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New Scientist asks the same question as Barry Arrington re dark matter

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Further to Barry Arrington’s Chasing shadows: How long can we keep looking for dark matter?, curiously, New Scientist has been asking the same question:

We’ve known we need dark matter since the 1930s, but still haven’t found it. The search can’t go on forever

Even CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, our best and by far most expensive tool for finding it, has so far drawn a blank. How much longer can we keep looking?

Perhaps we have simply been looking for the wrong thing. Perhaps dark matter particles are very massive, rather than fairly light, as many assume. The first experiments are now under way to detect any such “superheavy” dark matter that might have been created when the universe was just getting started (see “WIMPZILLAs: Monster particles from the dawn of time”).

Or perhaps the true identity of dark matter is so unexpected that we haven’t even thought to look for it, despite potential evidence lurking somewhere in the vast quantities of data from the LHC. More.

Suggested answer: Usually, things that can’t go on forever don’t. But when people are determined to believe something, they just keep it going by will power alone. Will we end up inventing dark matter, so we can go on having a basis for believing what we now believe?

File:A small cup of coffee.JPG In a high tech age, maybe it won’t be like Copernicus vs Galileo any more, as New Scientist goes on to suggest. Maybe people will just create their own reality. The heck with facts!

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Comments
Sounds like astronomy has been merely astrology's 'nouveau riche' and pretentious sister all along. Aspirational, if nothing else. Though I'd bet a pound to a pinch of snuff Albert got it right.Axel
July 5, 2015
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More problems for cosmologists: (from crev.info)
Galaxy evolution: Need more? PhysOrg promises that “‘Galaxy fingerprinting’ yields new clues about galaxy evolution,” but then ends by taking it all back. Keck Telescope observation show that distant galaxies are just like low-mass galaxies in the Milky Way’s neighborhood. So after all these years, working with the largest and most modern telescopes ever made, “We still don’t have an understanding of how parts of the Milky Way system formed, and our results now tell us what chemistry to go look for to answer this question.” Suggestion: report the facts and just leave it at that. Bonus: Had enough yet? Read Calla Cofield’s entry on Space.com, “Cosmic Confusion: Talk of Multiverses and Big Errors in Astrophysics.” Mario Livio recently confessed to the public some severe embarrassments in his field. “With three other prominent astrophysicists on the panel, Livio delved into one of the most confounding (and embarrassing) problems in modern astrophysics, which led to a discussion of whether or not our universe might be just one of an infinite number of multiverses— and whether a theory of the multiverse is good or bad for science.” He described how astronomers are off on their estimate for the vacuum energy of the universe by 120 orders of magnitude! .... These same people say that the matter and energy we observe only makes up 5% of what exists (the rest being inscrutable dark matter and dark energy), and that an infinite number of universes might exist (the multiverse), because this is the only way to avoid the appearance of design (the anthropic principle, the “A word” to this panel). One of the panelists admitted that astronomers “are in a very awkward situation” with their failures. “So I think we need to be open to all matter of speculations, given the sort of awkward situation we find ourselves in.” http://crev.info/2015/06/astronomers-lie-about-star-formation/#sthash.rXxdEKnB.dpuf Read the article for other glaring problems with current cosmology. Very eye opening!
tjguy
June 20, 2015
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If materialists can chase dark matter unicorns and it be held scientific, I can pursue God. He makes much more sense logically. Historically, science has tended to make more advances when God is a given. Speaking of Jesus, Paul writes:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
-Colossians 1:15-17 (ESV, emphasis mine) Criticize it all you want, but there is more evidence for God than dark matter.bb
June 18, 2015
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Dark matter and gravitational waves are pathetic unicorns. They are both based on the same old tired and fundamentally wrong assumptions about space and time.Mapou
June 18, 2015
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