Study: Dark matter does not exist and the universe is 27B years old(earth.com)
earth.com
Study: Dark matter does not exist and the universe is 27B years old
https://www.earth.com/news/dark-matter-does-not-exist-universe-27-billion-years-old-study/
39 comments
I'd say cyclic universe is way more kooky - it's wishful thinking that doesn't match the observations.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/no-universe-before-b...
This one is trying to replace one of the invisible mass with a modified physics.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/no-universe-before-b...
This one is trying to replace one of the invisible mass with a modified physics.
That was my intuition, but I'm just a layman so... that said, both seem to be geared towards making testable predictions, which makes them both a lot better than some other proposed alternatives.
It’s too bad the piece doesn’t have any reactions from other physicists. Is this a pretty speculative idea in the field or closer to the mainstream?
It's completely on the fringe side - doesn't mean it's wrong, just that it will need to explain a whole lot of known observations and then predict something that we can't currently explain before it catches on.
“Dark matter” always seemed like a cop out to this layperson. You can’t just give up and attribute problems with your theory to a mysterious substance that can’t be seen or measured!
Just the opposite. Sure, DM was proposed when some observations didn't match predictions, but do you think scientists liked that? Do you think they just accepted it? They did not. No one liked DM, and many people tried to disprove it. How does one disprove DM? You simply assume that it exists, and then make a prediction using that assumption. If the prediction is wrong, that's evidence against DM. What happened is that every time someone made a DM prediction, it turned out to be correct.
Two early cases of this were that if invisible matter exists, there should be gravitational lensing around seemingly empty space, which was then found, and that if if something like dark matter existed before recombination, then a certain pattern should be found in the cosmic microwave background, and a few years after the prediction, sensitive enough equipment was deployed that could see enough detail in the CMB, and the prediction turned out correct.
Today there's something like a dozen such predictions that have come true, ranging in scale from kiloparsecs to gigaparsecs, from things happening today to things that happened in the early universe. When a theory makes accurate predictions across many problems and areas, that is good evidence for the theory.
Two early cases of this were that if invisible matter exists, there should be gravitational lensing around seemingly empty space, which was then found, and that if if something like dark matter existed before recombination, then a certain pattern should be found in the cosmic microwave background, and a few years after the prediction, sensitive enough equipment was deployed that could see enough detail in the CMB, and the prediction turned out correct.
Today there's something like a dozen such predictions that have come true, ranging in scale from kiloparsecs to gigaparsecs, from things happening today to things that happened in the early universe. When a theory makes accurate predictions across many problems and areas, that is good evidence for the theory.
Well, but it has been. Just indirectly. But we have only measured tons of things indirectly, so that's nothing special. Like what Earth's core is made of, or the fact that exoplanets exist, or that atomic nuclei are made of things called protons and neutrons, which in turns are made of things called quarks. Us humans are really biased towards giving a special importance to EM radiation, due to how important vision is to us, but that's just us. Nature does not care.
"Laypersons" just never seem to know anything about dark matter, including the shitload of evidence from several different types of observations that there's something there that can't be explained by just tweaking some equations. Of course that never stops them from having an opinion based on a total strawman.
"Laypersons" just never seem to know anything about dark matter, including the shitload of evidence from several different types of observations that there's something there that can't be explained by just tweaking some equations. Of course that never stops them from having an opinion based on a total strawman.
FYI we've directly observed exoplanets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exopla...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exopla...
There’s about as much evidence for the existence of dark matter as we can possibly get, short of actually observing it.
In particular we’ve observed some galaxies that seem to have little to no dark matter. Gravitationally, they behave the way that you would “naively” predict without the need to plug in a correction term that represents dark matter. This indicates that there is something physically different about these galaxies (like an unobserved substance), and it points away from MOND-style theories.
In particular we’ve observed some galaxies that seem to have little to no dark matter. Gravitationally, they behave the way that you would “naively” predict without the need to plug in a correction term that represents dark matter. This indicates that there is something physically different about these galaxies (like an unobserved substance), and it points away from MOND-style theories.
