Wild New Study Suggests Gravity Can Exist Without Mass (sciencealert.com) 120
A new study by astrophysicist Richard Lieu suggests that gravity can exist without mass, proposing thin, shell-like layers of 'topological defects' as an alternative to dark matter for explaining the gravitational binding of galaxies. This theory posits that these defects create a gravitational force without detectable mass, potentially eliminating the need for dark matter in current cosmological models. Clare Watson reports via ScienceAlert: Lieu started out trying to find another solution to the Einstein field equations, which relate the curvature of space-time to the presence of matter within it. As Einstein described in his 1915 theory of general relativity, space-time warps around bundles of matter and streams of radiation in the Universe, depending on their energy and momentum. That energy is, of course, related to mass in Einstein's famous equation: E=mc2. So an object's mass is linked to its energy, which bends space-time -- and this curvature of space-time is what Einstein described as gravity, a notch more sophisticated than Newton's 17th-century approximation of gravity as a force between two objects with mass. In other words, gravity seems inextricably linked to mass. Not so, posits Lieu.
In his workings, Lieu set about solving a simplified version of the Einstein field equations that allows for a finite gravitation force in the absence of any detectable mass. He says his efforts were "driven by my frustration with the status quo, namely the notion of dark matter's existence despite the lack of any direct evidence for a whole century." Lieu's solution consists of shell-shaped topological defects that might occur in very compact regions of space with a very high density of matter. These sets of concentric shells contain a thin layer of positive mass tucked inside an outer layer of negative mass. The two masses cancel each other out, so the total mass of the two layers is exactly zero. But when a star lies on this shell, it experiences a large gravitational force dragging it towards the center of the shell. "The contention of my paper is that at least the shells it posits are massless," Lieu says. If those contentious suggestions bear any weight, "there is then no need to perpetuate this seemingly endless search for dark matter," Lieu adds.
The next question, then, is how to possibly confirm or refute the shells Lieu has proposed through observations. "The increasing frequency of sightings of ring and shell-like formation of galaxies in the Universe lends evidence to the type of source being proposed here," Lieu writes in his paper. Although he admits that his proposed solution is "highly suggestive" and cannot alone discredit the dark matter hypothesis. "It could be an interesting mathematical exercise at best," Lieu concludes. "But it is the first [mathematical] proof that gravity can exist without mass." The study has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In his workings, Lieu set about solving a simplified version of the Einstein field equations that allows for a finite gravitation force in the absence of any detectable mass. He says his efforts were "driven by my frustration with the status quo, namely the notion of dark matter's existence despite the lack of any direct evidence for a whole century." Lieu's solution consists of shell-shaped topological defects that might occur in very compact regions of space with a very high density of matter. These sets of concentric shells contain a thin layer of positive mass tucked inside an outer layer of negative mass. The two masses cancel each other out, so the total mass of the two layers is exactly zero. But when a star lies on this shell, it experiences a large gravitational force dragging it towards the center of the shell. "The contention of my paper is that at least the shells it posits are massless," Lieu says. If those contentious suggestions bear any weight, "there is then no need to perpetuate this seemingly endless search for dark matter," Lieu adds.
The next question, then, is how to possibly confirm or refute the shells Lieu has proposed through observations. "The increasing frequency of sightings of ring and shell-like formation of galaxies in the Universe lends evidence to the type of source being proposed here," Lieu writes in his paper. Although he admits that his proposed solution is "highly suggestive" and cannot alone discredit the dark matter hypothesis. "It could be an interesting mathematical exercise at best," Lieu concludes. "But it is the first [mathematical] proof that gravity can exist without mass." The study has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
negative mass (Score:5, Insightful)
I just need to invent this trivial little thing called negative mass, what?
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Or a dieting selfhelp group.
"The Singularity" on the other hand would be ok for metal but less for dieting.
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Or a dieting self help group.
Meh. I've talked with people and even the ones that achieve negative mass eventually gain it all back again.
Re: negative mass (Score:2, Troll)
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Re: negative mass (Score:2)
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Great name for a metal band, isn't it? Negative Mass!
Sounds like one that attracts no fans.
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Re:negative mass (Score:5, Informative)
yet there is a whole field of study of the so-called "black holes", which are, allegedly, "singularities". And no one even blinks.
