Will we ever find dark matter and dark energy?

[Obvious Leo]

It has been reported that even Mr. Hubble preferred to call the red shift and the resulting constant "apparent" but by simply calling it actual then a whole swarm of theorists were able to make a living from it.

Indeed. Mathematical modelling keeps many snouts securely embedded in the public trough, but we should occasionally reflect on Einstein's salutary warning.

"It is the theory which decides what the observer will observe"... Albert Einstein is discussion with Werner Heisenberg (1925)

What Einstein meant by this arresting statement was this. If we design our models to specifically predict what the observer will observe we can claim only a Pyrrhic victory when the observer duly goes ahead and observes it.

Although Immanuel Kant observed the honourable German tradition of ensuring that his philosophy was unreadable he was a pretty smart bloke all the same. This is what Manny had to say on the matter. It wouldn't win any literary prizes but it goes to the heart of the problem.

“(...) Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognising it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object”. (Kant, 1801. The Jasche Logic, in Lectures on Logic. Translated and edited by J Michael Young ( Cambridge University Press))

We all know that physicists are far too clever to piss around reading philosophy books, so all they'd know of Kant is how to spell his name (if that!), but you'd reckon they might be able to pay closer attention to their own beatified high priest.

Regards Leo

-- Updated October 20th, 2014, 9:27 am to add the following --

A little back story on the cosmological constant for your amusement, M, and one which might also appeal to DarwinX.

Einstein first invented this constant to account for the fact that the universe wasn't expanding, as his own GR theory predicted. When Hubble discovered that in fact the cosmos was "apparently" expanding Einstein chucked his constant out, calling it the biggest blunder he ever made in his physics career ( It wasn't. He made plenty of much bigger ones but that's a whole new story.) However things went from bad to worse for Albert because it was later discovered that this apparent expansion was accelerating, which meant they had to drag his cosmological constant back out of the dusty attic and shove it back into their equations. The very same constant can therefore be used to successfully explain why the universe is expanding as well as why it's not.

Once again a pithy quote from the great man itself. " You can use mathematics to prove anything"... Albert Einstein (1915)

You've gotta love mathematics, mate.

Regards Leo

[DarwinX]

The concept of infinity explains where dark matter is hiding. As I have stated many times before - infinity extends forever outward and forever inward. Its the forever inwards aspect of infinity that constantly gets overlooked by scientists merely because you can't see it or directly detect it using instrumentation, but we know that it must be there because of gravity, magnetism and electricity. Matter is merely an absence of dark matter. Matter is thus a negative emptiness which defines dark matter caused by the twisting of the aether matrix in the spiral galaxy.

[Frank Aiello]

Dark matter is a theoretical inference based upon the flatness of rotation curves. There must be a "missing mass" that explains why the rotational velocity of stars along the length of a galaxy remain constant. There is a certain amount of "evidence" (theoretical models) that seem to support dark matter such as gravitational lensing. Once again, it's a theoretical prediction, but it's a decent one based upon the data (i.e. the flatness of galactic rotation curves), and those who dispute it typically do so without considering the data carefully, in my view.

[Mechsmith]

Frank, In the first place just a look at a presumably mature galaxy (spiral) shows that simply conservation of motion should account for the shape. This is a simple phenomenon which also accounts for the shape of our solar system and the swirling of whirlpools. A mature galaxy is just an agglomeration of matter that is swirling down a black hole. It is basically seen as two dimensional just due to collisions between the little bits that tends to ensure that all the little bits are travelling on the same plane.

The rotational velocity of the stars is determined by where they are located with respect to the black hole or to put it more plainly it's where they are in relation to the center of mass of the galaxy. (Lawyer speak in case a black hole doesn't show up).

Lets build a galaxy. First we will get a bunch of little bits and use gravity to suck them into a pile. When the pile gets big enough and the little bits dis associate gravity will shut off and the pile will expand at a pretty good clip. Once the pile loosens up a bit gravity comes back up and the mess does it again. (we observe this stage as quasars, not necessarily all of them) Eventually things slow down and we begin to see the classic spiral shape.

Since this will happen eventually I don't think that we need dark matter. There may well be some but unless we can correct the red shift for mass and time I wouldn't spend much time looking for it. Happy Thoughts, M

[Jerrygg38]

It is difficult to see and measure dark matter and dark energy because there is a limit to energy level or mass that we can pick up. It is commonly conceived that the universe is composed of quarks and other sub particles. Yet what are they composed of? In my theory of the universe my smallest energy levels are dot-waves. Thus each sub particle consists of huge numbers of dot waves. Therefore no matter what theory is used, there are entities of waves or dot-waves or photons all over the universe in such small energy levels that they can never be measured. All we can do is to produce theories of such things but we can never measure them.

[Raymond]

It's said about 68% of our universe is dark energy and about 27% is dark matter (source: http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/). It kind of makes you think. If so much of the universe is made up of this stuff, then why is it so hard to locate? It's similar to math where it's known that the vast majority of the real numbers is made up of nonalgebraic numbers except here some of these numbers have been identified (e.g. e and π). Maybe the scientists need more time to locate this stuff or maybe it'll never be located.

What say you to this? Just how dark is dark energy and dark matter?

PhilX

Yes. Dark matter is primordial black holes. Dark energy the negative curvature of the 5D substrate spacetime on which we expand.