You're saying that the evidence for the existence of dark matter is that your theory doesn't agree with the observation. This is like saying that you have no evidence at all.
No, we're saying we haven't come up with any alternative that's as good at explaining a whole lot of things.
For what it's worth, I hate it too, and I'm quietly betting on the paper a while back that showed GR was all you need as long as you can be bothered to do the really really hard maths.
For what it's worth, I hate it too, and I'm quietly betting on the paper a while back that showed GR was all you need as long as you can be bothered to do the really really hard maths.
Nope. It's saying that the theory didn't agree with the observation, so we came up with a hypothesis, and – guess what – we haven't found any evidence against that hypothesis, and a lot of evidence for that hypothesis even in places we didn't think we'd find some! That's 100% proper scientific method. Please don't argue against stuff you only have a strawman understanding of. Even if you're on HN and think you're smart and all.
What evidence against the existence of dark matter should we expect to find if it didn't exist?
That's easy. We look at the predictions a DM model makes, and then see if the predictions match observations. People seem to think that just because DM does not interact electromagnetically, the DM hypothesis cannot make testable predictions.
Models are quantitative entities – this is physics we're talking about. They almost always have quantitative parameters whose values initially have large uncertainties. We make observations in order to tighten the error bars of those parameters – to rule out parameter values inconsistent with observations.
Now, if we found that two observations are inconsistent with each other – each implies a parameterization incompatible with the other – and could rule out experimental error via repeat experiments etc, then that would be evidence against the entire model. In dark matter's case, we might realize, for example, that we cannot predict both galactic rotation curves and CMB anisotropies with a single DM model. That would be evidence against DM. (But that's not the case, both seem to be perfectly consistent with a single, well-constrained model.)
Models are quantitative entities – this is physics we're talking about. They almost always have quantitative parameters whose values initially have large uncertainties. We make observations in order to tighten the error bars of those parameters – to rule out parameter values inconsistent with observations.
Now, if we found that two observations are inconsistent with each other – each implies a parameterization incompatible with the other – and could rule out experimental error via repeat experiments etc, then that would be evidence against the entire model. In dark matter's case, we might realize, for example, that we cannot predict both galactic rotation curves and CMB anisotropies with a single DM model. That would be evidence against DM. (But that's not the case, both seem to be perfectly consistent with a single, well-constrained model.)
As another layperson with a background in finance, it always felt like the cosmological equivalent of making a Balance Sheet balance by plugging the difference in a model
Well not at all. If anything, that's the MOND theories. The proper almost exact analogue to dark matter is an accountant noticing something's wrong with the figures, trying to find an honest mistake somewhere, and failing to do so, starting to reasonably suspect that there's embezzlement going on and the missing money has not simply disappeared into the ether.
Except accounting is just fun with numbers, so by definition you know if something is off, whereas with cosmological models you can't ever know if the math is missing something or if the model itself is inaccurate
I'm saying (as others seem to also be saying) that it feels akin to saying "trust me, the model is right, we just haven't been able to find the missing $1 million but I'm sure it exists somewhere"
It's not a particularly innovative or insightful criticism of current models, but that's what it feels like from the outside looking in. Chalk it up to ignorance, if you'd like, but I still feel like asking "are you sure you can't fix the model instead of plugging it with some unobservable feature?"
I'm saying (as others seem to also be saying) that it feels akin to saying "trust me, the model is right, we just haven't been able to find the missing $1 million but I'm sure it exists somewhere"
It's not a particularly innovative or insightful criticism of current models, but that's what it feels like from the outside looking in. Chalk it up to ignorance, if you'd like, but I still feel like asking "are you sure you can't fix the model instead of plugging it with some unobservable feature?"
If we're going to correct our metaphor, it's like saying "when we add up the balances of all accounts, we're missing a million dollars, but when we add up all the interest earned on those accounts, total interest only makes sense if that million dollars is somewhere in there. Therefore, there's a million dollars we can detect overall but can't locate specifically."
