helped these theories diffuse into the popular consciousness at a time when popular interest in science was at a high-water mark (remember when "chaos theory" was fashionable?). As I mentioned in another comment recently (it feels like a "Dark Matter" or "Dark Energy" headline trends on HN almost every day), this coded these theories as "exotic" or "weird" as you say, and invited speculation about Dark Matter and even an urge to overturn it among laypeople who equated "exotic" with "tendentious." But, as you suggest, personally I don't regard Dark Matter as all that exotic. We already know about some species of "dark matter": the neutrino is one, and before that there was the neutron. Oh, well. I suppose there will be another episode on HN in a day or so.
Had we named it "invisible matter", perhaps not as much controversy would surround it.
The controversy exists only in laypeople cirlces to be honest. Consesus among actual scientists is pretty firm.
Yeah, but it might've tamped down any perceived controversy even among laypeople, which would've saved many priceless electrons being spent debating the issue on the internet.
We have concrete evidence that either a) a new type of matter and energy exists, or b) our theories need to be modified in some way.
The orbit of planets in our solar system have hinted at missing matter several times -- one time it lead to the discovery of a new planet (Uranus or Neptune, IIRC); one time it lead to the discovery of General Relativity.
Until we either detect dark matter/energy, or develop a theory that accurately predicts the behaviour we're attributing to dark matter we cannot say one way or the other which is the correct approach.
It could also be that we are not accurately modelling EM/SR/GR effects at a large scale, such as how they are warped by the different stars orbiting the arms of the galaxies. Or that when we extend QED/QCD to accelerating reference frames (general relativity) that dark matter won't be needed, just like how QED was formulated by extending electromagnetism/QM to special relativity (non-accelerating reference frames).
"We have concrete evidence that either a) a new type of matter and energy exists, or b) our theories need to be modified in some way."
a new type of matter is a modification to our theories
"Until we either detect dark matter/energy, or develop a theory that accurately predicts the behaviour we're attributing to dark matter we cannot say one way or the other which is the correct approach."
"We" the general public isn't in the business of saying one way or the other is the correct approach, and scientists aren't, either. Scientists conduct experiments and propose theories in whatever lines of inquiry interest them, subject to the constraints of getting somebody to pay for it. Many scientists have been interested in refining the theory of Dark Matter and subjecting those refinements to experimental tests, partly because the theory has withstood and only grown stronger by those refinements and tests. That's a success by any measure, and that success is partly why public funding agencies have been willing to pay for it. Like anybody else, they try to pick winners.
It could also be that we are not accurately modelling EM/SR/GR effects at a large scale, such as how they are warped by the different stars orbiting the arms of the galaxies. Or that when we extend QED/QCD to accelerating reference frames (general relativity) that dark matter won't be needed, just like how QED was formulated by extending electromagnetism/QM to special relativity (non-accelerating reference frames).
It could be. Anything's possible.
Not trying to be a mindless skeptic but your “why is it so hard” question seems bizarre to me. It seems quite understandable that it’s hard for people to believe there’s a particle responsible for a significant percentage of all matter in the universe that we have no direct evidence of and the only reason it’s believed to exist at all is because a lot of otherwise well-understood equations and observations require it to exist.
If people understood that the last 200 years of science has shown that we are still utterly ignorant about the underpinnings of the universe, they might accept it better.
But we are not very well educated so yeah, they will doubt it for no good reason other than "it doesn't feel right"
"If people understood that the last 200 years of science has shown that we are still utterly ignorant about the underpinnings of the universe"
That's a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think?
"But we are not very well educated so yeah, they will doubt it for no good reason other than "it doesn't feel right"
That's also an exaggeration. Laypersons are under no more obligation to understand the details of the scientific professions than scientists are to understand the details of, say, the legal profession. A healthy skepticism within the general public is harmless and even helpful if it maintains an interest in science. I would just gently urge people not to veer from skepticism into dogmatism.
"the only reason it’s believed to exist at all is because a lot of otherwise well-understood equations and observations require it to exist."
I mean...those are pretty good reasons. If a particular theory successfully predicts more out of "a lot" of observations than any other competing theory does, and is a smaller departure from "a lot" of existing theory than any other competing theory is, would you choose to spend your career researching those competing theories?