"gravitons and dark matter"-more like Faries and Pixie Dust!

[why06]

What is with all these strange names. It seems if they have labeled all the effects in the universe with some kind of strange made up name. I mean common... "dark energy" "gravitron". It seems as if we just looked for an easy way out. There is no point of thinking up nearly a thousand names for something when one good idea will suffice. <br /><br />When I read through a particle physics book it seems as if I am reading a book of majic full of spells and potions. They label these imaginary particles with strange characteristics. One such being: An electron can never be at the same place at the same time or any matter for that fact, but who knows perhaps the universe needs to creat matter infinitely small to survive.<br /><br />Either way I know you all will say-<font color="yellow"> "these aren't real proven things...they are simply terms created to assign certain effect to."-<font color="white"> well do you know what I say to that..." Overcomplification" by giving these phenimenons a cause we have to also give the particle made up qualities for it to exist.<br /><br />I wish someone would just list what we literally know and why we think a certain ideal explain it instead of just publishing a bunch of nonsense that only produes false accusations and liters the minds of those just entering a field of science.<br /><br /><font color="green">If I become a physicist I want to study science NOT MAGIC!</font></font></font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div>________________________________________ <br /></div><div><ul><li><font color="#008000"><em>your move...</em></font></li></ul></div> </div>

 

[doubletruncation]

So it sounds like what you really want is a big list of every observation ever made. Keep in mind of course that when we make the observations we also assume things about how computers/electronics work... so to really make this list you need to make observations like "I looked at the screen and saw the following distribution of colors for the pixels: .....". But of course you probably don't have much of a problem with us assuming our mental picture of the physics at work behind a computer (since after all people use their mental picture of electrodynamics to make computers in the first place) so we can probably say "we read out voltages: ..... at time: .... when we did: ....". Now frankly I would find such a big list of all observations ever made completely useless. It would be far too massive to understand anything out of it. The point of making these observations, in part, is to see if there are any simplifying patterns in them - you come up with a theory to organize that information and understand it, and that theory is much more useful than the data all by itself because you can actually keep that theory in your mind and you can use that theory to make predictions about what would happen in a different situation. Sure people do publish their actual data, but ultimately the goal is to organize all of that data/observations into a picture of the universe that makes sense. I personally think that "dark energy" is easier to remember than all the observations of supernovae light curves and spectra. People will assign names to their theories as well because it just becomes so cumbersome to have to say all of the ideas behind general relativity every time you want to mention that theory. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[doubletruncation]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>There is no point of thinking up nearly a thousand names for something when one good idea will suffice<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />what makes you so sure that there is one good idea that will suffice? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[bonzelite]

gravitons are like "phaser gun." or "light sabre." all are equally as fake. dark matter is an official B.S. scientific term to mask the reality of "we have no idea what we're talking about." <br /><br />

 

[dragon04]

<font color="yellow">what makes you so sure that there is one good idea that will suffice?</font><br /><br />Isn't that the idea behind the search for a GUT? Einstein has this ugly, cumbersome jumble of equations until he combines the Maxwell field with the Riemann metric and his monster resolves itself into a beautiful, simple equation in 4 dimensions.<br /><br />Granted, fundamental particles are observable and aplenty. 36, IIRC, if you consider all fundamental particles and their "anti" counterparts.<br /><br />I'm a layman, but I have started the path to really, truly understand all this stuff. And none of what I posted addresses what the original poster is driving at.<br /><br />To why06:<br /><br />Terms such as "dark matter" and "gravitons" are hypothetical terms used as quanta that give scientists a "first step" to stand on to try and progress to what is really happening, I believe. Much like Einstein's Cosmological Constant in attempting to rectify whether it Universe is static, exapnsive, or contractive based upon observational evidence.<br /><br />As far as your reference to the position of an electron not being predictable at any given instant, it may seem obscure, but there is experimental proof that it is true.<br /><br />Light itself exhibits properties of both a particle and a wave. However contradictory that might seem, it is nonetheless true. The million dollar question is WHY is it true?<br /><br />I suggest that you read up on Heisenberg and Uncertainty. As well as Shroedinger and his cat.<br /><br />I think we have so many "terms" because we don't understand the phenomena that create these things we observe. We see the effect, yet we don't know the cause.<br /><br />I think that's an important idea. A lot of seemingly disassociated phenomena (or quanta if you will) probably have a common origin.<br /><br />Time for a bad analogy. You come home from work and find a duck, a bowling ball, 6 different colored pigs, a TV, a deck of cards, and a stripper in your <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em>"2012.. Year of the Dragon!! Get on the Dragon Wagon!".</em> </div>

 

