From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Fri May 02 2003 - 22:34:47 MDT
At 12:57 PM 5/2/2003 -0700, Terry W. Colvin forwarded:
> >But somehow 15 or 20 different methods of aging the Earth and the
> >universe all converge. Astonishing!
>
>I don't know about now, but this wasn't the case a few years ago. I
>recall reading in New Scientist about the embarrassing problem that the
>calculated age of many galaxies was many billions of years older than
>the calculated age of the universe. Personally I became disillusioned
>with astrophysics etc shortly after making the acquaintance of some
>astrophysicists and discovering that a large part of what we were are
>taught about the nature of the universe was no more than calculated
>guesswork, whose claim to validity relied on internal consistency rather
>than substantive evidence. But in achieving this, fudge factors are
>often thrown into the mix, such as when the calculated mass of the
>universe disagrees with that of the observable galaxies, we posit dark
>matter to make up the balance.
When we first start investigating a field, there may be little actual data
and many proposed models explaining that data. There is usually little
constraint on many variables at this point and those variables can be
adjusted in a variety of ways to make a model "work". But as time goes by
and more data is accumulated, the variables get more constrained and the
large number of models are whittled down to just a few, or even just one.
This is just what's happening in cosmology now. Conundrums like stars
apparently older than the universe went away with more data.
We had a nice colloquium yesterday here at UC Riverside by Ned Wright, one
of the researchers on the WMAP team. I got invited to the after talk dinner
and got to talk with him extensively. One of Ned's most pleasing graphs in
his talk was the one that showed that the "predictions" of Modified
Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), don't fit the data and MOND is therefore
falsified. MOND is the alternative to dark matter which proposes that there
is no dark matter, we simply have to modify Newtonian gravity at large
distances to make things work. It is not really a theory as much as a
heuristic for how you modify Newtonian gravity at different distances. I've
considered it the worst kind of cop-out and am glad it's killed.
Dark matter now has too many lines of evidence for it not to be real, not
the least of which is the WMAP data. Ned commented that he doesn't like it
that we don't know what 96% of the universe is made of (23% dark matter and
73% dark energy). He would never entertain the existence of these if all
the data didn't compel him to. But since that's what the data shows, he has
to accept them. Finding out specifically what they are will probably be the
next major advance in our understanding of cosmology and fundamental nature.
>Similarly Einstein used what might be
>termed a "Skinner's Constant"* to make his figures come out right, which
>to his discomfort then led to the possibility of black holes. A more
>recent interpretation of Relativity showed it was possible to dispense
>with both, which if it turns out correct will prove rather embarrassing
>to Steven Hawking whose entire career rests on the study of objects
>which might turn out to be entirely imaginary. (I did hear recently that
>some black holes had actually been observed, but given this was on some
>TV programme which was a Discovery Channel co-production one has to
>treat such claims with a large pinch of salt, since a lot of these
>modern science documentaries are, sadly, long on spin and short on hard
>facts.)
You should look to the scientific literature. We now have evidence for the
existence of event horizons in the characteristics of the radio signals
coming from matter just before it falls in the black hole from the inner
edge of accretion disks.
>(* Skinners constant: the number that when added to the results you got
>gives the answer you should have got)
>
>-Shez.
Ron Ebert
-- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1@msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]
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