Will we ever find dark matter and dark energy?

[Theophane]

Then Occam would take a dim view of DM/DE, which is a hypothesis of the unverifiable if I am not mistaken. Similar in its way to Bigfoot, mermaids, and vampires.

[Simply Wee]

We know that it brings all things to matter, but it is a ghost, an almighty ghost, one that feeds us all things. Through its effects we can work it out, before there was any shape or form there was dark matter. 14 billion years later the material universe resembles what once was this ghost. I will hazard a guess, dark matter is the Holy Ghost. It is the one true sacred and unseen force from which all things conected to it are divided between sacred and profane by us. This is what we call totemism which believed by primitive man gave way to religion, which in turn conected it to the fathers or father of mankind or sky daddies and their ambassadors. For they loved the world so much, they give it their only begotten son....mankind. When we know what dreams are made of, then so shall this be. I guess.

[Jklint]

Also, can gravity be qualified as a first principle if we don't yet conclusively know what specifically causes it in the first place?

I regard time and gravity as simply two different expressions of the same thing, namely the rate of change, and this defines gravity as the cosmic metronome. This was clearly established in General Relativity but its significance was overlooked, because by this time Special Relativity had been accepted as canonical doctrine and SR had effectively spatialised time out of existence by representing it as a spatial dimension. The resultant attempt to formulate gravity as a spatial construct has been woefully unsuccessful and thus physics has lumbered itself for a century with models which make no sense. If they're looking for a "cause" for gravity then they can look forward to another century of pedalling on the hamster wheel because this is simply cock-headed thinking. Although this is somewhat of an oversimplification it makes better sense to think of gravity as the causer rather than the causee.

According to modern Cosmology it is GR much more than SR which has long been in control of gravity...if one can put it that way. Both GR & SR exist as valid "within"...and please note within their own levels or domains. Reality has layers. It's not all or nothing and never has been. Newton's Laws are also correct within non relativistic speeds. Both SR & GR are also valid within their criteria but are likely to prove incorrect at the more fundamental layers below it.

The quest is now as I understand it what gravity itself is derivative of. It must derive from something. It doesn't just come into being simultaneous with time or whatever.

I thing you're mostly right in that gravity is the "causer" instead of the "causee" of that which we can currently acknowledge of even speculate upon. But without attempting to understand the cause of gravity itself, which would include a host of revelations as a side effect to that discovery, the quest to go further would stalemate and that seemingly is not a barrier or strategy that particle physicists or cosmologists are willing to acknowledge or accept.

It all depends on how far we can penetrate to the point of origin and discover the beginning, that point of incipience for absolutely everything. You've heard of Zeno's Paradox. This is the Cosmic version of it getting ever closer but never truly arriving. But who knows!

[Spiral Out]

Reality has layers.

What are these "layers" and what separates them as "layers"?

Both GR & SR exist as valid "within"...and please note within their own levels or domains. […] Both SR & GR are also valid within their criteria

Yeah, all things are valid within their own criteria. So what?

but are likely to prove incorrect at the more fundamental layers below it.

Then they (SR & GR) are fundamentally not valid. Again, what are these "layers"?

It all depends on how far we can penetrate to the point of origin and discover the beginning, that point of incipience for absolutely everything.

Discovery is one thing, being able to recognize and understand what has been discovered is quite another. It's not really a discovery if it cannot be used to further the basic understanding of the true nature of our common environment. Without the complete picture (GUT), the pieces (GR & SR) cannot be claimed to be accurate.

[Obvious Leo]

Then Occam would take a dim view of DM/DE, which is a hypothesis of the unverifiable if I am not mistaken. Similar in its way to Bigfoot, mermaids, and vampires.