I like that, thank you for humoring me and my ignorance
It feels like TFA is arguing "the way we calculate interest in the current model is wrong, here's a new formula". The jury is still out on whether that new formula breaks other parts of the model, I suppose
It feels like TFA is arguing "the way we calculate interest in the current model is wrong, here's a new formula". The jury is still out on whether that new formula breaks other parts of the model, I suppose
Yes, exactly. And carrying it just a little further, the missing million idea has been around a while and actually accounts for quite a few observed discrepancies. A new interest formula plausibly explains one, but then has to tackle the others as well or better before it'll be taken as seriously.
But we do know where it is, to quite good precision. We know how much or how little dark matter is present in different galaxies, which matches quite well with the amount of dark matter that must've been present in the early universe to explain some of the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background.
Its ignorance. There are very good reasons why Astronomers haven't chucked out Dark Matter. And yes, they have thought of the 5 minute HN remarks and already dealt with them.
Someone investigating a potential financial crime doesn't have all the information. They only have a model of where the money is coming from and going to. It's not like it's always easy to prove that there's definitely something illegal going on if the perpetrators have been carefully hiding their tracks with shell companies and money laundering and so on. So the investigator must form hypotheses and then try to find evidence for or against said hypotheses.
Another analogy: we find a person, shot, in his home. There's a bullet inside the body, calibre and rifling marks point to a particular type of firearm, powder burn marks indicate a point-blank shot, all the CSI stuff. But the murder weapon is nowhere to be found. Do we assume that the weapon – and the perp – does indeed exist, or should we "tweak the model" to include a way for bullets to spontaneously materialize out of thin air and kill people?
> Chalk it up to ignorance, if you'd like, but I still feel like asking "are you sure you can't fix the model instead of plugging it with some unobservable feature?"
I don't understand how people think there's a distinction between "introducing a particle" and "fixing the model". Doing the former is doing the latter! Anyway, yes I do chalk it up to ignorance, because that's still a strawman, assuming some kind of a Scientific Orthodoxy that has decided that Dark Matter It Is, Claiming Otherwise Is Heresy.
It's tiring to repeat this in every thread about DM, but – everybody and their dog has been testing the dark matter hypothesis for several decades now, obviously, because finding definitive evidence against it could be worth a Nobel, and so would figuring out a way to detect dark matter particles in laboratorio. And thus far they've found zero contradictory evidence, but instead in several other subdisciplines of astronomy, observations have been made that just happen to fit exactly the same sort of dark matter model that was originally only devised to explain the galactic rotation curves, without any fiddling. All the new evidence has simply tightened some parameters of the model that used to be less well known.
Meanwhile, no competing hypothesis has been able to explain all the different observations that the the single unified dark matter model does explain. Different non-dark-matter models may be finetuned to explain some pieces of evidence, but that makes them unable to match other evidence.
Nobody is claiming that there couldn't be a nice elegant dark-matter-less model that explains everything neatly. Most astrophycisists and cosmologists would be elated if one were found, and people do keep on looking. But as long as no such thing exists, we must assume that something that walks like a duck and quacks like a duck is, indeed, a duck.
Another analogy: we find a person, shot, in his home. There's a bullet inside the body, calibre and rifling marks point to a particular type of firearm, powder burn marks indicate a point-blank shot, all the CSI stuff. But the murder weapon is nowhere to be found. Do we assume that the weapon – and the perp – does indeed exist, or should we "tweak the model" to include a way for bullets to spontaneously materialize out of thin air and kill people?
> Chalk it up to ignorance, if you'd like, but I still feel like asking "are you sure you can't fix the model instead of plugging it with some unobservable feature?"
I don't understand how people think there's a distinction between "introducing a particle" and "fixing the model". Doing the former is doing the latter! Anyway, yes I do chalk it up to ignorance, because that's still a strawman, assuming some kind of a Scientific Orthodoxy that has decided that Dark Matter It Is, Claiming Otherwise Is Heresy.
