Fermi and dark matter

[Michael Mozina]

You're still sidestepping the key issue Ben. There is a "known source" of high energy gamma rays, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with exotic or hypothetical forms of matter.

To explain gamma rays only requires "electricity' and "normal matter". Supernovas are also known to produce high energy shock waves. Any theory that relies upon multiple "leaps of faith" cannot be considered to be "on par" with a theory that is based upon pure empirical physics and occurs "naturally" right here on Earth and inside our solar system.

The claim "electricity did it" is empirically justified. The statement 'dark matter did it" is not. Even if we simply make qualification as important as quantification, your theory about how DM did it isn't going to survive a simple Occum's razor argument.

[ben m]

You're still sidestepping the key issue Ben. There is a "known source" of high energy gamma rays, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with exotic or hypothetical forms of matter.


Your argument is not "there is no dark matter", nor "dark matter cannot emit gamma rays". Your argument is "there are so many other gamma rays out there that Fermi cannot possibly isolate the dark matter ones, if any".

It's a question of backgrounds, then. Yes: the Fermi team knows that there are backgrounds. They are not morons. High-resolution gamma ray astronomy is nearly 20 years old and we know darn well to expect gamma rays from supernova remnants, compact stars, pulsars, quasars, CR bombardment of the Moon, and other sources including the Sun. The Fermi team is NOT, as you would know if you read their papers, saying, "Hey, gamma rays---must be dark matter!". Rather, they are trying to separate known sources from unknown sources, point sources from diffuse sources, and to understand the energy spectrum (curiously absent from your vocabulary, MM) of each such source.

To illustrate how this is done right: before Fermi was launched many people speculated that the best place to look for dark matter gammas would be the Galactic center. Later, it was determined that the Galactic center was the source of a huge number of GeV gammas from mundane sources (like cosmic rays) which made some WIMP searches lose sensitivity. Nobody misinterpreted those GeV gamma rays as dark matter, MM. Why not? Because we are not morons.

Now, your claim seems to be that "if Fermi sees any excess gammas at all, they are probably explained by the Electric Sun hypothesis" or whatever you call it these days. Two comments:

a) Wow, that's some hypothesis. Could the electric sun hypothesis explain a 300 GeV monoenergetic gamma line? A broad energy peak between 100 and 150 GeV coming from subdwarf satellite galaxies, but not from nearby stars? If it can explain any observations whatsoever, MM, it's not a science hypothesis, it's a magic leprechaun.

b) Your electric sun hypothesis has failed many, many times over already. Were you hoping no one will notice? "Hmm, this Mozina person is talking about the Sun as though he's a recognized expert on solar electromagnetism! If he says there's a previously-unrecognized gamma ray background he must be right!" No, MM. There are a great many people who are qualified to discuss Fermi's normal-astrophysics backgrounds, sources, and uncertainties therein. You are not one of them, and mentioning Electric Sun (or whatever you call it) crackpottery just reminds me of that.

Imagine getting a press release about, say, General Relativity. "The Gravity Probe B experiment has misinterpreted its data; rather than seeing frame dragging they have seen the Steorn Free Energy Effect." Or about, I dunno, nutrition. "Omega-3 fatty acids, contrary to mainstream science, are not good for you. See our web site for details. Therefore we insist that Omega-3s be removed from vaccines immediately to stem the autism epidemic."

[ben m]

To explain gamma rays only requires "electricity' and "normal matter".

You could, similarly inaccurately, say the same thing about radio waves, optical photons, and x-rays. "Why are astronomers talking about quasars, quasar jets, accretion disks, supernovae, neutron star crusts, synchrotron radiation, type-II Fermi acceleration, and so on? It's all just electricity and normal matter."

Different sources have different spectra. That's it in a nutshell. The SUSY gamma ray spectrum is expected not look like synchrotron radiation, nor like pulsars, nor like proton-proton collisions, etc.

[Reality Check]

You're still sidestepping the key issue Ben. There is a "known source" of high energy gamma rays, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with exotic or hypothetical forms of matter.

You are still ignnorant of the key issue Michael. There are known sources of high energy gamma rays detectable by Fermi and they have nothing whatsoever to do with exotic or hypothetical forms of matter. They are subtracted from the raw Fermi data to give the unknown sources of gamma rays. These unknown sources include dark matter candidates that produce gamma rays.


To explain gamma rays only requires "electricity' and "normal matter".

To explain the known gamma rays only requires electromagnetism and normal matter.