Not quite analogous because in principle the existence of dark matter is verifiable. It yields testable predictions which are already the subject of experiment, so in that sense dark matter is a genuine scientific hypothesis. The same cannot be said for dark energy which at this stage is nothing more than the physicist's version of the "god of the gaps". My gut feeling is that dark matter will also prove to be a "god of the gaps" hypothesis, but my gut feelings have nothing to do with science so we'll have to wait till the jury returns with a verdict

According to modern Cosmology it is GR much more than SR which has long been in control of gravity...if one can put it that way. Both GR & SR exist as valid "within"...and please note within their own levels or domains. Reality has layers. It's not all or nothing and never has been. Newton's Laws are also correct within non relativistic speeds. Both SR & GR are also valid within their criteria but are likely to prove incorrect at the more fundamental layers below it.

Well put.

The quest is now as I understand it what gravity itself is derivative of. It must derive from something. It doesn't just come into being simultaneous with time or whatever.

GR says otherwise. GR says clearly that time and gravity bear an inverse logarithmic relationship with each other which obtains all the way down to the quantum level, which means they are simply two different expressions of the same thing, exactly as SR shows that matter and energy are two different expressions of the same thing. For conceptual convenience we can say that one derives from the other but this Cartesian reductionism is entirely arbitrary.

But without attempting to understand the cause of gravity itself, which would include a host of revelations as a side effect to that discovery, the quest to go further would stalemate and that seemingly is not a barrier or strategy that particle physicists or cosmologists are willing to acknowledge or accept.

Particle physicists and cosmologists are just geeks that are good at sums, not uber-menschen come to explain reality to us. ( Despite what they might themselves choose to believe.) The Kuhnian paradigm shift you allude to is not a problem of physics but a problem of metaphysics, which most physicists know almost nothing of. They are further hampered by the constraints of academia and thus have a long history of treating contrarians like lepers, which is antithetical to the scientific method. Einstein would never have got either of his major papers published in the modern era because physics has abandoned the scientific method and supplanted it with model-building, otherwise known as "what works" or "shut up and calculate". This makes physics extremely vulnerable to confirmation bias and effectively renders a paradigm shift impossible.

I think getting closer but never quite arriving is a good enough definition of the quest for truth.

Regards Leo

-- Updated July 17th, 2014, 8:02 pm to add the following --

Without the complete picture (GUT), the pieces (GR & SR) cannot be claimed to be accurate.

Exactly so, and with the complete picture GR, SR and QM will all be shown to be false because all three are incompatible with each other. They are each describing a different piece of the puzzle without adequate reference to the other.

Regards Leo

[Jklint]

The quest is now as I understand it what gravity itself is derivative of. It must derive from something. It doesn't just come into being simultaneous with time or whatever.

GR says otherwise. GR says clearly that time and gravity bear an inverse logarithmic relationship with each other which obtains all the way down to the quantum level, which means they are simply two different expressions of the same thing, exactly as SR shows that matter and energy are two different expressions of the same thing. For conceptual convenience we can say that one derives from the other but this Cartesian reductionism is entirely arbitrary.

At this time from what I gather even GR is usually qualified as true within limits only which is basically the point I was trying to make. At the Quantum Gravity level it seems to get more diluted with spacetime foam. In any event, it will clearly not be the last word on the subject.

Particle physicists and cosmologists are just geeks that are good at sums, not uber-menschen come to explain reality to us. ( Despite what they might themselves choose to believe.)

As for "Particle physicists and cosmologists being just geeks good at sums, not uber-menschen" I don't think is quite fair. Certainly they are not Ubermenschen but Human-all-too-Human just like the rest of us sometimes too much enamored of their own pet theories which goes down the drain if shown there is nothing to support it.

The history of science is contained within the history of humanity and their lethal and interminable screwups. Neither truth nor error are seldom acknowledged to be what they actually are. Time is the filter for that process and it happens irrevocably.

At this point in the game - if one may so call it – how else is one to proceed except by math, theory and experimentation? As the “abstractions” become evermore pronounced so do the theories and the math. I don't believe anyone is trying to purposely make it more complicated than it actually is. To the contrary, I think our abilities here fall far short of what is actually contained deep within nature.

I'm sure you're aware that the LHC is being upgraded to being a positive ion collider as well as a proton to proton collider...it's historic function. It also goes from 7TeV to 13TeV. This is the most extreme machine ever created by humans so far. I'm interested in how you regard this “hyper creation” within the context of Particle Physics and Cosmology?

