Spirits and other incorporial things

CrashNo offense taken."Youko" is a japanese fox spirit as opposed to "Yoko" as in John Lennon's wifeMy avatar is actually a color-modified version of Kurama from Yuyu Hakusho (anime and manga)Must admit that he does look a bit feminine as do many such anime males.anyway back to the point here. I would like to paraphrase this as "we detect something quite plainly from its demonstrable gravitational effect on the galaxy"Dark matter is a postulation to explain that effect. It may or may not be the actual reason, depending on how loose your definition of dark matter actually is. Didn't say it did have gravity, only that it could (if it indeed existed) have a similar effect on matter as gravity does.PY

Dormamu Yes it would wouldn't it? That is my entire point. Very very few people really understand it and yet everybody jumps on the band wagon to defend it whenever anybody suggests that any part of it may be incorrect.I'm not at all sure if this website is even the place to be debating relativity though. besides which, I will be out of my depth when it comes to the pure mathematical definition of the system. I am an Analytical Chemist, not a mathmatician. I just like to question everything that I don't understand until I do understand it instead of taking it on "faith" I didn't actually suggest that it would. DM is just an example of something else which has not been proved to exist and yet is blindly accepted. There are other possible explanations for its effects just as there are other possible explanations for ghosts and apparitions etc. other than "you are nuts and imagining stuff!" Completely agreed. There very probably is no connection at all. I just used DM (which incidentally was brought up by another poster initially) as an analogy.PY

Ifen I don't understand all the math either but I can think of other possible ways to explain Einstein's observations. (And these ways are not anything to do with spooks or unknown forces.) I will keep an open mind until all the predictions made by general relativity are proven to be accurate. Some are really not yet testable. we can't yet travel at any speed that allows us to fully test it all. Let's wait and see eh?. Again, exactly the expected response. Anybody who goes even slightly against accepted wisdom to even suggest something new, is treated with ridicule. Very few people (myself included) fully understand relativity or any number of branches of science. However, huge amounts of people accept it at face value instead of delving into it to attempt to fully understand it all.
That is "faith" isn't it?You are also attempting to tie me to a "beleif" system that biases my opinions. You couldn't be further from the truth. I don't "beleive" anything, to my knowledge. Neither do I "know" anything. I am searching for answers to "everything" and the further my search goes the less I trust the "answers" that I get. I am probably more skeptical than most in this respect.Why should my unwillingness to just "accept" other people's postulations make my own observations any less reliable? I want to find out for myself.PYPY

Primarily the ones that contradict parts of QM in extreme cases. We know that one of the two needs to be modified to fit all the eveidence under all conditions.I know most of it has been tested.PY

OK I can buy that. Possibly I do have a slight bias in wanting to be able to beleive that there is something more out there. I recognize that in myself and attempt to make allowances. Any research into either view of the subject is sure to help. Thanks for the reference.PY

Tell me about it! This has always been my problem too. We need to learn more before we can postulate plausible explanations but the feild appears to be so full of fakes and charlatans that no true scientist will take it seriously enough to really look into it. Add to that the fact that stuff conveniently doesn't work under laboratory conditions and what are we left with? Nothing!PY

Right then. Looks like I had better try to overcome my mathematical issues and really try to learn this stuff. See you over there when I am ready.PY

AdminPhatI have to agree with Ifen here. The thread as it is has absolutely nothing to do with Angels or Demons. It is more to do with the discussion of possible explanation for observed (or imagined) phenomena.
Further, it is attempting to find a way that such things can be rationalized through science.
I don't think this would be considered "on-topic" in a thread dedicated to Angels and Demons which are clearly based in religion and not science.PY

Hey Dormamu.You need to post the reference to my initial message about relativity in your new proposed thread. Otherwise it might not get accepted!See you there.PY

No I haven't read that one.It has actually been quite a while since I really looked into this stuff much. This thread has rekindled my interest. What do you mean they were fake? Those fairys were obviously real. Anyone can see that!
Just kidding Does kind of make you wonder at his credulity though doesn't it. I will try to find it at the local library.Interesting thought about comas. I wonder what Lazerus would have thought of that? PY

Glad we got that cleared up then.We don't really have a definition of dark matter then, other than to say that is is the name that will be given to the something that is causing the gravity effects that have been observed, if and when we actually find it. Sounds like a bit of a cop out really. Whatever we find, there's your dark matter!That is more or less what I have said all along. Lots of stuff could possibly emulate gravity I should think. How about a bunch of microscopic aliens with really big tractor beams?
How about effects bleading over from alternate universes.I have never seen these things of course but I can infer their existence from the observed effects. Just like dark matter really.But then by your own definition of dark matter, if we were to discover that it really is a bunch of microscopic (even sub atomic) aliens with big tractor beams, then they would be defined as "dark matter" wouldn't they?The only "silly" thing is to fixate on one theoetical answer to the exclusion of all others.PY

Why keep coming back to gravity?
I am not attempting to refute that effects have been observed which are (only) explanable by the presence of something which has apparent gravity.You are still left with an entirely theoretical substance which we choose to call "dark matter"All you can truly say about the stuff with absolute certainty is that something is there which has an effect on its surroundings, which appears to be gravity. That is a pretty vague description. Basicly something is there but we can't see it.
Also if it makes up the majority of the Galaxy's mass then would it be safe to assume that there has to be at least some of it right here on Earth? (incidentally that is not rhetorical. I would actually like to know the currently held view on this)If the answer to that question is yes then why can't we detect it, find it, pick it up etc. If no then how come it isn't in this particular part of the Galaxy.Also the term "non-luminous matter" implies some kind of unknown form of matter which (to my knowledge) nobody has ever even proposed a structure for.The whole argument boils down to this.
There is something there. It must be astronomically huge. We can't directly observe it but we infer its existence by observed phenomena which can only be explained by its presense.And I still think this is off topic since it has never been seriously suggested that ghosts and spirits (or the Angels that you keep coming up with) have any relationship to dark matter.PY

JarObviously our definitions must differ slightly. What you describe is exactly the same as I have been trying to describe myself. It would seem that we both have the same definition of dark matter and I don't think that has ever been the issue here.The argument that Crash keeps dragging me back into would appear to be in the definition of the word "theoretical".
At least you meet me half way with the statement In my definition, you can't see it. You can't pick it up, you can't entirely define its nature or structure. Ergo it is theoretical.
If your definition of "theoretical" allows for degrees of theoreticalness (another presumably non-existant word) then go for it.
I just don't see it that way.The Oxford English dictionary has this definition of the term. I would say that dark matter most certainly fits into number 2 in this case.This discussion isn't getting us anywhere is it?PY

I don't dispute that point and never have.
The original point of this thread was to attempt to shed some light on the possible nature of these (not even theoretical) "ghoulies and ghosties and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night"Nobody has been able to.No problem.I didn't expect them to either.What the heck has dark matter got to do with it?Please don't bring up my post when I playfully compared the two. They aren't really analogs. I know that already! Dark matter has evidence. It is a bonafide theory. Its effects on other stuff can be observed and tested. We are sure that something is out there.SO WHAT?All this is completely besides the point as I have never seriously claimed that the two are related in any way so why are we discussing the subject of dark matter at all in a thread about the nature of spirits?PYThis message has been edited by PurpleYouko, 12-08-2004 12:43 PM

CrashFYI. DM was first mentioned by LAM in post 17.PY