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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  4394 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A Thought on Dark Matter

Here's the electromagnetic spectrum. Pay careful attention to how much of it we can see:

http://www.lbl.gov/images/MicroWorlds/EMSpec.gif

We can only hear oscillations between 20 times per second and 16,000 times per second. Bats and dogs can hear double that.

The only thing we can see out in space are things burning with the brightness of the sun, things large enough to cause gravitational perturbations visible light years away, and things spewing out radio waves energetic enough to pick it up with a dish.

Much dark matter is basically "Jupiter" - big blobs of gas that happen to not be illuminated by any star. Much of it is likely antimatter. All of it is prosaic and requires no peculiar physics to describe. The only thing that makes it "dark" is our inability to see it, which is a function of it being the fuck and gone far away from any ilumination. If you had a pound of "dark matter" in your living room you wouldn't even notice it because the air would rush in and replace its relative vacuum (well, you'd probably notice some interesting annihilative effects from the antiprotons and such).

Turn your question on its head: "dark matter" is a mathematical inevitability, a side product of the equations that govern star formation. You can solve for it. "Consciousness" on the other hand doesn't come out of any formula we've stumbled across.

Cogito ergo sum, mutherfucker. There is more god in your question than there is in the subject you wish to discuss.





lil  ·  4393 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    There is more god in your question than there is in the subject you wish to discuss.

Well said. Bravo!

briandmyers  ·  4392 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I am no expert, but I was under the impression that astronomers were fairly confident that dark matter could not possibly all be ordinary, but invisible things (like un-illuminated 'Jupiters' and anitmatter and such). I do not understand the details of exactly why, but I thought that they were confident that there is simply not enough of the ordinary stuff to explain gravitational observations - hence the mystery of its nature. But I could be wrong about that.

thefoundation  ·  4394 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Where did energy originate from? Did God create it? Science sure as hell doesn't know. I think this is more the point of the conversation

kleinbl00  ·  4394 days ago  ·  link  ·  
BLOB_CASTLE  ·  4393 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Are you a believer in miracles?

kleinbl00  ·  4393 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sorry, it does not work like that.

The subject at hand is whether or not "science" "sure as hell" does or does not know where energy comes from. My link illustrates that if nothing else, "science" (or more accurately, experts who have devoted their careers to the study of such things) have a great body of knowledge on the subject that provides a great deal of illumination and thought on the subject. It nullifies the claim that "science sure as hell doesn't know."

The argument has been succinctly and resoundingly defeated. You do not now get to drag my faith or lack thereof into the arena. This is a discussion on the limits of scientific knowledge and their causes, not on one person's willful choice in faith. You do grave disservice to your original question by attempting to discredit ANY participant through ad-hominem attack regardless of your motive.

BLOB_CASTLE  ·  4393 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I was just continuing the lyrics from Miracles.

BLOB_CASTLE  ·  4394 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hahaha, I love the boldness of your writing.

    We can only hear oscillations between 20 times per second and 16,000 times per second.
You bring up an interesting point. Because we can only here those things, do you think it is against our nature to strive to do more that is inherent of us? I think nature has a way of telling us what we should and shouldn't do based on our biology, and that trying to become 'superhuman' will bring on a wide array of trouble.
kleinbl00  ·  4393 days ago  ·  link  ·  

...so because we can only resolve one arcsecond using our vision we are somehow "against God" for inventing binoculars?

"If God intended us to fly he would have given us wings?"

BLOB_CASTLE  ·  4393 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I wouldn't say against God. Against our own nature is more accurate. Now this is just be rambling, but say we were only meant to see so little for a reason. What if eventually we saw something we weren't meant to see and would result in catastrophe? Hypothetical situation, but one worth pondering.

kleinbl00  ·  4393 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not worth pondering. The minute you start jumping at shadows is the minute you give up reason.

BLOB_CASTLE  ·  4393 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    The minute you start jumping at shadows is the minute you give up reason.

I feel this contradicts what you've been saying. I would say that jumping at shadows, however pointless it may be, is idealistic and leads to innovation through imagination.

thundara  ·  4394 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    If you had a pound of "dark matter" in your living room you wouldn't even notice it because the air would rush in and replace its relative vacuum (well, you'd probably notice some interesting annihilative effects from the antiprotons and such).

(Note: This would be some non-trivial fraction of the strength of the most powerful bomb the US has ever detonated )

kleinbl00  ·  4394 days ago  ·  link  ·  
thundara  ·  4394 days ago  ·  link  ·  

No mention of the relative proportion of anti-matter at all on there, how will I be able to calculate the theoretical number of nukes in space now!?

kleinbl00  ·  4394 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Don't feel bad. I've got a friend who's been working on dark matter for 20 years and he doesn't know either.

escapereality  ·  4394 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Very well put, we as humans are very limited in what we can comprehend and understand of the universe. Still, I don't think we should be too eager to reach for the easy way out - being the god theory. Just because we can't explain it now doesn't mean we never will.

kleinbl00  ·  4394 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Very well put, we as humans are very limited in what we can comprehend and understand of the universe.

I would disagree. I would say that we, as denizens of a dirt ball far out on a spiral arm, are very limited in what we can directly measure and observe. There are no barriers to comprehension.

I am a fundamentally faithless individual. I do not see God in the gaps. That said, if I were a spiritual person I'd be more inclined to see "an invisible hand" in the stuff that can't be easily derived than in the stuff we only know about because we derived it.