Do Dark Matter & Energy, Singularities and Gravity not fitting into current Quantum Physics theories not scream that we're completely out to lunch?
Does the orbit of Mercury not fitting into the model of Newtonian gravity not scream that we're completely out to lunch?
Of course not. It just meant that Newtonian gravity was incomplete, it still is valid for a large range of experiences.
Any new discoveries can't invalidate all current observations, it can only add to them. So any new theory has to explain the new phenomenon AND all the already explained things.
GR didn't make Newton wrong, GR simplifies down to Newtonian gravity as long as you aren't going too fast or space isn't too curved.
Observations that aren't explained within an existing framework just means your existing framework isn't complete.
Dark matter and dark energy are names for observations of phenomenon with candidates to explain the mechanism behind the phenomenon. Something may come up that finally explains the phenomenon that is quite different than what we'd expected (by calling it dark matter or dark energy), but that doesn't invalidate all the observations that led to the creation of the placeholder terms in the first place and the new theory will have to explain all the observations.
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Originally Posted by polak
Do Dark Matter & Energy, Singularities and Gravity not fitting into current Quantum Physics theories not scream that we're completely out to lunch?
From my vary amatuer reading, it seems like we have a good idea about how things might work but not knowing what 5/6ths of the universe is made of? "Infinitely" dense and small points of matter? Being completely out to lunch wouldn't surprise me at all. Seems like we've picked the low hanging fruit but have no idea that there is a tree that it's attached too.
The way you are using quantum mechanics leads me to believe you really don't understand what it is about.
Dark matter & Energy fit perfectly well into general relativity which is the area that that actually has to do with those things, in fact the reason we think they exist is because if they didn't that would me GR is way off. It's possible that GR IS way off, and that dark matter & energy don't actually exist, but so far every prediction of GR has been correct, so it looks pretty solid at this point. Sure it may be wrong, and if it is then physicists have some work to do, but again I wouldn't bet on it.
Right now the biggest open question in physics is how to combine GR and quantum theory, they work great in the areas they are meant for, but they don't play well together. Combining them is where some of the really cutting edge stuff comes in, but in the end those are way more likely to be breakthroughs that work to confirm the current framework, rather than blow them right apart.
Like I said, it's possible we are wrong, that's an admission that is key to the scientific method, but to bring this back to the original post that started this discussion, the JWT isn't the tool that is likely to lead to a paradigm shifting discovery. They types of things that will do that are going to be things like the LHC, not an infrared space telescope.
If you're really interested in learning more about these things I would highly recommend two youtube series:
1) Crash Course Astronomy
2) PBS Space Time (specifically the two episodes "Why the Big Bang Definitely Happened" and "What's Wrong With the Big Bang". The whole "Relativity" playlist is really great too.
Both are great and do a fantastic job of working through some of these concepts in bite sized chunks.
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Recently, of course, black holes were in the news, when LIGO detected gravitational waves from the inspiral of two black holes of approximately 30 solar masses each. This raises an interesting question, at least if you’re clever enough to put the pieces together: could the dark matter be made of primordial black holes of around 30 solar masses, and could two of them have come together to produce the LIGO signal? (So the question is not, “Are the black holes made of dark matter?”, it’s “Is the dark matter made of black holes?”)
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While black holes have gone mainstream, a handful of researchers are investigating exotic ultra-compact stars that, they argue, would look exactly like black holes from afar. Well, almost exactly. Though their ideas have been around for many years, researchers are now putting them to the most stringent tests ever, looking to show once and for all that what looks and quacks like a black hole really is a black hole. And if not? Well, it could just spark the next revolution in physics.
Now, the EHT is about to add a superstar player: the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, a telescope made up of 66 high-precision dishes sited 16,000 feet above sea level in Chile’s clear, dry Atacama desert. With ALMA on board, the EHT will finally be able to make the leap from fitting models to seeing a complete picture of the black hole’s shadow. EHT astronomers are now rounding up time at all of the telescopes so that they can take new data and assemble that first coveted image in 2017.
And if they don’t see what they expect? It could mean that the black hole isn’t really a black hole at all.
