Telescope Reviews: Re: Do you believe in dark energy and matter?

I am new to mirror making. Many of my friends ask me why I use glass rather than metal for mirrors. They ask why I grind by hand. Some say that it is not possible to get a smooth accurate surface by hand grinding. Others suggest that I should mold a mirror.

Those who have not studied mirror making are completely unaware of why I should proceed as I do. It is easy for them to find fault just due to the fact that they have not looked at the problem. The procedures I use have been developed by trial and error over decades. It is unlikely that someone who has not considered or studied mirror making is going to find an obviously better way just by thinking about it for 5 minutes.

Similarly, science is done using a procedure called the Scientific Method. The results and speculations you see in print are the results of years of study and decades of developments building upon earlier work. I suggest that someone who has not followed this progression of work would not easily understand why the current consensus has been developed and is in a poor position to criticize it.

At there edge of science there must be speculation. One wrong speculation leads to another. The outcome of experiments naturally eliminates the wrong ones. But without the publication of wrong postulate and the discussion that follows the process of probing and error and correction can not move forward.

Dark matter is a specific postulate that would explain a particular observation. The postulate has testable consequences and about 2 years ago a photo was taken that appears to show a separation between baryonic mater and dark matter in a collision between galaxies. The photo shows baryonic matter of a galaxy in one position and gravitational lensing of light from behind the collision in a different position. The separation of the two is consistent with expectations that dark matter would not be slowed by the collision as much as the baryonic matter.

Rather than simply declare the silliness of the dark matter postulate, perhaps you could explain this observation using some other postulate?

The universe has been observed to expand. Einstein’s general relativity predicted this expansion prior to its observation. Einstein thought that this was silly and made what he called the biggest blunder of his career by changing the math to eliminate the expansion. This is typical of what happens when humans do physics based upon what they think is silly rather than follow the scientific method. GR carries a built in prediction of the expansion that has been observed and therefore does not require modification to explain it. The error here is giving this feature a separate name. The expansion is inherent feature of the current best description of gravity.

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Michael

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