[Obvious Leo]

At this time from what I gather even GR is usually qualified as true within limits only which is basically the point I was trying to make.

I understood your point and agree completely.

At the Quantum Gravity level it seems to get more diluted with spacetime foam.

The spacetime foam was always an unloved conjecture and nobody in the world of physics takes it seriously these days, apart from a few die-hard aether theorists who still lurk around the fringes.

At this point in the game - if one may so call it – how else is one to proceed except by math, theory and experimentation? As the “abstractions” become evermore pronounced so do the theories and the math. I don't believe anyone is trying to purposely make it more complicated than it actually is. To the contrary, I think our abilities here fall far short of what is actually contained deep within nature.

I don't suggest that anybody is purposely trying to make things more complicated. I reckon spacetime was too complicated from the get-go and thus to make the three pillars of physics compatible with each they do nothing except make things even more complicated. What I'm suggesting is that the foundational assumptions are wrong and that to represent time as a spatial dimension is metaphysical hogwash. What they need is a simpler paradigm, not a more complicated one, or else they'll never be able to stop inventing hidden dimensions and multiple universes and nobody seriously expects to find any answers there.

The LHC is a remarkable feat of human ingenuity and I applaud its construction. However the discovery of the Higgs boson was the most blatant example of confirmation bias in the history of science. Don't be fooled by the confected elation of the particle geeks because this was just show business to keep the taxpayer's dollars rolling in. Luckily the blokes with the cash know bugger-all about physics so it was an easy con. Deep down they were utterly shattered to discover what they did and openly admit that they would have preferred it if their prediction had been falsified, because this may have led to new physics. In the words of Kant, their cognition of the object has merely confirmed their cognition of the object, which is insufficient for truth.

Along with most others I look forward to next year when the collider comes back online with its higher energy collisions. However the Standard Model cannot be significantly advanced unless the LHC yields data contrary to prediction, a fact fully acknowledged by the physics fraternity. If that happens they can finally chuck a lot of useless crap out of their model because they know damn well it's full of it.

Regards Leo

[Jklint]

At the Quantum Gravity level it seems to get more diluted with spacetime foam.

The spacetime foam was always an unloved conjecture and nobody in the world of physics takes it seriously these days, apart from a few die-hard aether theorists who still lurk around the fringes.

It does sound as if the universe emerged freshly bleached out of one BIG washing machine.

The LHC is a remarkable feat of human ingenuity and I applaud its construction. However the discovery of the Higgs boson was the most blatant example of confirmation bias in the history of science. Don't be fooled by the confected elation of the particle geeks because this was just show business to keep the taxpayer's dollars rolling in. Luckily the blokes with the cash know bugger-all about physics so it was an easy con. Deep down they were utterly shattered to discover what they did and openly admit that they would have preferred it if their prediction had been falsified, because this may have led to new physics. In the words of Kant, their cognition of the object has merely confirmed their cognition of the object, which is insufficient for truth..

I'm not in a position to comment on the veracity of the Higgs particle. Evidently upon having "discovered" the Higgs they didn't know for sure if it was the Real McCoy. It was a year later when CERN confirmed it as fitting all the prerequisites of the Standard Model but they still don't know everything about it.

What I don't understand is, as has been reiterated by you and many others, that this whole affair is a fraud. If the Standard Model is viable which few dispute and something like the Higgs is expected within it why would this discovery be so categorically regarded as total deception. As for the words by Kant, they can serve equally as both objection and validation for the same argument...actually for any argument!

What I'm saying is "I don't know" for sure either way. But I would think there is a reason instead of mere opinion why you and others are so certain. Also, I'm confused by this sentence:

Deep down they were utterly shattered to discover what they did and openly admit that they would have preferred it if their prediction had been falsified, because this may have led to new physics.

Who was shattered? Do you mean that the CERN scientists would have preferred the Higgs to be a bogus particle thereby abolishing the Standard Model leading instead to a new physics? This would have required starting from square one abolishing most of the quantum paradigm in the process. But I may have misunderstood your meaning.

