4 ms·

At least at the pop-science level, his ideas connect a lot of dots. He'd neatly resolve the weirdness and mystery of black holes, their jets, their information

At least at the pop-science level, his ideas connect a lot of dots. He'd neatly resolve the weirdness and mystery of black holes, their jets, their information paradox, and dark energy. It feels good. Whether or not any of it makes a lick of sense once you start actually crunching numbers is another question. The lack of interest from other scientists leaves me skeptical (even if I'm silently enamored of the neatness myself).

Semiapies 8y ago
Yep. I've been hearing mentions of this guy's theories from pop science publications for years even though, as the article says, "The idea has found no support in the astrophysical community—over the last decade, Chapline’s papers on this topic have garnered only single-digit citations." The pop science press is depressingly bad.
- philipov 8y ago
  "Dark Energy Star" is pure marketing speak, and the pop science press loves sexy terms like that, whereas to serious physicists a hyphy phrase like that is going to throw all sorts of red flags, the same way an engineer would be appalled by someone boasting about Chaos Engineering. It's usually referred to as the Cosmological Constant instead.
- walru 8y ago
  I would much rather live in a world where this person may be heard than likewise. "Don't take refugee in the false security of consensus." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY
czbond 8y ago
Never trust credentials for "leaps and bounds thinking". Trust credentials for incremental, linear thinking....
econnor 8y ago
There's a certain nominative-deterministic inevitability to all this. There are these things called black holes that apparently are a full of a lot of stuff and aren't completely understood. And there's this mysterious stuff called dark matter that has to exist but seems to be hiding. My mom would be yelling "'Come on guys, join the dots". And who would blame her.
- chc 8y ago
  You seem to be thinking that nobody considered black holes as dark matter candidates, but that's not the case. The two big theories around the origin of dark matter are called WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) and MACHOs (massive compact halo objects), and MACHOs include black holes. The reason MACHOs aren't widely accepted is because the evidence (e.g. lensing measurements) doesn't suggest there are nearly enough massive invisible objects to account for a significant portion of the dark matter.
  - econnor 8y ago
    I'd kinda worked out that people who know about this stuff didn't think it was a good account. Was more remarking that calling things dark and black (and, indeed, wimps and machos) sort of invites simplistic and erroneous pop-science assumptions.

Semiapies 8y ago

Yep. I've been hearing mentions of this guy's theories from pop science publications for years even though, as the article says, "The idea has found no support in the astrophysical community—over the last decade, Chapline’s papers on this topic have garnered only single-digit citations." The pop science press is depressingly bad.

philipov 8y ago
"Dark Energy Star" is pure marketing speak, and the pop science press loves sexy terms like that, whereas to serious physicists a hyphy phrase like that is going to throw all sorts of red flags, the same way an engineer would be appalled by someone boasting about Chaos Engineering. It's usually referred to as the Cosmological Constant instead.
walru 8y ago
I would much rather live in a world where this person may be heard than likewise. "Don't take refugee in the false security of consensus." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY

czbond 8y ago

Never trust credentials for "leaps and bounds thinking". Trust credentials for incremental, linear thinking....

econnor 8y ago

There's a certain nominative-deterministic inevitability to all this. There are these things called black holes that apparently are a full of a lot of stuff and aren't completely understood. And there's this mysterious stuff called dark matter that has to exist but seems to be hiding. My mom would be yelling "'Come on guys, join the dots". And who would blame her.

chc 8y ago
You seem to be thinking that nobody considered black holes as dark matter candidates, but that's not the case. The two big theories around the origin of dark matter are called WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) and MACHOs (massive compact halo objects), and MACHOs include black holes. The reason MACHOs aren't widely accepted is because the evidence (e.g. lensing measurements) doesn't suggest there are nearly enough massive invisible objects to account for a significant portion of the dark matter.
- econnor 8y ago
  I'd kinda worked out that people who know about this stuff didn't think it was a good account. Was more remarking that calling things dark and black (and, indeed, wimps and machos) sort of invites simplistic and erroneous pop-science assumptions.