13 Things That Don't Make Sense

[tostones]

Peace,

Hope all are well. I recently read an interesting article at New Scientist. I'm sure many are aware of science's current limited understanding of things such as dark matter, cosmic rays, tetraneutrons etc.. but I thought I would post the link for those interested.

www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600

PEACE

[SAMURAI36]

Wow, that's awesome.....Especially this part:

5 Dark matter
TAKE our best understanding of gravity, apply it to the way galaxies spin, and you'll quickly see the problem: the galaxies should be falling apart. Galactic matter orbits around a central point because its mutual gravitational attraction creates centripetal forces. But there is not enough mass in the galaxies to produce the observed spin.

Vera Rubin, an astronomer working at the Carnegie Institution's department of terrestrial magnetism in Washington DC, spotted this anomaly in the late 1970s. The best response from physicists was to suggest there is more stuff out there than we can see. The trouble was, nobody could explain what this "dark matter" was.

And they still can't. Although researchers have made many suggestions about what kind of particles might make up dark matter, there is no consensus. It's an embarrassing hole in our understanding. Astronomical observations suggest that dark matter must make up about 90 per cent of the mass in the universe, yet we are astonishingly ignorant what that 90 per cent is.

Maybe we can't work out what dark matter is because it doesn't actually exist. That's certainly the way Rubin would like it to turn out. "If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton's laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances," she says. "That's more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle."

And this part:

9 Dark energy
IT IS one of the most famous, and most embarrassing, problems in physics. In 1998, astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding at ever faster speeds. It's an effect still searching for a cause - until then, everyone thought the universe's expansion was slowing down after the big bang. "Theorists are still floundering around, looking for a sensible explanation," says cosmologist Katherine Freese of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "We're all hoping that upcoming observations of supernovae, of clusters of galaxies and so on will give us more clues."

One suggestion is that some property of empty space is responsible - cosmologists call it dark energy. But all attempts to pin it down have fallen woefully short. It's also possible that Einstein's theory of general relativity may need to be tweaked when applied to the very largest scales of the universe. "The field is still wide open," Freese says.

Nearly flip sides of the same coin--perhaps therein lies the problem?

PEACE

[tostones]

Peace SAMURAI7ASSASSIN

Your right in that it appears to be two different sides of the same coin (what pulls apart and what sticks together). Both ideas sprung from observed phenomena that don't fit current understanding, while remaining nearly impossible to observe (or even explain). I've read it described as two dark components of energy density in the universe, the smooth component called dark energy, and a fluid of nonrelativistic weakly interacting particles called dark matter. Also, I've seen some pretty bizzare solutions proposed, seems scientists are pretty lost. Regardless, further understanding (even it turns out to be an illusion) will have very far-reaching effects.

PEACE