The Search for Dark Matter and Dark Energy 212
mlimber writes "The New York Times Magazine has a lengthy article on dark matter and dark energy, discussing the past, present, and future. 'Astronomers now realize that dark matter probably involves matter that is nonbaryonic ["meaning that it doesn't consist of the protons and neutrons of 'normal' matter"]. And whatever it is that dark energy involves, we know it's not 'normal,' either. In that case, maybe this next round of evidence will have to be not only beyond anything we know but also beyond anything we know how to know.'"
Can dark matter just be.. (Score:5, Interesting)
..."in-transit" energy from 100,000,000,000 stars?
...large amounts of completely non-reflective dust and asteroids?
...a side effect of over-estimating the size of the universe? (i.e. stars like our 5 billions light years away don't exist anymore)
/real questions
//just curious..
"Dark energy" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How about ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally I'm still hopeful that Newtonian gravity doesn't work at large distances, someone discovering some new gravitational physics (like, working out a quantum model for gravity is a good start) would be more exciting to me personally than just knowing that there's something that's mostly undetectable floating around in the universe.
Oh, and very large bodies also obey the laws of quantum physics, just taking them into account is a waste of time as the effects are insignificant. AFAIK there isn't a situation where QM doesn't apply correctly. In the same way as you can take special relativity into account when you're driving in your car, the maths works and it's correct but the effect is so small it is truly insignificant.
Funny you should say that... (Score:1, Interesting)
And on that note, no, I'm not a Cult of Scientology member
Re:Travel and other considerations? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Can dark matter just be.. (Score:3, Interesting)
You're right that the universal baryon density doesn't specifically constrain galactic dark matter. But Occam's Razor suggests there is only one dark matter problem. Besides, you would have to explain why galaxies would have one type of dark matter while galaxy clusters have a completely different kind (and we know intra-cluster dark matter is non baryonic). It's much easier to explain the dark matter evidence at all scales by postulating just one culprit.
Re:"Dark energy" (Score:1, Interesting)
Dark energy is similar. Fact: the matter in the universe is accelerating apart. This takes energy. As it turns out, a fantastic amount. Why can't we see this energy? It's there, in fact in quatities that it makes up most of what we percieve as the universe. And yet it's thus far resisted out investigations. It's presence isn't up for debate. Where it chooses to hide itself, that's the mystery.
Re:Not really... (Score:2, Interesting)
See also: String Theory proponents.
ant.