[doubletruncation]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>gravitons are like "phaser gun." or "light sabre." all are equally as fake<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Except that gravitons are theoretically predicted particles, show me theoretical motivations to suspect the existence (or possibility of constructing) phaser guns and light sabers and I'll agree with you. Perhaps you may not put much stock in the prediction of gravitons - keep in mind though that in the past particles have been predicted before they were observed (e.g. quarks).<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>dark matter is an official B.S. scientific term to mask the reality of "we have no idea what we're talking about."<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Sure I would agree that dark matter is a way of parameterizing our ignorance, but I don't think it's true that we don't know anything about it at all. At the very least we do know the effective distribution of mass that you would need to reproduce rotation curves of galaxies, gravitational lensing and the velocity distribution of galaxy clusters. We know that the effective mass is more than anyone has been able to account for so far. We can tell that in our own galaxy at least it probably isn't composed mostly of ~planet-sized objects (see the microlensing survey results). In some cases it does seem that the effective distribution of mass is not correlated with light or x-rays. We have reason to think that the amount of matter that you need to account for these observations constitutes about 30% the critical density required to close the universe. And this is not an exhaustive list. So I don't think it's fair to say that we have no idea what we're talking about. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Time for a bad analogy. You come home from work and find a duck, a bowling ball, 6 different colored pigs, a TV, a deck of cards, and a stripper in your front yard. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />I'd be a bit curious as to how the stripper got there, but I'd go with the theory my kids left the rest of the stuff in the front yard. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

 

[doubletruncation]

If you follow that theory to its logical conclusion, I'd bet the kids are going to be in big trouble <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[drwayne]

I wouldn't rule out my 11 year old leaving the stripper out there too...<br /><br />Wayne <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>"1) Give no quarter; 2) Take no prisoners; 3) Sink everything."  Admiral Jackie Fisher</p> </div>

 

[doubletruncation]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Isn't that the idea behind the search for a GUT?<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Sure, we can hope there is such a unifying theory, and people can spend their careers searching for such a theory, and perhaps eventually someone will find something. But I would bet you good money that even if such a theory were found, it will be very difficult, if not impossible to explain very much with it, even if in principle it can explain everything. For one thing, I doubt that it will make the zoology of particles go away - even if in principle your theory predicts the existence of a pion, it will probably be so complicated to actually show that and calculate its properties, that in practice no one will use that fundamental theory. People have been quite successful, it seems, at interpreting the data from colliders and other experiments using the standard model set of particles+interactions and quantum field theory, so I think that is ultimately why we ascribe any value/reality to that theory including all it's particles and their behaviors.<br /><br />I guess the point I was trying to make in my first reply was in response why06's question of why we don't just state precisely what we literally do know and why we think an idea explains it. I think the reason is that ultimately what we literally do know is a bunch of voltage measurements (usually most physics measurements eventually boil down to that), or something equally unenlightening. You've got to draw the line somewhere, assuming some prior physics, to say something like "we've measured the incoming and outgoing momenta/energies of these various sets of particles". Many people though will find that even that is too much raw data, that is not particularly enlightening, to provide the reader. And so they will boil it down to "we made a kaon, saw it travel a distance and then observed it decay into a pion, a neutrino and an anti-neutrino" - but there's a lot of interpreta <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>If you follow that theory to its logical conclusion, I'd bet the kids are going to be in big trouble .<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />That would probably depend on whether it was a male or female stripper and who was expected to pay the bill. <br /><br />Afterall, I make the kids pick up their stuff from the yard on regular basis, so the more mundain items aren't going to cause me a lot of additional stress. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Sure, we can hope there is such a unifying theory, and people can spend their careers searching for such a theory, and perhaps eventually someone will find something. But I would bet you good money that even if such a theory were found, it will be very difficult, if not impossible to explain very much with it, even if in principle it can explain everything.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />I tend to agree with you overall. What tends to "irk" me are the notions of "dark energy" and space "masers" when the perfectly logical explanation of these things can be found in plasma cosmology that includes large scale Birkeland currents. <br /><br />Often times it surprises me how little emphasis most astronomers put on the role of electricity and electrical currents in the structures of the universe. I also get a bit miffed over the notion of a black hole that is described as a "singularity" that is also described as "infinite mass", that comes to a point. These notions are not physically likely or necessary. They might make for a very nifty math formula, but any nuetron star with enough mass might create an event horizon. Plasma physics doesn't even need a neutron star to create galaxy sized structures in the first place.<br /><br />I'm just surprised how little astronomers consider the implications of electrical flow through plasma when looking at sturctures we see in the universe. I think much of the made up terminology of astronomy comes from our ignorance of the role of galactic scale Birkeland currents that permiate the mostly plasma fibers of the universe. Even cosmic expansion can be explained in terms of electromagnetic acceleration of plasma. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>