Yes, because with our current capabilities there is no issue with thinking of them as singularities - the same is true for every fundamental particle that we treat as point-like - they are singularities as well. Yes, at some incredibly high energy this point-like singularity model will have to break down but, for the effective field theories we have at the moment it is fine to treat them as point-like singularities.
Think of it like Rutherford's first models of rutherford scattering that treated the nucleus as a point charge. That theory works perfectly well for gold since your alpha particle never has enough energy to get close enough to the nucleus to see the effect of it not actually being a point charge. However, use a nucleus with a smaller charge, like aluminium, and you do start to see the effect of a finite-sized nucleus - similarly if you accelerate you particles artificially to higher energies we can also see the finite size of even nuclei as highly charged as gold. However, until you get to the energy where particles get close enough to the nucleus a point-like, charge sinularity model works perfectly well and that is the stage we are at with both Black Holes and fundamental particles.
Re:negative mass (Score:5, Informative)
He didn't invent negative mass, he merely assumed it. The notion goes back to the 1950s. See the wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I'm aware. Point stands though.
I recall a nice alternative theory of relativity which assigned a negative energy to the gravitational field itself. Impossible to find though because the author was Bernouilli something.
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You're a little late with that joke, which has appeared in countless places ... the opposite of specific gravity is general hilarity
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tragedy is when i cut my finger. comedy is when an anti-gravity disc throws you up in the air and you die
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No, that's not negative mass. Negative energy matter, which is assume is what negative mass is since E=mc^2, is what you need to stabilize a wormhole.
FWIW, a positron has been described as an electron traveling backwards in time. I believe that's the way it is depicted in Feynman diagrams, but it's been so long I'm not certain. So it *is* a part of the standard model. But it doesn't have negative mass.
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Not if the Many Worlds Interpretation is correct. You could go back in time and change whatever you wanted because your timeline would not be affected.
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As far as I understand, currently all the explanations are 'inventing' something or another that has so far not been directly observed. Perhaps it's a flying spaghetti monster pushing things around?
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The claim is they can get rid of something but they replace it with sth exotic instead. It's very much not attractive.
I won't go as far as saying 'unscientific' or 'occam' or anything because people make that into sth hard edged which it is not.
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Can they do experiments? As in actual experiments not 'In theory if you had a trillion dollar and all the resources in the solar system' .At this level I think it's just doing math.
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You have to start somewhere. New experiments are hard to devise and perform. Nobel prizes are awarded for such things.
However, he's not saying this is the right answer. As you say, it's just doing math with the existing equations. But this gives the experimental physicists more options since the dark matter stuff hasn't yet worked out.
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If you look at science as an investor, as an experimental scientist I would not be tempted to invest here. It's really low return on investment stuff. You might say 'it all is in that area'. Yes.
So a hypothesis was created? (Score:2)
As far as I understand, currently all the explanations are 'inventing' something or another that has so far not been directly observed.
Isn't that how science works? A hypothesis is created to explain something, then tests and observations come afterwards?
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Sure, but in this case it seems like one hypothesis is considered "good" by virtue of being popularly established and one is "bad" by virtue of challenging the first without any actionable tests for either. I could imagine a swapped scenario, where the negative mass hypothesis was something established and then dark matter comes along and people mock it because negative mass already explains it.
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Sure, but in this case it seems like one hypothesis is considered "good" by virtue of being popularly established and one is "bad" by virtue of challenging the first without any actionable tests for either.
Sounds like steady state vs big bang.
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Ultimately, mass is energy. From our perspective, mass is a huge amount of energy in a small amount of space. When energy is confined in such a way, we say that there is mass. Could there not be energy states and positions that could push similar effects across a "larger" (from our perspective) scale?
I just need to invent this trivial little thing called negative mass, what?
You live in a digital universe where there are points and exact moments of state changes. I live in an analog universe where there are no exact moments and the state changes are where all the interesting shit i
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Antigravity already is part of the theory as the cosmological constant/dark energy. It's the result of empty space having energy (such that it's favorable to create more space). I think negative mass is supposed to be something different, but it's hard to tell what with it not existing. Would it have negative inertia?
