Dark matter a dying theory?

Look, god knows what those scientists are really thinking. My problem with science writers is that they often don't know the details of what they are writing about.The term dark matter refers to anything that exerts a gravitation force on the visible galaxy that's causing it to behavior more like a solid object than mostly empty space.Looking for dark matter is like looking for a murderer. Suppose we find a woman stabbed to death. Whoever that killed her we will cal Mr. X. We got suspects A and B. Oops, neither A nor B turned out to be elsewhere when the woman was murdered.To say that just because they can't find what dark matter is in a few tries then they doubt it exists is like saying Mr. X doesn't exist because A and B didn't turn out to be the murderer.We know with absolute certainty that the galaxy is behaving like there are more mass in it than what we can see. It doesn't matter what dark matter is made of. It could be god for all I care. Nonetheless, it is there.Edit.I had a professor that had a hunch dark matter is made of an entirely different matter than then what we would call normal matter. And when I say different, I mean even the spins are different or there's no spin at all and it has no eletromagnetic charge it is simply impossible for us to detect it using conventional means.Added by edit.I just got reminded of the movie Analyze That. One of the witnesses testifying against the mob boss "committed suicide by stabbing himself 4 times in the back."Look, if we know a woman was stabbed to death for times in the back, are we going to continue looking for Mr. X or are we going to assume a murderer involved is a dying theory because suspects A and B were found to be not it?Edited by Taz, : No reason given.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Are you kidding me? Is this a joke? We haven't even sent a man to the nearest planet and you want us to give up already?Again, you seem to be under the impression that "dark matter" refers to something specific. I assure, it is not. It is like saying "Mr. X murdered the woman." Mr. X refers to anyone who killed the woman. Mr. X is a place holder just like dark matter is a place holder. You don't understand. Everything we know of has an electromagnetic charge. Why the hell do you think we don't fall right through the earth surface and toward the center? All "normal" matter interact with electromagnetic force. That's why solid objects don't go through each other.Edit.If dark matter in fact turns out to be something that don't interact with electromagnetic force, then the only way to obtain a sample is by manipulating gravity. Unfortunately, for the moment it is beyond our capability.Added by edit again.Actually, technically speaking whatever dark matter is is the normal matter of the universe, since it makes up most of the total matter in the universe.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Ok, I'll take that.I just have a problem with the OP suggesting that dark matter doesn't exist because of a failed attempt at finding it. Again, this is like saying there was no murderer after finding out suspects A and B both had an alibi even though a woman was stabbed to death 4 times in the back.

Tesla, no offense, but I am seeing a pattern in your way of thinking. You seem to think that approximation == wild guess. When I say this way of thinking, I'm not just referring to your misconception of approximation. You tend to think of things in a vacuum, meaning you use a small piece of evidence to support your assertion while ignoring the all the other evidence that contradict your assertion.Suppose someone asks me how old my nephew is. Off the top of my head, I have no idea his exact age. But I do know that he is about 10 or so. So, I say about 10. It's an approximation. If he turns out to be 11 or 9, my answer would still be correct. If, for example, he is 11 and I say "about 24", then my answer would be a wild guess because it is no where near the correct age.Going back to the galaxy, we can approximate the mass of the stars and with enough calculations the approximate mass of the galaxy by observing the movements and behavior. Now, for you to understand how this is done, I have to point to physics 101 that every college student should have learned. Without going into details, we can calculate the mass of Jupiter's moons by measuring the relative distance between the moon and the planet and orbital period. universal gravitation equation!So, no, approximation does not equal wild guess. We actually have a mathematical and scientific basis for those approximations.In the other thread, you did exactly the same thing as you're doing here. You made a claim that creationist research should be treated equally to scientific research. I had to point out to you that your statement is made in a vacuum because you never considered the results! Scientific research produce real world results while creationist research have not made a single advancement in our understanding of nature.I'm just pointing this out as constructive criticism. You can take it for what it's worth or you can make a knee jerk reaction. I don't really care. It just bothers me to see you having this attitude.Added by edit.I say as a researcher in material science. What we do isn't just theoretical bullshit. We actually produce real world results and applications for our private funders. Frankly, I'm appalled at how creationists can continue to operate in our capitalist system. They have not produced a single real world result. And yet they continue to get fundings. Boggles the mind.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

You still don't understand the meaning behind the term "dark matter". It's a place holder for what we don't know. It doesn't refer to any specific thing.That said, you are incorrect. Dark matter itself has been verified to exist because we know a large chunk of the universe is missing. Whatever the hell that's making the galaxies behave the way they behave we call "dark matter". It doesn't matter what "dark matter" turns out to be. For all we know, it could be the 5th dimension or the pink unicorn or whatever.You seem to be having trouble understand the concept of "I don't know" here.Added by edit.So, earlier today I attended my friend's wife's Ph.D. dissertation for organic chemistry. It was quite a humbling experience, because after the first 5 minutes everything just shot 2 miles over my head. I was really trying to keep up with what the hell she was talking about. But damn! I was scratching my head the whole way through. Her husband, my friend, also a material science engineer, reassured me that he also had no idea what the hell she was talking about.The point is astrophysicists have good reasons to postulate the existence of dark matter. Fritz Szwicky (sp?) was a really really smart guy. Even if us lowly mortals don't understand all the details, it doesn't negate the fact that there are very very good reasons to believe the existence of something that's making up most of the mass of the universe that, for the moment, we can't detect.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.Edited by Taz, : changed opinion to experience... must have been a result from that stroke...