Along with most others I look forward to next year when the collider comes back online with its higher energy collisions. However the Standard Model cannot be significantly advanced unless the LHC yields data contrary to prediction, a fact fully acknowledged by the physics fraternity. If that happens they can finally chuck a lot of useless crap out of their model because they know damn well it's full of it.

By all the useless crap do you mean all the particles which simultaneously come into being and within pico or femto seconds evaporate or is there something else?

[Obvious Leo]

What I don't understand is, as has been reiterated by you and many others, that this whole affair is a fraud.

This is putting the case far more strongly than anything I intended. All I really meant was that the non-discovery of the Higgs would have been far more useful than its discovery. However since that's not the way it turned out they wisely made the best of the situation and hailed it as a victory. Politicians do this every day of the week and when it comes to politics the professional academics make our elected no-hopers look like rank amateurs. I make no criticism of this because progress in science depends on it. In a sense it was a victory because they got to test all their fancy new gear and it all worked pretty much as intended, but it taught them nothing they didn't already know so they had no way of telling whether what they think know is true or not. Scientific hypotheses can never be proven true, only falsified, therefore the scientist is always looking for ways to outwit his theory by making a prediction contrary to it. The more times he fails to outwit it the more robust his theory becomes but it doesn't make it any truer. It might just mean he hasn't figured out the right question to ask of it. I'm not that mathematically fluent so I'm not really qualified to offer an opinion as to whether the LHC will be able to offer such an unknown question but I certainly hope so. We live in a Rumsfeldian world where unknown unknowns remain unknown until we know about them. Werner Heisenberg was not my favourite physicist but he summed this problem up quite well when he said that what we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to the way we ask questions about it.

Who was shattered? Do you mean that the CERN scientists would have preferred the Higgs to be a bogus particle thereby abolishing the Standard Model leading instead to a new physics? This would have required starting from square one abolishing most of the quantum paradigm in the process. But I may have misunderstood your meaning.

You didn't misunderstand my meaning but it's fair to say that I was more shattered than the average physicist and I seriously wanted the Higgs to be a false prediction, precisely because I want the QM paradigm confined to the pages of history. It doesn't make sense and it can't be made to make sense because it is predicated on SR and SR is a background-dependent model which doesn't make sense either. GR is background-independent and this is the cosmology model that the Standard Model will need to comply with. This is a completely uncontroversial viewpoint and supported by the entire physics community.

By all the useless crap do you mean all the particles which simultaneously come into being and within pico or femto seconds evaporate or is there something else?

They can invent as many particles and forces and fields as they like and it wouldn't worry me in the slightest. These are simply mathematical tools devised to describe a process. However the Standard Model is currently patched together with over a hundred mathematical constants which have been entered by hand to stop the paradigm from collapsing. Every one of them will have to go because a physical model held together by mathematical sleight-of -hand is like a motorcar held together with sticky-tape and string.

I used to have a car like that and I'm sure you can guess what happened. It fell to bits.

Regards Leo

[Atreyu]

Since "dark matter" and "dark energy" don't really exist (as proposed) then it's highly unlikely that they will ever be found (as conceived).

What invariably will be found however is what the instrumentation that was designed to detect "dark matter" and "dark energy" is actually able to detect which will be a fundamentally non-translatable, and thus misinterpreted, manifestation of some other manner of phenomena which itself is inherently unknown and unknowable (due to the misapplication of the equipment), although it will inevitably be called "dark matter" or "dark energy" and thus be forced to fit where it cannot.

This is what science does.

Yes, I like that idea. My view is that what is missing is not 'matter/energy' at all, but rather an unknown force. The reason for the increased acceleration of expansion is not because there is missing matter, but because there is a force causing it which has not yet been defined and elucidated in science, like gravity, electromagnetism, and strong/weak nuclear force has been. Science is merely assuming that the four known and defined forces are all that are, and then trying to claim there must be missing matter/energy to explain things within the parameters of those four forces. It never occurs to them that the key to the solution could be explaining and defining a new force or 'basic principle'.

[Spiral Out]

It was a year later when CERN confirmed it as fitting all the prerequisites of the Standard Model but they still don't know everything about it.