The claim "electricity did it" is empirically justified. The statement 'dark matter did it" is not. Even if we simply make qualification as important as quantification, your theory about how DM did it isn't going to survive a simple Occum's razor argument.
The claim that electromagnetism produced the excess gamma rays is empirically justified.
The claim that dark matter produced the excess gamma rays is empirically justified.

Occam's razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor) could actually be in faviour of DM, e.g
Hypothesis 1: An previously unknown astrophysical mechanism produces the gamma rays excess using black holes and electromagnetic fields (2 entities).
Hypothesis 2: Dark matter of a specific type produces the gamma ray excess (one entity)
The hypothesis postulating the fewer entities and more likely to be correct is DM.

[ben m]

The other bit of Occam's Razor here: remember, MM is supposed to be allowing for the sake of argument that the general hypothesis "New-physics particles make up the gravitationally-known missing matter".

MM seems to be claiming based on no knowledge whatsoever that it is inconcievable for those new particles to have a gamma ray annihilation channel. This is strange: the entire rest of the Particle Zoo has a gamma ray annihilation channel. Quark-antiquark and lepton-antilepton can all annihilate to gammas. Neutrino-antineutrino can annihilate to gammas via, for example, vv->WW and W final states containing pions. Heck, gluon-gluon can annihilate to gammas via any number of channels, as can WW and ZZ and Higgs Higgs (as much as it pains me to draw that diagram).

Within the hypothesis that WIMPs exist, the existence of an annihilation channel containing gammas is the default in general. If the WIMP hypothesis is specifically SUSY or KK, it's unavoidable.

But Michael Mozina, with his nonexistent training in particle-physics phenomenology, has declared this to be an extra assumption. Sorry, MM, you are incorrect. It is you who are making an extra assumption---you are going out of your way to turn off the obvious photon annihilation channels, and you are doing so based on mistaken and ill-informed intuition.

Of course there's nothing wrong with such extra assumptions; it just generates a different hypothesis. Some hidden-sector dark matter hypotheses, for example, have this no-photons property.

Under the MM "WIMPs exist but don't annihilate to any photon final state" hypothesis, we can predict that Fermi will see normal astrophysical sources and no WIMP-like excess. See how easy that was? That's how science works.

[DSo]

Nobody misinterpreted those GeV gamma rays as dark matter, MM. Why not? Because we are not morons.



Well said.

Ben/RC- I bet you are unable to get the last word in on the subject.

[ben m]

Apropos of nothing: of course all particle decay-gamma radiation is simply "electricity", if you want to view it that way. All photon-creating processes, including exotic-sounding ones like the Primakoff Process, particle-antiparticle annihilation, SUSY decays and annihilations, etc., come from the standard QED coupling of photons to charge. That coupling is basically the quantized version of Maxwell's Equations. Hence: yes, gamma rays "come from electricity".

I doubt this changes MM's mind on anything.

[DazzaD]

Apropos of nothing: of course all particle decay-gamma radiation is simply "electricity", if you want to view it that way. All photon-creating processes, including exotic-sounding ones like the Primakoff Process, particle-antiparticle annihilation, SUSY decays and annihilations, etc., come from the standard QED coupling of photons to charge. That coupling is basically the quantized version of Maxwell's Equations. Hence: yes, gamma rays "come from electricity".

I doubt this changes MM's mind on anything.

I dont wish to do MM a disservice but I wonder if he is even aware of this?

[ben m]

I dont wish to do MM a disservice but I wonder if he is even aware of this?

If it's not a component of his electric-sun idea, I'm going to guess "no". Pointing out its derivation from Maxwell's Equations did not change his mind about magnetic reconnection, IIRC.

[Reality Check]

Another bit of astronomy that I did not know know about.
Found on the Resonances blog: Fermi says "nothing"...like sure sure? (http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2009/11/fermi-says-nothinglike-sure-sure.html)