On the other hand, we already can create and detect dark matter particles, we call them neutrinos. They completely ignore electromagnetism, and have mass. It's just we'd need lots and lots and
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No. Neutrinos aren't dark matter. They're just hard to detect. They *were* considered as a candidate for awhile. (Well "sterile neutrinos" were...but they don't seem to exist.)
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They're exactly the description of dark matter, other than that the distribution of them would be hard to explain. They're dark matter, just we think they're the wrong dark matter -- though feel free to illuminate me as to how you could illuminate a neutrino.
Re: negative mass (Score:2)
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Then what's their electric dipole moment?
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Extra credit: Nevada and Arizona are considered swing states. If voters there see an outcome on the east coast they may decide to switch or not vote before their polls close. The outcome of races in the east does have influence on on swing states to the west.
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Thank you, that's really interesting.
Re: negative mass (Score:2, Insightful)
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A lot of speculative astrophysics (notably including the Big Bang) relies on dark matter. But relativity does not require it. Relativity _allows_ for dark matter, in the sense that if dark matter were found to exist, relativity would not thus be invalidated. But it does not require it.
Anyway, if you think negative mass is a weird idea, wait until you hear about imaginary (or complex) mass.
The next question (Score:1)
The next question, then, is how to possibly confirm or refute the shells Lieu has proposed through observations.
No, the next question is what is the next unproven theory we can layer on top of this unproven theory so we can continue pretending it's not unproven theories all the way down?
Re:The next question (Score:5, Informative)
Theories are never "proven," they are supported with ever increasing evidence.
So a lot of things we believe to be true in Astronomy, like Black Holes, are increasingly more likely because we've had so many observations that support their existence, and theories that predict their behavior supported by observations.
But nothing is ever "proven." At least not in the mathematical sense.
For example, we thought Gravity was a force because of Newton's theories. But Einstein came up with his theories, and also predicted how those theories could be supported by evidence. For example, he predicted gravitational lensing, and that was later observed during solar eclipses. Other experiments and observations have further supported it.
So the very useful Newtonian model of gravity, while still used at the small scale, is not as useful at the cosmological scale. And Einstein's model has proven to be far more accurate.
But that doesn't mean that some new model can't come along and do a better job. Though I'm guessing it may take a few hundred years to get there.
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Well going back to the original article, this guy has a lot he'll need to prove. He's suggesting that a new theory can explain the "dark matter" phenomena that has been observed on telescopes, but we don't understand.
But now the next step is figuring out what experiments would prove or disprove his new model. Otherwise it's just an interesting thought experiment and not a well thought out model of the universe. No matter how much math you do.
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Well going back to the original article, this guy has a lot he'll need to prove. He's suggesting that a new theory can explain the "dark matter" phenomena that has been observed on telescopes, but we don't understand.
But now the next step is figuring out what experiments would prove or disprove his new model. Otherwise it's just an interesting thought experiment and not a well thought out model of the universe. No matter how much math you do.
A big problem is that "Dark matter" is an unfortunately named placeholder. Whatever the cause of our observations not being in line with our physics is not necessarily matter at all, and inventing non-mass gravity sure does have a lot of proving to do.
Right now, it isn't anything other than another and quite problematic placeholder that is placed on another placeholder. Reminds me of string theory as unprovable.
Wonder what happens when a big expression of massless gravity and a black hole collide?
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There's been some weird modding done in this thread. Someone higher up has an interesting point but they're already at -1, and yours is at 0 Redundant. I've had mod points for most of the last week, but today when they'd be useful to fix some of this I don't.
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For example, we thought Gravity was a force because of Newton's theories.
Pop science and many reputable scientists still think so.
But Einstein came up with his theories, and also predicted how those theories could be supported by evidence.
It has been a hundred years. I think we may be stuck at Gravity is a fundamental force of the Universe for a VERY long time. :(
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It has been a hundred years. I think we may be stuck at Gravity is a fundamental force of the Universe for a VERY long time. :(
Well, its still easier to compute the structural integrity of a building using Newton's model rather then Einstein's.
The Einstein stuff is far more advanced. But it's overkill low energy, small scale stuff. We can use the force model just fine.
It is unproven theories all the way down (Score:5, Interesting)
we can continue pretending it's not unproven theories all the way down
It is unproven theories all the way down. Nobody has ever pretended otherwise and, in fact, in quantum field theory this is actually explained by effective field theory [wikipedia.org] where you can construct a field theory that works at a given energy/length scale which is an average over the more fundamental physics happening at a higher energy/shorter distance scale. Fermi's beta decay theory is a classic example of this where his four-fermion vertex is fundamentally a low energy W-boson exchange.
