Re: The Dark Matter Problem has been Solved


Posted by Pasti on May 11, 2004 at 23:57
(67.69.236.226)

Re: The Dark Matter Problem has been Solved (MirrorMan)

"Yes, there are many rival theories out there."

My point,and Dan's, exactly.

"What I am assuming here is that DAMA has indeed detected dark matter. The DAMA results are in conflict with CDMS results...
Mirror Matter can explain the discrepancy (plus more)."

I agree with you.But for someone involved with the University of Amsterdam,I(personally)was expecting something different than "the mystery of dark matter has been solved".

In spite of the reference that you mentioned regarding the measurement of dark matter/mirror matter, there is no experimental evidence for the measuring of such matter, and you know exactly what I mean by that.

Instead of presenting your ideeas as possiblities,alternate possibilities until further experimental evidence is gathered,you presented them as definitive conclusions.Moreover, I hope that you do realize that if this discussion had taken part at a conference,you wouldn't havre lasted more than a couple of minutes with this approach.

And there was another point I wanted to make.

Indeed, this site is not peer reviewed,as you said.And most people post here for the fun of having a good conversation (most of the time, anyway).But this does not mean in the least that you won't happen upon one of your peers,every so often.Which, every now and then won't let fly by everything that you say.

"Of course, the DAMA results could be wrong. It could also be the case that there is some other explanation."

Or maybe, the astro people's data processing is much less rigorous than you think.Don't forget that for CDM distribution for example, people still use the linear approximation of the RWF equations,only the linear evolution of the spatial modes (very often),averages for rather large volumes, and so on and so forth.

But again, the point is that indeed there could be other explanations too.Not that the mirror matter should be discarded by a hand wave; it is just another possibility among many other, for the time being at least.And it is will take sometime until these things will be sorted out, I am sure that you are aware of that.

"John Moffat, doesn't he work on variable c theories? "

Yep, that is what he's been working on for sometime now.

"I've never understood how a dimensional constant can be said to be 'changing'. Michael Duff made this point some time ago. Dimensional constants exist because we use incompatible units. They don't have any fundamental significance."

Well,Mike's point is one point of view.But you should keep an open mind.Hubble's constant was a constant in the beginning, but now, for inflationary models it is a time dependent expansion factor.Right?

And all GR equations are local, with the inherent problems of finding global solutions.So solutions with varying c on various patches are not something unexpected, they are just more complicated.

Moreover,there is no way you can postulate (no observational evidence) the globality of what you call the constants of nature.And the constants of nature have also an additional role:they also describe magnitudes, not only mismatches of units.This thing with the units is a viewpoint characteristic to theorists (unfortunately), and in my oppinion, is a rather restricted view of the issue.Again, the Hubble constant is a good example.

If you think why the speed of light has become a universal constant,you automatically have to go to Einstein's postulates of special relativity, or GR in this context.Einstein postulated a limit speed because he needed finitely fast propagating (gravitational)interactions,right?In a certain sense, there is no way you can postulate (in the sense of evidence, that is) the universality/globality of this limit,and if you do, there is no way to assert if this is globally the max limit.It is possible that in some regions of the spacetime the limit is lower.There is nothing that prevents these donstants to actually be dynamical variables.The math,and the ensuing philosophical issues just become more complicated.



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