Astronomers have observed a couple of dozen low intensity satellite galaxies ("subhalos") of the Milky Way. These subhalos have a large mass to light ratio (over 1000 for the darkest) implying a large concentration of dark matter.
Although the resulting gamma-ray flux is expected to be smaller than that from the galactic center, the subhalos with its small visible matter content offer a much cleaner environment to search for a signal.
The Fermi collaboration presented a poster (http://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/download/attachments/67503267/BloomFermiSymposiumPosterDwarfSearch102809Finalpdf .pdf) at the Fermi Symposium with four candidates but could not match the observed spectrum with 3 randomly selected dark matter models. They thus conclude that their candidates are not dark matter subhalos. The poster (http://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/download/attachments/67503267/BloomFermiSymposiumPosterDwarfSearch102809Finalpdf .pdf) has this interesting section:
Overview of Galactic Dwarfs
• Currently only 25 galactic dwarfs are known, and they have been discovered by optical telescopes. 14 of these are ultra faint [SDSS, 2005, 2007] . There should be many more according to CDM simulations [e.g., Via Lactea II, 2009]. Current theoretical models predict we could observe a factor of ~10 more [Tollerud, et al., 2008].
• The most recently discovered galactic dwarfs have very few stars, e.g., Segue 1 might have 65 stars associated with it [Geha, 2009]. They also have M/L ratios ~>1000 (compared with ~10 for the Milky Way galaxy). Thus they appear to contain dark matter and little else.
• Such dwarf galaxies are good dark matter source candidates for Fermi LAT as any γ-ray emission in the Fermi range would likely come from dark matter annihilation or decay. (Interesting limits from the known dwarfs for some dark matter models are reported at this conference [Farnier, C., et. al., 2009].)
• In this work we are searching for galactic dwarfs that have no counterparts at this time. We are trying to discover new galactic dwarfs via a γ-ray signal that would be a distinctive signature for the nature of dark matter distinguishable from a purely astrophysical source.

[Michael Mozina]

Apropos of nothing: of course all particle decay-gamma radiation is simply "electricity", if you want to view it that way. All photon-creating processes, including exotic-sounding ones like the Primakoff Process, particle-antiparticle annihilation, SUSY decays and annihilations, etc., come from the standard QED coupling of photons to charge. That coupling is basically the quantized version of Maxwell's Equations. Hence: yes, gamma rays "come from electricity".

I doubt this changes MM's mind on anything.

The fact that the emission of moving positrons and electrons is a form of "current flow", turning your DM into a regular source of "electricity", is probably the only "attractive" thing about that theory from the perspective of EU theory. The fact this process never shows up in a controlled experiment is what keeps it from "changing my mind", or the mind of any EU theorist that places a high emphasis on empirical physics.

In all of these "dark theories" there must be a point where actual empirical physics supposedly takes over. It's the fact you can't demonstrate that this process does occur "naturally" in any controlled experiment or any event on Earth that makes your theory "weak".

FYI, it's been a crazy week at work, and a really busy (and great) week as a parent, but I will see about catching up with the conversation over the weekend.

http://www.mtshastanews.com/entertainment/x1682929177/Star-crossed-lovers-at-Mount-Shasta-High-School

[ben m]

In all of these "dark theories" there must be a point where actual empirical physics supposedly takes over. It's the fact you can't demonstrate that this process does occur "naturally" in any controlled experiment or any event on Earth that makes your theory "weak".

Repeating that over and over does not make it more true.

Anyway, the dark matter hypothesis is indeed based on perfectly empirical physics: measurements of velocities of stars and galaxies, which translate straightforwardly to measurements of gravity, which translate straightforwardly to measurements of mass. Measurements of light bending which translate ditto to mass measurements and orbit measurements. That's all as empirical as anything else in astronomy. Are you suggesting that astronomers have the gravity measurements wrong?

Then there's "figuring out what this mass is", which is a matter of plasmas and atomic absorption spectra and whatnot. Are you suggesting that astronomers have star-counting, the Lyman-Alpha forest, and hot hydrogen spectroscopy wrong? Are you suggesting that "UV light above 10 eV is absorbed by hydrogen" is not empirical? Are you suggesting that microlensing (basically a long-distance version of Eddington's 1918 observation) is not empirical?

[DazzaD]

The fact that the emission of moving positrons and electrons is a form of "current flow", turning your DM into a regular source of "electricity", is probably the only "attractive" thing about that theory from the perspective of EU theory. The fact this process never shows up in a controlled experiment is what keeps it from "changing my mind", or the mind of any EU theorist that places a high emphasis on empirical physics.

In all of these "dark theories" there must be a point where actual empirical physics supposedly takes over. It's the fact you can't demonstrate that this process does occur "naturally" in any controlled experiment or any event on Earth that makes your theory "weak".


This constant statement about having to be able to repeat the experiment on Earth is a misnomer.

Please explain to me, that for my version of how fusion works in say the Sun, you are going to demonstrate that physics, directly, in an experiment, here on Earth.

Because you cannot.

[Michael Mozina]

This constant statement about having to be able to repeat the experiment on Earth is a misnomer.

It may be a "misnomer" from your perspective perhaps, but there in fact a distinct difference between a process that shows up in a controlled experiment, and one that does not.

