Dark Energy – Fireflies & Laserbeams

The Case Against Dark Matter

Monday January 10, 2022 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Science | Leave Comments

Erik Verlinde proposes a new theory that does away with the need for Dark Matter

I've been arguing since the Aughts that Dark Matter is not a real thing. Scientists have been looking for decades and have found nothing to substantiate its existence, other than their theory fits how things work. This seems to be working backwards, to make a theory fit the data, instead of investigating and discovery the theory naturally. Occum's Razor implies that the simplest idea is probably the right one, and trying to make up matter that we can see or detect in any way disputes the Dark Matter theories in my mind.

Verlinde is not new to radical theories and in this new one he combines quantum entanglement and holographic space-time representation to show how dark matter is simply a false manifestation of quantum interplay with dark energy. Still some more work to be done on testing the hypothesis but it looks very intriguing. You can read more about it here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/erik-verlindes-gravity-minus-dark-matter-20161129

Monday January 6, 2020 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Science | Leave Comments

[caption id="attachment_1741" align="alignnone" width="778"] (Image: Volker Springle/Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics/SP)[/caption] I am feeling validated by the news that came out today regarding Dark Energy. A team of astronomers at Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea), together with their collaborators at Lyon University and KASI (Korea Astronomy and Science Institute), showed that the key assumption in the theory is based on erroneous data. I had been saying all along that the measurements were suspect. I posted this back in February 2011: Why do I Love Science Fiction? The whole story is here: New evidence shows that the key assumption made in the discovery of dark energy is in error newevidences I have been saying this from the beginning that it seemed to break the Simplicity principle. Most philosophers believe that, other things being equal, simpler theories are better than more complex ones and the Dark Energy theory was reliant on a lot of long range measurements that were open to a wide array of issues that might interfere with them. It seemed to leap to a conclusion based on data that was not very robust and to me, on lazy science. This doesn't mean the universe isn't flying apart, or accelerating, but the idea that we couldn't detect 95% of the universe verges on the absurd on the face. It seemed to me more likely that the measurements were wrong. They made a lot of assumptions. Turns out their assumptions are likely wrong, as I surmised. I think the Webb (JWST) telescope, which launches next year will provide scientists with better information with which to make better theories.

Wednesday February 23, 2011 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging | Leave Comments

Lots of reasons actually. I love being able to stretch my imagination and explore interesting and esoteric concepts. I like extrapolating political and scientific developments into the future. I like the fact that we can take things from history and manipulate them into a story idea for a different colonial world. I like the idea of starflight and starships and maybe even faster than light travel. I know that last one is a stretch, but I love the idea. I am constantly watching the scientific circles for someone to come up with an idea that will allow for faster than light travel. I like the idea of a future for mankind, spread out among the stars, not just trapped on one world. I like that some of the concepts I've seen writer's come up actually blow my mind! Don't get me wrong, I like other genres, but there is something that resonates with me in science fiction. Maybe it's the science. Cosmology has always been fascinating to me. The funny thing is I think science fiction is what fueled my interest in science which went full circle and now the science fuels my interest in science fiction. I was in junior high when Star Wars came out and it changed my view of the world. I wouldn't be in the job I am now if not for that movie. However, I have issues with the current state of affairs in the scientific community. I see all over television and the internet how man has solved the problem with explaining why our universe seems to be flying apart faster and faster. Or that they are very close to understanding most of the fundamental laws of physics. Okay, you caught me, this is actually going to be a rant on physics. I have issues specifically with Dark Matter and Dark Energy. I think it's lackadaisical physics. We can't see it or actually find any of something that makes up 70% of our universe? I honestly think there are some fundamental mistakes being made by a lot of really smart people that seem to be jumping onto a bandwagon. It couldn't be that they screwed up the way they measured the bending of light from stuff that is really, really far away. It couldn't be that they have under valuated the gravitation force. I saw someone post a list of different scientific theories that are the current hot topics a few weeks ago and ran a poll on how likely people thought each one was. The results of their unscientific poll were interesting. The views varied as much as the topics, and physicists and engineers and really smart people are far apart on their opinions. Stuff like Supersymmetry, Inflation, String Theory, Dark Matter, Higgs Bosons, and a couple of other things made the list. It just goes to show how far we are from really understanding a lot of these issues. These are hard issues that they are grappling with, no doubt, but what gets me is how they are being presented to the public as solved, when not one single thing on that list was solved to any degree of certainty. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/02/07/do-you-think-inflation-probably-happened/ I'm going on the record to say I don't believe in Dark Matter or Dark Energy, at least not in the way it is being represented. I'm not saying we know every type of matter in the universe, but I don't think we are missing 70% of something. I think it's more likely that we are missing something in how we are measuring gravity. I think the red shifting of some of the black hole distance measurements are wrong. They are basing their entire theory off of a handful of extremely long measurements. These measurements are telling them we are missing an enormous portion of our universe somewhere. It seems much more plausible that they measurements are wrong. I've always been a science geek, and still love it, but come on folks! OK, rant over. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. We now return you to your normal blog. Clear Ether!