It's tiring to repeat this in every thread about DM, but – everybody and their dog has been testing the dark matter hypothesis for several decades now, obviously, because finding definitive evidence against it could be worth a Nobel, and so would figuring out a way to detect dark matter particles in laboratorio. And thus far they've found zero contradictory evidence, but instead in several other subdisciplines of astronomy, observations have been made that just happen to fit exactly the same sort of dark matter model that was originally only devised to explain the galactic rotation curves, without any fiddling. All the new evidence has simply tightened some parameters of the model that used to be less well known.
Meanwhile, no competing hypothesis has been able to explain all the different observations that the the single unified dark matter model does explain. Different non-dark-matter models may be finetuned to explain some pieces of evidence, but that makes them unable to match other evidence.
Nobody is claiming that there couldn't be a nice elegant dark-matter-less model that explains everything neatly. Most astrophycisists and cosmologists would be elated if one were found, and people do keep on looking. But as long as no such thing exists, we must assume that something that walks like a duck and quacks like a duck is, indeed, a duck.
"Goodwill"?
As another layperson, I understand it as the physics equivalent of solving for x, but far less trivial. We figure it must exist because it's a missing puzzle piece in the mathematics that accurately predicts everything else. This is reinforced by observations of indirect effects that aren't accounted for in the current math.
You mean like Planet Nine?
If Dark Matter exists it can be measured by it's effects on its surroundings
If Dark Matter exists it can be measured by it's effects on its surroundings
Oh man, let me tell you how we learned about the existence of some of the planets and things like neutron stars.
It worked with planets pretty well.
Scientists are grasping at straws to explain the JWST observations but I still prefer Randall Mills' classical theory now thirty years old, that has stood up well with all its predictions coming true despite the howls of laughter from the skeptics. The model of atomic structure is superior and it shows dark matter is just hydrogen in a lower-energy non-radiative state.
https://brilliantlightpower.com/theory/
https://brilliantlightpower.com/theory/
Many physicists have dismissed BLP’s theories as incompatible with established principles of physics. The concept of hydrinos, for example, contradicts the known laws of quantum mechanics, which are well-supported by experimental evidence. Critics argue that BLP’s approach contains mathematical errors and unjustified assumptions. There have also been allegations of portions of Mills’ work being copied from other texts without proper attribution. Despite BLP’s claims of breakthroughs and imminent commercialization, the company has faced significant challenges in gaining acceptance from the scientific community and in securing patents. The theory has not been independently verified, and there is widespread doubt about the viability of the technology proposed by BLP
Sounds like pseudoskepticism to me.
> incompatible with established principles of physics.
Appeal to tradition
> contradicts the known laws of quantum mechanics, which are well-supported by experimental evidence.
Saying it doesn't make it so.
> mathematical errors
This one I approve of if demonstrated. It does seem odd for people to keep saying that for 2 decades while the research progresses. It requires demonstration.
> unjustified assumptions
You can have as wild an hypothesis as you like.
> copied from other texts
grasping at straws
> claims of breakthroughs...
poor claims of refutation!
> ....and imminent commercialization
haha, yes! he has been claiming this for decades and continues to do so. There are even contracts with utility companies from what I understand.
> the company has faced significant challenges in gaining acceptance from the scientific community
How did we end up here? I thought it was simply in violation of well-established experimental evidence, rife with mathematical errors, assumptions, plagiarism, false claims, etc etc? How do we get from all that to gaining acceptance?
> not independently verified
Wait, does that mean that all of the hit pieces, all of the moaning and all of the HOAX screaming littered all over the web is not actually based on anything?
Let me get this straight, so we are burning our world to a crisp, trying to ban food production and energy usage to save our precious environment. People cant pay their energy bills. Everything we consume and do seems to be made from energy primarily.
Then there is a privately funded research project, 20 years ongoing, burned 140 m euro. But we are sure non of it is real based on nonsense clap trap rather than verification? ~Woah!~
It works like this: There are things you know to be true, things you know to be false and then there are things you just don't know. If Undefined evaluates as false there is something wrong with your code. I don't believe a word Mills says but that isn't the same as knowing he is wrong.
> incompatible with established principles of physics.
Appeal to tradition
> contradicts the known laws of quantum mechanics, which are well-supported by experimental evidence.
