4 ms·

What about dark energy? Dark matter seems quite solid. But then dark energy does feel like a hack, right? Throwing the whole “dark thing” concept under the bus

by d--b 4y ago

What about dark energy? Dark matter seems quite solid. But then dark energy does feel like a hack, right? Throwing the whole “dark thing” concept under the bus.

lisper 4y ago
> Dark matter seems quite solid. So to speak :-) >But then dark energy does feel like a hack, right? Throwing the whole “dark thing” concept under the bus. Yes, dark energy really is nothing more than a mathematical hack (at least for now). There's a reason that a certain personality type chooses to go into physics and not marketing, with the result being that the market for physics often leaves something to be desired.
zinclozenge 4y ago
Why would dark energy be a hack? We know that the universe's expansion is accelerating. Since it's accelerating, and not expanding at a constant rate, that means there has to be something driving that. Dark energy is basically a "placeholder" term to describe the phenomenon.
- Rury 4y ago
  >We know that the universe's expansion is accelerating Correction. We don't know this for fact. It's the prevailing theory fitting the phenomena we observe.
- nitwit005 4y ago
  > We know that the universe's expansion is accelerating. That still seems to be a matter of serious dispute.
lytefm 4y ago
I thought the same when reading the article. Dark matter doesn't just seem solid - it has even has mass :) Dark energy is a whole different story and seems more like the epicycles of the heliocentric model: Adding a mathematical hack in order to fit the model into the data. I'm remain curios about stationary universe model proposed by Peter Ostermann [1] which can explain the SNe-Ia data with homogeneously distributed dark matter and without a need for dark energy. Also, it is a lot more elegant and "Einsteinian" than the concordance model. [1] https://www.peter-ostermann.de/ https://www.peter-ostermann.de/

by d--b 4y ago

What about dark energy? Dark matter seems quite solid. But then dark energy does feel like a hack, right? Throwing the whole “dark thing” concept under the bus.

lisper 4y ago

> Dark matter seems quite solid. So to speak :-) >But then dark energy does feel like a hack, right? Throwing the whole “dark thing” concept under the bus. Yes, dark energy really is nothing more than a mathematical hack (at least for now). There's a reason that a certain personality type chooses to go into physics and not marketing, with the result being that the market for physics often leaves something to be desired.

zinclozenge 4y ago

Why would dark energy be a hack? We know that the universe's expansion is accelerating. Since it's accelerating, and not expanding at a constant rate, that means there has to be something driving that. Dark energy is basically a "placeholder" term to describe the phenomenon.

Rury 4y ago
>We know that the universe's expansion is accelerating Correction. We don't know this for fact. It's the prevailing theory fitting the phenomena we observe.
nitwit005 4y ago
> We know that the universe's expansion is accelerating. That still seems to be a matter of serious dispute.

lytefm 4y ago

I thought the same when reading the article. Dark matter doesn't just seem solid - it has even has mass :) Dark energy is a whole different story and seems more like the epicycles of the heliocentric model: Adding a mathematical hack in order to fit the model into the data. I'm remain curios about stationary universe model proposed by Peter Ostermann [1] which can explain the SNe-Ia data with homogeneously distributed dark matter and without a need for dark energy. Also, it is a lot more elegant and "Einsteinian" than the concordance model. [1] https://www.peter-ostermann.de/ https://www.peter-ostermann.de/