ICANT writes:
Percy you have constantly reminded me to study before putting my fingers into gear. So as a reason for my statement on dark matter holding the universe together I present the following 4 pieces of evidence. If they are wrong please correct.
Before I take a quick look at these, let me ask you a question. Did you understand the responses to your previous "pieces of evidence?" And your "pieces of evidence" before that? And the ones before that? And those before them?
In other words, what is the point of anyone responding to your "pieces of evidence" if instead of spending the time to understand the responses you just go off and find more "pieces of evidence" that just raise pretty much the same issues?
By "study and learn" we don't mean go off and find more excerpts that you don't understand. We mean work to understand the ones you've already provided. All you're doing is lengthening the list of extremely similar excerpts about things you don't understand.
You're quoting an article from the University of Michigan school newspaper from May of 1995. That issue also included the news that Gary Moeller had resigned as head football coach as well as advice about what to do in the event of a tornado.
You should be seeking recent, well informed technical articles. This is none of these. Don't cast your net too far. There are probably billions of words on the Internet about the Big Bang. Every kind of weird belief is represented out there somewhere, and if you're not discriminating you're just going to waste a lot of time. Stick with mainstream technical journals, magazines and websites, and don't go too far back in time.
I have no idea why this article says that dark matter could be "the glue that holds the universe together." It was an obviously very speculative hypothesis 13 years ago, and it just as obviously hasn't panned out, not in the form of supporting evidence, anyway.
But what would it mean if it turned out that dark matter
*is* the "glue that holds the universe together?" Are you thinking that such a discovery would somehow invalidate the evidence that supports current theories of cosmological origins?
Anyway, the bottom line is that there is very little we understand with any degree of confidence about dark matter at the current time. We know it exists because we can see the effect its mass has upon the structure of galaxies, but beyond that we know very little.
Dark Matter - Celestial Objects on Sea and Sky
The Case for Dark Matter
The evidence for dark matter lies with gravity. Gravity is the force or "glue" that holds the universe together. Everything in the universe is mutually attracted to everything else.
In this case the article's author obviously does not mean to imply that gravity holds the universe together. He's merely stating that gravity is the attractive force within the universe.
Like I said before, there are literally billions of words about cosmology on the Internet. Not everyone is going to express themselves perfectly clearly every time. If you're going to scour the Internet looking for sentences here and there that reinforce your misinterpretations, you will have no trouble finding them. But finding people who actually have detailed and accurate knowledge of cosmology has got to be a rare event, but you're for the most part rejecting this blessing.
Just a moment...
This question arises from years of progressively stranger observations. In the 1960s, astronomers discovered that galaxies spun around too fast for the collective pull of the stars' gravity to keep them from flying apart. Something unseen appears to be keeping the stars from flinging themselves away from the center: unilluminated matter that exerts extra gravitational force. This is dark matter.
The above appears wholly accurate.
I don't know how you get this:
Percy writes:
This contains the most fundamental misunderstanding of all. The Big Bang isn't science because it's what scientists want to believe.
From this:
ICANT writes:
Just because I don't believe like you do does not mean that I do not understand what has been discussed...
You said, "I don't believe like you do." For scientists it isn't a matter of belief but of what the evidence and replicated experiments/observations indicate. Reaching conclusions from evidence is one thing, believing something without being able to offer any evidence is another.
Would you please explain the difference in what you see from the Big Bang point of view and what I see from a Genesis 1:1 point of view.
Now you're missing the entire point of this website.
No one's trying to talk you out of your religious beliefs. No one is lobbying for equal time before your congregation to preach the Big Bang, an ancient earth, and evolution. If you want to believe Genesis is how it happened, that's fine by all of us here.
Problems only arise when creationists claim their religious beliefs are actually scientifically valid principles that should be taught in public school science classrooms, but when lobbying school boards they can't admit that the principles they advocate are religious in nature, so they drop references to God and Bible in such venues.
So if you want to believe that Genesis is how it happened, fine, no argument from me. And I have absolutely no worries about creationists who go to schools boards and argue that Genesis is what should be taught in science class about cosmological origins, because not a school board in the country would ever think they could get away with such a blatant violation of the First Amendment, no matter how sympathetic they might be to such a proposal.
EvC Forum exists to examine creationisms claims to be legitimate science. Once you start citing Genesis you've lost that debate outright, so go ahead and cite Genesis all you like. But not here in the science forums, okay?
--Percy
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