Saying it doesn't make it so.
> mathematical errors
This one I approve of if demonstrated. It does seem odd for people to keep saying that for 2 decades while the research progresses. It requires demonstration.
> unjustified assumptions
You can have as wild an hypothesis as you like.
> copied from other texts
grasping at straws
> claims of breakthroughs...
poor claims of refutation!
> ....and imminent commercialization
haha, yes! he has been claiming this for decades and continues to do so. There are even contracts with utility companies from what I understand.
> the company has faced significant challenges in gaining acceptance from the scientific community
How did we end up here? I thought it was simply in violation of well-established experimental evidence, rife with mathematical errors, assumptions, plagiarism, false claims, etc etc? How do we get from all that to gaining acceptance?
> not independently verified
Wait, does that mean that all of the hit pieces, all of the moaning and all of the HOAX screaming littered all over the web is not actually based on anything?
Let me get this straight, so we are burning our world to a crisp, trying to ban food production and energy usage to save our precious environment. People cant pay their energy bills. Everything we consume and do seems to be made from energy primarily.
Then there is a privately funded research project, 20 years ongoing, burned 140 m euro. But we are sure non of it is real based on nonsense clap trap rather than verification? ~Woah!~
It works like this: There are things you know to be true, things you know to be false and then there are things you just don't know. If Undefined evaluates as false there is something wrong with your code. I don't believe a word Mills says but that isn't the same as knowing he is wrong.
Please don't post unattributed copied and pasted LLM outputs here. That's not what I come to HN to read
The training data comes from here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brilliant_Light_Power/Arc...
20 years worth of Wikipedia gate keeping. On the up side one can read how the sausage is made. For negative statements the uneducated troll Eric Krieg is a suitable source. For positive statements no peer journal is good enough.
2005
> Dr. Mills was awarded a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Chemistry, summa cum laude in 1982, and a Doctor of Medicine Degree from Harvard Medical School in 1986. Why are you guys so reticent to accept the degrees of genuine researchers,
2016
> Trends Journal : after completing his medical studies in three years, Mills spent a fourth year at MIT investigating electrical engineering.
> > Where did The Trends Journal (TTJ) get Mills' MIT background?
2024, Mills still doesn't have any professional training (according to wikipedia)
The LLM's must be full of this garbage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brilliant_Light_Power/Arc...
20 years worth of Wikipedia gate keeping. On the up side one can read how the sausage is made. For negative statements the uneducated troll Eric Krieg is a suitable source. For positive statements no peer journal is good enough.
2005
> Dr. Mills was awarded a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Chemistry, summa cum laude in 1982, and a Doctor of Medicine Degree from Harvard Medical School in 1986. Why are you guys so reticent to accept the degrees of genuine researchers,
2016
> Trends Journal : after completing his medical studies in three years, Mills spent a fourth year at MIT investigating electrical engineering.
> > Where did The Trends Journal (TTJ) get Mills' MIT background?
2024, Mills still doesn't have any professional training (according to wikipedia)
The LLM's must be full of this garbage.
Explain like I'm five here, was JWST supposed to be able to see further back than Hubble to the origins of the universe? Has this happened? What are the findings?
Just another way of writing the equations. Not any kind of discovery.
Write the other headline, equally as 'provable': Tired light does not exist, it's really dark matter.
Write the other headline, equally as 'provable': Tired light does not exist, it's really dark matter.
"The Universe is the fastest aging thing in the Universe"
[deleted]
They overloaded the CCC acronym, which has also been used for Penrose's Conformal cyclic cosmology[3], though can't say which is more speculative.
I'm also reminded of Von Neumann's elephant[4], given that they vary the constants it doesn't seem that surprising I suppose that they can get a fit. Freeman Dyson learned this the hard way[5].
This is just one test, the article mentions a few others that they'll need to pass to be a serious contender. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
[1]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad1bc6
[2]: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/524/3/3385/7221343?lo...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal_cyclic_cosmology
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%27s_elephant
[5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV41QEKiMlM