That would come as a relief to many theorists. Black holes are mothers of cosmic paradox, keeping physicists up at night with the puzzles they present: Do black holes really destroy information? Do they really contain infinitely dense points called singularities? Black holes are also the battlefield on which general relativity and quantum mechanics clash most dramatically. If it turns out that they don’t actually exist, some physicists might sleep a little better.
But if they’re not black holes, then what could they be?
Most physicists have placed their bets on Saggitarius A* and other candidates being black holes, though. Boson stars and gravastars already have a few strikes against them.
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Kind of cool and might be interesting to anyone who enjoys Egyptology. They may have found the tomb of Nefertiti, which has been an ongoing mystery for an extremely long time.
British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves speculates that Tutankhamun, who died at the age of 19, may have been rushed into an outer chamber of what was originally Nefertiti’s tomb, which archeologists have yet to find.
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NeuroPhage’s rise is an extraordinary example of scientific entrepreneurship. While I am rooting for Solomon, Hillerstrom, and their colleagues, and would be happy to volunteer for one of their trials (I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2011), there are still many reasons why NeuroPhage has a challenging road ahead. Biotech is a brutally risky business. At the end of the day, NPT088 may prove unsafe. And it may still not be potent enough. Even if NPT088 significantly reduces amyloid beta, tau, and alpha-synuclein, it’s possible that this may not lead to measurable clinical benefits in human patients, as it has done in animal models.
But if it works, then, according to Solomon, this medicine will indeed change the world: “A single compound that effectively treats Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s could be a twenty billion-dollar-a-year blockbuster drug.” And in the future, a modified version might also work for Huntington’s, ALS, prion diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and more.
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Conservationists have spotted a Sumatran rhino in Indonesian Borneo for the first time in 40 years. Until now, humans have only glimpsed signs of the critically endangered species through camera traps or footprints. With only around 100 remaining, it was particularly exciting for conservationists when they came across a female earlier this month.
Kind of cool and might be interesting to anyone who enjoys Egyptology. They may have found the tomb of Nefertiti, which has been an ongoing mystery for an extremely long time.
Very interesting. Akhenaten was well known for completly changing the artistic style as well as the religion in Egypt (from polytheism to worshipping one god 'Aten'). He also moved the capital to build a new capital under his name. He is always sculpted/drawn with an elongated head and there are conspiracy theories within archaeology that he was actually an extra-terrestrial and Tutankhamun (original name Tutankhaten meaning living image of aten) died at an early age because he was a alien hybrid but his parents were brother and sister (possibly cousin) so imbreeding likely would have more to do with his health problems. There are also theories of political opportunism that killed Tutankhamun and Nefertiti had him killed to become queen.
For decades, scientists have estimated that the Siberian unicorn - a long-extinct species of mammal that looked more like a rhino than a horse - died out some 350,000 years ago, but a beautifully preserved skull found in Kazakhstan has completely overturned that assumption. Turns out, these incredible creatures were still around as recently as 29,000 years ago.
Before we talk about the latest discovery, yes, there was a very real 'unicorn' that roamed Earth tens of thousands of years ago, but it was nothing like the one found in your favourite children’s book. (Sorry - it’s a bummer for us, too.) The real unicorn, Elasmotherium sibiricum, was shaggy and huge and looked just like a modern rhino, only it carried the most almighty horn on its forehead.
According to early descriptions, the Siberian unicorn stood at roughly 2 metres tall, was 4.5 metres long, and weighed about 4 tonnes. That’s closer to woolly mammoth-sized than horse-sized. Despite its very impressive stature, the unicorn probably was a grazer that ate mostly grass. So, if you want a correct image in your head, think of a fuzzy rhinoceros with one long, slender horn protruding from its face instead of a short, stubby one like today’s rhinos.
The newly found skull, which was remarkably well-preserved, was found in the Pavlodar region of Kazakhstan. Researchers from Tomsk State University were able to date it to around 29,000 years ago via radiocarbon dating techniques. Based on the size and condition of the skull, it was likely a very old male, they suggest, but how it actually died remains unknown.
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