Again, you are showing your lack of understanding of the nature of science.No theory is ever "true". In fact, the first lesson in any high school science class is that a scientific theory can never be proven. What a scientific theory does is give us the most accurate description of how nature works based on our best understanding of the data and results. You know what scientists do all the time? They try to disproven their theories. If a theory cannot stand up to scrutiny, then it might as well be useless. Good god, man. Not only do you have a total lack of understanding of how science works, you are very persistent at keeping your misconceptions.No single research is ever enough to verify anything. After the initial experiments and publication, other research groups will try to reproduce the results. After the results are thoroughly reproduced over and over, people will begin to take different approaches to producing the same results. People will try to take a look at the problem from different angles. Some people will continue to try to disprove it outright.For example, my lab is working on a non-corrosive material that has a much higher yield strength than conventional steel. There have been some work done with this material by the army in armor technology. But I can confidently say that we are the first to work on applying the material to construction projects. The material has a much higher yield strength than steel, it is non-corrosive, doesn't rust, form a much higher bond strength with concrete (about twice as much as conventional steel), weighs about a quarter that of steel, and has a much higher elasticity than steel. What's more, it is as abundant as rocks if you know where to look, meaning the economic potential is unimaginable considering how expensive steel is. What's more, it lasts about 4 times longer than steel, thus reducing the maintanence cost by a bundle. Of course, if you're a non-engineer you will never understand the significance of everything I outlined above.For now, the potential is overwhelming. Footing design would require a lot less reinforcement. Docks wouldn't have to be constantly maintained unlike steel which rust like a mofo in semi-marine environment. Towers wouldn't collapse so soon because of high temperature (ahem 911) because the material we're working on could resist temperature deformation up to twice that of steel.After our tests and publication, other labs will try to produce the same results. It will be years, or decades, before there are enough confirmation for mainstream projects.Look at fiber steel. Conventional bridges wouldn't exist without it, not to mention our power grid. And it took us almost 30 years to start using fiber steel from the time it was first brought up.Another example is pervious concrete. I predict it will be another 20-30 years before mainstream society will adopt it.You really have no idea the standards that are involved. Why not ask our resident physicists, biologists, chemists, etc. for their standards? I'm only able to give you a perspective from one branch of science. No, they're not. Name a modern invention, discovery, or anything at all that had resulted from creationist research. I'm not asking for scientific discoveries made by religious people. I'm asking for real genuine discoveries or inventions that were resulted from creationist research. I've been looking for years and I sure as hell never found any.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Well, I managed to read your post before you edited it. Unfortunately, I was temporarily suspended, so I couldn't respond. Your post made my eyes roll so far back that they got stuck for a few seconds...Here is what you said from the other post.

quote:

---

Science is the tool to understanding the universe we are in. I see all the time how adamant people are about general theories being true because educated people have done some tests and confirmed it.

---

The way I interpret this is that you seem to imply there is something wrong with people being adamant about the theories because "educated people" have done some tests.Here's why I responded the way I did. Nowadays, science encompasses just about everything in our collective library of knowledge. And as such, it is impossible for anyone person or group of persons to study everything. The last person who tried this was Leonardo Da Vinci, and this was back when science was in its infancy.I sure as hell don't know jack poop about geology. And I am sure that most people out there don't even know how to begin to design a basic steel reinforced concrete beam. We all rely on the work of countless others to forward our collective knowledge.For example, in our lab we have a machine that could put a million pounds of force on an object. I have no idea how the machine came to be or how the internal workings are set up. All I know is that we input a few instructions in the computer and the thing starts crushing our test beams and record the data.We rely on the work of others in order to further our own work. I don't have to understand the mechanics of the machine in order to use it. And when something goes wrong, we call the mechanics to come out and fix it for us. You could say I trust those who designed and built the machine enough to stand next to it and use it on a regular basis.This goes with other fields as well. It is not a bad thing to put our trusts in people who know what they are doing in their own fields. I'm not saying we should put our trust in any single person or group of persons. But the tentative results are pretty darn trustworthy. And no one will deny there are always room for improvement.There is, however, something wrong with us putting our trust in people who try to speak authoratively on subjects outside their expertise. An example would be a southern baptist preacher trying to disprove biological evolution by using a bunch of strawman arguments.The other problem I have with your attitude is that you make it sound like in science all it takes is some dumbass making some dumbass assertion and bam! we have a scientific theory. In order for something to become generally and tentatively accepted in the scientific community, it has to have been through hell and back. I still get the feeling you don't know just how rigorous the whole process is.And those who dare try to falsify their data will very quickly be found out. Why? Because if nobody else could reproduce the results then the fakers are exposed. Those guys who claimed to have invented cold fusion couldn't even sell used cars after they were exposed. Not a single other person in the world could reproduce their supposed results. Go figure...Going back to the topic of this thread, physicists have a very good reason to propose the existence of dark matter. Fritz Swicky, I think, was the first to make the argument. That was back in the 20s and the reasons for the existence of dark matter have not been disproven. So, you can imagine how sure they are that dark matter exists.

Just wondering. How come creationists don't try to make the argument that god is the dark matter we've been looking for or that the spiritual universe is the dark matter and dark energy we've been looking for?