Do Dark Matter and Dark Energy Cast Doubt On the Big Bang? 225
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "Back in the 1960s, after the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background, the Big Bang reigned supreme as the only game in town. But back then, we also assumed that what we consider as "normal matter" — i.e., protons, neutrons and electrons — was, along with photons and neutrinos, the only stuff that made up the Universe. But the last 50 years have shown us that dark matter and dark energy actually make up 95% of the energy composition of our cosmos. Given that, is there any wiggle room to possibly invalidate the Big Bang?"
Don't ask me (Score:5, Insightful)
Do Dark Matter and Dark Energy Cast Doubt On the Big Bang?
I have no idea! You should probably ask a physicist.
Low Quality Article, Uses Question Mark. (Score:5, Insightful)
If a headline ends in a question mark the answer is always no. If the answer was yes they wouldn't ask, they'd tell.. The question mark is how shitty opinion pieces trying to push a view point try to masquerade as news.
Re:Oh good lord. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dark matter is probably just civilizations that have built (advanced forms of) Dyson spheres around their stars.
This also explains the Fermi paradox.
Dyson spheres would glow in the infrared and therefore be pretty obvious. This is because they still have to radiate the heat produced by the star they enclose - otherwise their internal temperature would perpetually increase.
Re:Oh good lord. (Score:2, Insightful)
This guy has a very good video showing why we don't need the big bang or dark matter/energy to explain the state of "known" universe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy47OQxUBvw
Re:Oh good lady, and lord. (Score:5, Insightful)
we'd like to have non-baryonic fairly massive (so relatively cold) particles. Dark matter is anything that doesn't interact with regular matter via the strong or gravitational interactions. Neutrinos don't.
More and more I'm getting a feeling that science has been down this road before. That our understanding of subatomic particles and the distant edges of the Universe is similar to the pre-Copernican use of epicycles to understand astronomy. That the search for dark matter (and probably string theory too) is a search for that final missing epicycle that will make the model work just right.
I think we need to look for a Galileo or Copernicus who has some whacky, undeveloped alternate concept that if only we could change our point of view, we would see that it makes everything so much more clear.
Re:Oh good lord. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: "when you make theories to fit your observations, of course they match."
Slashdotters appear to generally not realize that scientists simply decide what anomalies to focus the public's attention on. Notice that this article never mentions any uncertainties associated with these ideas, nor areas where potential mistakes might exist within these conventional theories. Why even broach this subject if you're not at all willing to give the critics some airtime to make their case?
The people who run this site do not have a pulse on how to push science forward beyond these obstacles. The science articles which are promoted on Slashdot exclude any discussion of mistakes within our theories, and for this reason, this aggregator will not generate thought leaders who can help us to resolve the most perplexing issues in astrophysics & cosmology today. Sometimes, in science, cosmetic ad hoc tweaks will not get us from A to B. This is the case with dark matter & energy; they are of that rare class of problems in science where we must revisit the initial hypothesis. And this is ultimately the reason why, after decades of investigation, they remain with us. The ideas which will take us to the next step are generally quite divergent from established wisdom -- which means that they fall into the category of "mistakes in science". And that absolutely guarantees that they will not survive moderation on Slashdot, which exhibits the behavior of a rabid fanboy when it comes to science. We need critics in science. But the Slashdot moderators seem more concerned with convincing us that science is awesome (click harvesting), than actually moving science forward.
microwave bright [Re:Oh good lord.] (Score:4, Insightful)
well, if Dyson spheres are anywhere near the size of the solar system, they would radiate in the infrared. Longer infrared the larger they are.
You could imagine a Dyson sphere that is vastly larger than a solar system -- like, a hundred AU across, or so--that would radiate waste heat in millimeter wave, or even something vastly larger than that that would radiate in microwave.
But, of course, that doesn't solve the problem-- they would be shine like beacons to radio telescopes.
Re:Oh good lord. (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, aspects of big bang cosmology were predicted before observation, and second of all, WTF? Theories have to fit observation or they are, by definition, wrong.