The result is that the Standard Model itself is an effective field theory of some higher-energy, more fundamental theory. The problem is that there are basically an infinite number of possible higher-energy theories that would all give the SM at low energy so you can't extrapolate from low to high energy, you actually have to find a way to measure what happens at higher energies to find which model is right.
At some point the hope is that we will eventually get a fundamental understanding of everything but, until we get there, it absolutely will be unproven theories all the way down. However, that does not mean that the effective theories we have are not incredibly useful. Just look at what we achieved with Newtonian mechanics which is just a low-energy effective theory of relativitistic quantum mechanics.
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At some point the hope is that we will eventually get a fundamental understanding of everything but, until we get there, it absolutely will be unproven theories all the way down.
Even if we get to a point where our best theory explains all the things to the 20th decimal place, it will still be unproven theories all the way down -- just really, really good theories. Scientific theories can never be proven, only disproven.
The only way that changes is if we find that the universe is a simulation and manage to hack into it and read the source code. Even then we'll have a mass of unproven and unprovable theories about the nature of the machine that's executing it.
We do not Know (Score:2)
The problem is that we
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Just look at what we achieved with Newtonian mechanics which is just a low-energy effective theory of relativitistic quantum mechanics.
Yeah, when a low-quality model is THAT effective, good luck looking beyond it. :(
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The next question, then, is how to possibly confirm or refute the shells Lieu has proposed through observations.
No, the next question is what is the next unproven theory we can layer on top of this unproven theory so we can continue pretending it's not unproven theories all the way down?
Quite frankly, we should welcome any theory until we can find an answer and turn it into more than a theory. Mainly to remind people that most talking about space are not as knowledgeable as many assume. “Dark” matter and “dark” energy combined make up 95% of the known universe. Here’s what NASA has to say after many decades:
We don't know much about dark energy either, but we do know there is a lot of it.
Sure must be nice to get paid that much being labeled an “expert” and still be absolutely fucking clueless about 95% of it. Most people are
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"continue pretending it's not unproven theories"
Scientific theories can never be proven, only disproven.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Occam's Razor (Score:5, Interesting)
This solution, that there is a mechanism for, what I will term, dark gravity, seems imaginative.
It fails Occam's Razor pretty significantly though. Instead of a yet-to-be found particle with a mass we now need a yet-to-be-found particle or field that manifests a negative mass. We have never found anything like that before while we absolutely have seem particles with mass before.
This does not mean that it is wrong but if you start to entertain really wild ideas that require huge amounts of new physics then the number of possible explanations of Dark Matter start to exponentially increase because you are no longer closely tied to established physics. Given the huge number of possibilities that then open up, none of which have any evidence to support them, there is no reason to think this theory any more likely than e.g. new modified versions of MOND [wikipedia.org] or other wacky ideas. That's why we tend to use Occam's Razor because, without it, the number of possible theories to consider rapidly grows out of control.
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All ideas are good. But you also need to come up with how this fits in with the whole range of observations already made, and with experiments that prove or disprove the new model.
Otherwise it never goes beyond just being an interesting thought experiment.
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Re:Occam's Razor (Score:4, Interesting)
All ideas are good.
No they really are not e.g. the idea that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, the ideas behind homeopathy, chiropractic manipulation and other pseudo-scientific rubbish, the idea that the earth is flat, the idea that the universe was created in ~4000BC and not by the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago etc. These ideas range from the silly to the downright dangerous but not one of them can possibly be said to be "good".
While this particular idea is certainly not in the same category as those I do not see how it really adds much to the scientific discussion of DM. The fact that negative mass could hide the long range effects of extra mass is hardly surprising - we have lots of experience with this in EM and even QCD.
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All ideas are good.
No they really are not e.g. the idea that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent ...
Hm. If you kill the question before it is ever asked, how can you be certain that the vaccine is indeed safer than the disease it prevents?
ALL ideas are good. Some are less useful than others. Some ideas are good only for the contrast they provide.
Restricting ideas restricts Freedom.
