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I'm not even close to a physicist, but it has always bothered me that such a huge percentage of the matter in the universe would be nearly unobservable. It's th

by s_q_b 10y ago

I'm not even close to a physicist, but it has always bothered me that such a huge percentage of the matter in the universe would be nearly unobservable. It's the sort of thing that wouldn't pass my normal sanity check in a scientific computing model. But I trust that these possibilities are being well considered. Is there any significant mainstream buy-in with regard to alternative theories of gravity?

stcredzero 10y ago
it has always bothered me that such a huge percentage of the matter in the universe would be nearly unobservable. It's the sort of thing that wouldn't pass my normal sanity check in a scientific computing model. How about this? -- A large fraction of bugs in a large, long lived computer system will be difficult to recreate.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  It's not the same thing. Imagine being told there's loads of bugs in your system and it's constantly breaking, even though no-one can show you a single one of these bugs and you've not got a single user complaint. That's dark matter. It's obviously bullshit, but it's the 'simplest' explanation.
  - Synaesthesia 10y ago
    There's been some pretty specific observations of dark matter like galaxies which have been shown to have varying proportions of DM, there have been measurements where scientists have actually localised the dark matter, i.e. mapped where it should be concentrated based on the perturbation of nearby stars.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    That's not quite right. A better analogy would be: "Imagine being told there's loads of bugs in your system and it's constantly breaking, and even though no-one can show you a single one of these bugs, tons of users are complaining." That would fit the situation better: There's only one kind of indication that these things exist.
pavlov 10y ago
... it has always bothered me that such a huge percentage of the matter in the universe would be nearly unobservable. Maybe think of it this way: expecting matter to be easily observable is an anthropocentric point of view, because human intuition defines matter as something that can be observed by the senses. But the universe was not designed to be observed by us. There's no reason to expect that the majority of matter should be observable.
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> I'm not even close to a physicist, but it has always bothered me that such a huge percentage of the matter in the universe would be nearly unobservable. It turns out that in some ways we actually are precious snowflakes. What we are made off (baryonic matter) makes up less than 5% of the whole "stuff" of the Universe. A mere froth on the surface of existence.
evanb 10y ago
Well, just think about the Dark Scientist who says "OK, we make up 27% of the universe, and there's a missing 5% we don't see because it doesn't interact with us." And then some dark model builder says, "Guys, guys. I bet it's SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) with 3 generations and the parameters tuned so that..."

by s_q_b 10y ago

stcredzero 10y ago

it has always bothered me that such a huge percentage of the matter in the universe would be nearly unobservable. It's the sort of thing that wouldn't pass my normal sanity check in a scientific computing model. How about this? -- A large fraction of bugs in a large, long lived computer system will be difficult to recreate.

mattmanser 10y ago
It's not the same thing. Imagine being told there's loads of bugs in your system and it's constantly breaking, even though no-one can show you a single one of these bugs and you've not got a single user complaint. That's dark matter. It's obviously bullshit, but it's the 'simplest' explanation.
- Synaesthesia 10y ago
  There's been some pretty specific observations of dark matter like galaxies which have been shown to have varying proportions of DM, there have been measurements where scientists have actually localised the dark matter, i.e. mapped where it should be concentrated based on the perturbation of nearby stars.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  That's not quite right. A better analogy would be: "Imagine being told there's loads of bugs in your system and it's constantly breaking, and even though no-one can show you a single one of these bugs, tons of users are complaining." That would fit the situation better: There's only one kind of indication that these things exist.

pavlov 10y ago

... it has always bothered me that such a huge percentage of the matter in the universe would be nearly unobservable. Maybe think of it this way: expecting matter to be easily observable is an anthropocentric point of view, because human intuition defines matter as something that can be observed by the senses. But the universe was not designed to be observed by us. There's no reason to expect that the majority of matter should be observable.

Florin_Andrei 10y ago

> I'm not even close to a physicist, but it has always bothered me that such a huge percentage of the matter in the universe would be nearly unobservable. It turns out that in some ways we actually are precious snowflakes. What we are made off (baryonic matter) makes up less than 5% of the whole "stuff" of the Universe. A mere froth on the surface of existence.

evanb 10y ago

Well, just think about the Dark Scientist who says "OK, we make up 27% of the universe, and there's a missing 5% we don't see because it doesn't interact with us." And then some dark model builder says, "Guys, guys. I bet it's SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) with 3 generations and the parameters tuned so that..."