Cosmological Snake Oil
Here we go again with the "dark matter" garbage. This is beginning to annoy me.
If you're not conversant in cosmological terminology, please allow me to explain. Here's the scenario; I want you to apply Occam's Razor and tell me your conclusion.
You've built a beautiful, perfectly-balanced, incredibly detailed mathematical model of the universe. Everything fits in its place, and it allows you to understand the mechanics of galaxies, clusters, and superclusters in amazing detail, as well as understand the origins of the universe. All is well in Cosmology Land... well, except for one little thing: the mass estimates of your model don't quite, exactly match up with the actual observed data. There's a small error of... um... well, it's about 80%, actually.
So, you tell me which is more likely:
1) There is approximately five times more matter in the universe than observations can account for, and it takes the form of something that can't be seen, identified, or observed in any way, yet magically influences what you can see so that the universe conforms exactly with your theoretical model.
OR
2) Your theoretical model is fundamentally flawed.
Real head-scratcher there, huh?
There is no difference between the "theory" of dark matter, and the "theory" of the celestial spheres. Both are equally scientific-- which is to say, not at all.
"Dark matter" my ass.
If you're not conversant in cosmological terminology, please allow me to explain. Here's the scenario; I want you to apply Occam's Razor and tell me your conclusion.
You've built a beautiful, perfectly-balanced, incredibly detailed mathematical model of the universe. Everything fits in its place, and it allows you to understand the mechanics of galaxies, clusters, and superclusters in amazing detail, as well as understand the origins of the universe. All is well in Cosmology Land... well, except for one little thing: the mass estimates of your model don't quite, exactly match up with the actual observed data. There's a small error of... um... well, it's about 80%, actually.
So, you tell me which is more likely:
1) There is approximately five times more matter in the universe than observations can account for, and it takes the form of something that can't be seen, identified, or observed in any way, yet magically influences what you can see so that the universe conforms exactly with your theoretical model.
OR
2) Your theoretical model is fundamentally flawed.
Real head-scratcher there, huh?
There is no difference between the "theory" of dark matter, and the "theory" of the celestial spheres. Both are equally scientific-- which is to say, not at all.
"Dark matter" my ass.
posted by Jar(egg)head at 09:46
1 Comments:
The amount of speculation going on about the layout of the universe is mind boggling. It also borders on pointless at present time. A neat hobbie perhaps but since there is no way to test ANY of it. It doesn't even qualify as theory. Every statment of we figured something out from these gits is more comical than the last. Once we've terraformed mars and maybe some moons around Saturn and Jupiter, maybe we can start to take this stuff seriously. Maybe after building a world ship or two. This is down the same line as a black hole is actualy a hole. Could be. Shrug. So what. A study of somthing a little closer and more atainable in our life time would be nice. But they are free to waste their spare time any way they want.
Later,
N
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