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Not to be a pedant, but there ARE some vaccines whose risks outweigh the benefits
No, you could have a vaccine whose miniscule risk is greater than (risk of disease x risk of catching the disease) if the risk of catching it is small enough - which I suspect is the case for anthrax. Although in these cases I suspect it is more the waste of resources in vaccinating the entire population against a disease they are extremely unlikely to ever be exposed to. However, if the risk of the vaccine were ever greater than the disease then it would never get approved as a vaccine in the first place!
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This solution, that there is a mechanism for, what I will term, dark gravity, seems imaginative.
It fails Occam's Razor pretty significantly though. Instead of a yet-to-be found particle with a mass we now need a yet-to-be-found particle or field that manifests a negative mass. We have never found anything like that before while we absolutely have seem particles with mass before. This does not mean that it is wrong but if you start to entertain really wild ideas that require huge amounts of new physics then the number of possible explanations of Dark Matter start to exponentially increase because you are no longer closely tied to established physics.
OTOH, if the negative matter assumption generates some testable predictions about the observable structure of the currently-unexplained gravitational forces, while the dark matter assumption does not, and if those predictions are supported by observations, then there's reason to prefer the negative matter theory and its additional descriptive power. And it sounds plausible that this could be the case.
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if the negative matter assumption generates some testable predictions about the observable structure of the currently-unexplained gravitational forces, while the dark matter assumption does not
I think it is more like the opposite. DM models do explain why DM has a very different distribution of mass around galaxies - a spherical halo instead of a spiral disc. Indeed, it also explains how spiral galaxies can remain stable and can explain observed phenomena like the bullet cluster where two groups of galaxies collided and the matter collided and heated up producing X-rays while the bulk of the mass (as seen by gravitational lensing) passed through each other. I'm not sure how this negative mass mo
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I suppose one advantage for him is that there's already a whole ton of astrophysicists actively looking for existing, and ways to create, negative mass.
There are? Why? Also astrophysics is almost entirely an observational field so I highly doubt there are any looking at ways to create negative mass. In particle physics, which is a more likely field for people to look for ways ot create negative mass, I am not aware of anyone doing so unless there are some fringe theories for new physics that some grad students on the LHC are testing. Certainly there are no major efforts to look for this because there is no theoretical motivation for it.
Science does not
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Well, making matter with negative energy might well let us create wormholes, but the assumption that the path through the wormhole is shorter than the path outside is....the only reason to believe it is because we want to. Most of the "evidence" (such as it is) suggests otherwise.
And if you're using it to neutralize your mass for travel in normal space, high speeds are going to be incredibly dangerous, because the faster you are traveling, the smaller a thing you need to encounter to destroy you. Space is
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Well, making matter with negative energy might well let us create wormholes,
Only with planetary-scale masses of it. The most obvious and immediate application would be massive energy generation and easy space travel since negative mass will be gravitationally repulsive and, when you create it, you'll get insane amounts of energy for free....which is why it almost certainly does not exist.
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"dark matter is not a theory":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Yawn. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yawn. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yawn. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Failing to find it this long justifies expanding the scope of thinking, yes. But the abstract math ideas
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There are no kangaroos in my closet.
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a region of space that has high gravitational lensing, but no apparent mass.
Are there any such? I've never heard of them, but it would be incredibly interesting if they did exist.
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Yes, "Testable, exclusive predictions" just happen from the get-go for any theory? Have you ever looked at how scientific theories develop?
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They do for a physical theory, pretty much by definition. He admits up front that it's basically just mathematical speculation.
Because by proposing the math, now hundreds of other cosmologists can discover ways to confirm or disprove the model? That's how science collaborations work. You don't necessarily have one person do the whole thing.
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They get bored or demoralized with their current abstraction's lack of progress, so t
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Ahem. (Score:5, Funny)
Irony left as an exercise for the reader.
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Massless shells are load bearing? Can I put my shopping on one? I could do with some more shelving...
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I thought it was an intended (and very brilliantly executed) pun!
Kudos to the author for the impeccable writing!
Unless it's falsifiable, not interested. (Score:5, Interesting)
https://iopscience.iop.org/art... [iop.org]
The claim that relativity stops working at extreme distances IS falsifiable and is far more interesting. If it forces a change to the model of gravity, then we'll have a clearer idea of what the discrepancy actually is. It may easily turn out that such a correction greatly reduces the problem.