And the absurdity continues. If they don't know everything about the "Higgs Boson" then how can they categorize it as "fitting all the prerequisites of the Standard Model"?

If the Standard Model is viable which few dispute and something like the Higgs is expected within it why would this discovery be so categorically regarded as total deception. […] But I would think there is a reason instead of mere opinion why you and others are so certain.

Not of a deception, but of an error of misrepresentation of phenomena based on a fundamental misinterpretation of such phenomena that cannot be translated to a form that fits within Human sensory limitations.

There is plenty of valid reason for doubt. But are you receptive to it?

Shall I expect more silence from this poster?

[Misty]

Science is merely assuming that the four known and defined forces are all that are, and then trying to claim there must be missing matter/energy to explain things within the parameters of those four forces. It never occurs to them that the key to the solution could be explaining and defining a new force or 'basic principle'.

Interesting. What kind of instrument will be needed to detect another "basic principle" especially if it is the Word of God that defines the workings of the universe? Perhaps dark energy is really light energy called the will of God!

[Jklint]

Who was shattered? Do you mean that the CERN scientists would have preferred the Higgs to be a bogus particle thereby abolishing the Standard Model leading instead to a new physics? This would have required starting from square one abolishing most of the quantum paradigm in the process. But I may have misunderstood your meaning.

You didn't misunderstand my meaning but it's fair to say that I was more shattered than the average physicist and I seriously wanted the Higgs to be a false prediction, precisely because I want the QM paradigm confined to the pages of history. It doesn't make sense and it can't be made to make sense because it is predicated on SR and SR is a background-dependent model which doesn't make sense either. GR is background-independent and this is the cosmology model that the Standard Model will need to comply with. This is a completely uncontroversial viewpoint and supported by the entire physics community.

First of all I freely admit you know much more about the subject than I do which makes it so confusing for me and interesting at the same time.

I realize that GR, which is really a theory of Gravity has yet to join up with the Standard Model which excludes gravity within its paradigm and without which it cannot be complete. This also makes the GR incomplete which Herr Einstein acknowledged though perhaps in a different context since he didn't give QM much credibility. From everything I've read and reading at the moment the Standard Model is an extremely successful highly predictive theory. The same is obviously true for GR the quandary being to combine the two. Since both theories are or seem so successful to such a high degree I think it would be logical to conclude that neither has the intention of disappearing in order to maintain the integrity of the other.

From the way I see it, if both are valid within their respective levels they cannot be incompatible it's just that the compatibility mechanism hasn't been discovered by which they merge probably not without some modifications to each. Isn't this what they're still striving for especially with advanced instruments like the LHC?

Also, if Fundamental Particles do in fact exist as specified by QM something like the Standard Model must incorporate them. I don't know of any other method by which to model these abstractions except through math. What would GUT be, if it ever comes to be, except as described by a mathematical model. The whole of reality, of nature, it seems is being transcribed onto a two dimensional grid as pure description.

Anyways its been a good conversation, at least for me, but intend to stop here. I just received a second warning and it's always best to quit before one gets fired.

Regards!

[Atreyu]

Interesting. What kind of instrument will be needed to detect another "basic principle" especially if it is the Word of God that defines the workings of the universe? Perhaps dark energy is really light energy called the will of God!

I think your on the right track, a bit, but I myself am not religious so I wouldn't put it in those terms. It can't be 'detected' by any instruments because it's a question of cognition and not perception. There's nothing to see. There's something to be conceptualized.

The ancients called that force 'intent'. They said it was a conscious force. They would have said that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate not because of some unknown matter/energy but rather because it's being 'intended' to do that. The only implication is consciousness, but of course one is free to elaborate on the nature of that consciousness, singular or collective.

[Obvious Leo]

It can't be 'detected' by any instruments because it's a question of cognition and not perception. There's nothing to see. There's something to be conceptualized.

Exactly the way I see it. I'm utterly convinced that the mystery of dark energy is not awaiting a new scientific discovery. It's awaiting a new way of thinking the world.

Regards Leo