We can't know until we know if there really is this disrepency at extreme distance, why there's a discreprncy, and how to correct for it.
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That's fine. There are lots of important things that I don't find interesting. That doesn't make them unimportant, it only means I'd rather do something else. There's no benefit in everyone doing (or thinking) the same thing.
FWIW, I'm not interested enough in this theory to dig into it. I'm interested in it being presented (though I consider it unlikely). Perhaps it could be extended to predict what the negative energy mass would/could consist of, and we could go looking for that.
If true, it could be v
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As if gravity was merely a force ...
Hardly noteworthy speculation (Score:3)
As noted or hinted upon by others, the concepts challenged in this paper (i.e. general relativity) are very well established and tested experimentally, e.g., in the context of GPS. Conversely, the question of what negative masses or mass densities would imply is obvious, so that probably every single physics student or professor has thought about it. Still, nobody seems to have found any traces of negative masses.
Thus, the authors suggestions should be viewed as (potentially) somewhat interesting speculation or an empirical approach for fitting cosmological data.
I dont think there is anything new that the general public could/should learn from this news or the article.
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That it hasn't been found on Earth is hardly surprising. It would immediately interact with normal matter to annihilate both without the release of energy.
I still feel it unlikely, but that it hasn't been detected is hardly a good argument. I think it would be extremely difficult to create appropriate conditions to detect it. It may need a hard enough vacuum that it could only be done in space. (OTOH, how could it have been forged in the first place? Certainly not in any place dominated by normal matte
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The proposal doesn't challenge general relativity. The author proposes that galaxies are embedded in nested discontinuities in the gravitational field (the "topological defects"), which, cranking that configuration through the equations of GR, can produce observed galaxy rotation curves.
The "without mass" thing is weird. The discontinuities can be interpreted as massive singularities surrounded by anti-massive singularies (thus the "negative mass").
Dark Fluid predates this paper (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not saying I know much about the topic, but to me, this is like Occam's Razor slicing thru dark matter.
The simplicity is appealing.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/bizarre-dark-fluid-with-negative-mass-could-dominate-the-universe-what-my-research-suggests
https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.07962
Dark matter seems like the models of the solar system before Copernicus figured a few things out. Those old models bent over backwards with complexity to represent what we saw, but were, with what we now know, unnecessarily complicated.
Gravity: the most powerful force in the universe (Score:3)
Gravity Holes (Score:1)
Anything replacing dark matter will draw ridicule (Score:3)
We need to get back to first principles and the scientific method to have a proper theory of what space is. Until we define space, how can we know what it means to deform it?
I propose that space is the combination of all electric fields emanating from all charged particles, i.e. a universal electric field modeled by Maxwell's equations, specifically Gauss's law. This explains the double slit experiment as particles in motion emanate a field and are essentially de Broglie's pilot waves. Gravity, like magnetism is a special case of group behaviour. In the case of magnetism, the circular motion of charged particles create a fluctuating field modelled as transverse waves; other charged particles seek the lowest energy state by aligning themselves with the entire group in proximity. In the case of gravity, most often seen as a field emanating from particles with mass, we have quantum standing waves travelling from the particle's point like center and reflecting back from its outer boundary. In this case we have fields whose strength is akin to compression waves. The wavelength is defined by the particle's Compton wavelength, and in the case of particles with mass, e.g. the proton, fluctuates at an incredibly high frequency. The Schrödinger equation models the shape of this field that provides electrons a low energy place to inhabit. We see experimental evidence that gravitation can be produced by electrical activity as exhibited by the EmDrive and the devices made by Exodus technology and others - see https://www.earth.com/news/nas... [earth.com]. This proposal is a form of Modified Newtonian Dynamics, and is generally ruled out as possible, even though it explains why there is no need for things like dark matter and dark energy.
For me, my proposition is obvious and is supported by centuries of experimental evidence. But to the career physicist, is for some reason ridiculous.
This hypothesis .. (Score:2)
Who does this guy think he is? Some lousy patent clerk scribbling his ideas instead of rubber stamping obvious technology applications.
Like "dark money" (Score:2)
"Dark money" is the money you don't have in your checking account, that you have no idea where it went. It can easily be explained by "negative money."
Interesting (Score:2)