Please explain to me, that for my version of how fusion works in say the Sun, you are going to demonstrate that physics, directly, in an experiment, here on Earth.

Because you cannot.

You're right, I cannot do that. What I can do is verify that fusion actually occurs here on Earth and I can isolate the physical conditions where it can occur. I can verify the fusion process to be an 'energy source" under specific conditions.

Whether fusion is the primary power source of a sun is a completely separate question, but the fact that fusion "could be" a power source of a sun is easily confirmed. It's therefore completely rational of you to point at a distant object and claim "fusion did it". Right or wrong, your belief and your claim is based upon an empirically demonstrated process that is known to occur here on Earth.

Like the "fusion releases energy" claim, if you decide to point at the sky and claim "invisible stuff did it", I will also expect you to demonstrate that 'invisible stuff' exists and has the effect you claim it has. In this scenario of linking gamma rays to DM, there are at least three claims that cannot be empirically verified. I cannot verify that any exotic forms of matter exist in an experiment, including but not limited to theoretical SUSY particles. I cannot verify that said particle is "long lived" enough to remain stable for billion of years. I cannot verify that it emits "gamma rays" during annihilation. There are at least three separate claims in relationship to that Fermi data that lack empirical support.

That is quite different in the case of fusion. I can't verify the conditions in the core or a hydrogen sun are capable of producing the fusion process, but I can verify that the fusion process is a known power source. In the case of fusion, you're simply "scaling" a known process to something larger than can be created here in a lab, and the only unverified claim is that the core produces the conditions necessary to drive this process on an ongoing basis. Things like neutrino measurements can/should be used to validate such a claim.

All theories will eventually need to be "scaled to size" to include conditions that cannot be duplicated on Earth. That's not my complaint. I don't mind you scaling a known and demonstrated process like fusion to size. I don't mind you claiming that the conditions of the core of sun are capable of sustaining the process. I may eventually take exception to that concept due to some other observation, but the basic concept of fusion as an energy source can and has been verified. Compare and contrast that with the utter lack of empirical support that "dark matter" emits gamma rays. In that case it's not just a "scaling problem". You can't even demonstrate that DM exists at all, let alone that it lasts more than a millisecond or that it emits anything.

[Tubbythin]

It may be a "misnomer" from your perspective perhaps, but there in fact a distinct difference between a process that shows up in a controlled experiment, and one that does not.

No there isn't! The laws of physics are completely independent of whether you or I or anyone else think an experiment is controlled or not. Our ability to isolate a specific phenomenon may depend on how well we understand the observations which may depend on the level of control we have over what we choose to observe. But that does not mean lab based experiments are always inherently better than non-lab based experiments. You only need to look at Kepler's laws to see that.

[Michael Mozina]

You are still ignnorant of the key issue Michael.

No, I am not ignorant of the fact that you cannot demonstrate the claim that "dark matter emits gamma rays". That's the key issue.

There are known sources of high energy gamma rays detectable by Fermi and they have nothing whatsoever to do with exotic or hypothetical forms of matter. They are subtracted from the raw Fermi data to give the unknown sources of gamma rays.

Okey, Dokey.

These unknown sources include dark matter candidates that produce gamma rays.

Those "unknown sources" have nothing to do with DM because you never showed an empirical link between DM and gamma rays. Hoy.

Occam's razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor) could actually be in faviour of DM,

Oh that's rich. :) I gotta see you justify that statement.....

e.g
Hypothesis 1: An previously unknown astrophysical mechanism produces the gamma rays excess using black holes and electromagnetic fields (2 entities).
Hypothesis 2: Dark matter of a specific type produces the gamma ray excess (one entity)
The hypothesis postulating the fewer entities and more likely to be correct is DM.

Er, stars and EM fields are "known and demonstrated" entities RC. They are known to be directly involved with Fermi observations as well.

So let me get this straight.....

It's all one big coincidence in your opinion that the binary star population of the core just so happens to match this excess gamma ray distribution?

Whereas binary star populations can be verified, and suns and discharges can be directly linked to Fermi data, your DM thingy doesn't do squat here inside this solar system.

In any "DM caused gamma rays" claim, you're necessarily adding a variable that is utterly unnecessary and that is completely and utterly unrelated to the evidence. Whereas stars do exist, and discharges do emit gamma rays, and binary star formations are common, DM doesn't do squat. In any Occum's razor argument you loose. You invented an unnecessary entity, and stuffed it into the discussion in a purely ad hoc manner. There isn't even an empirical link between gamma rays and DM to begin with. Even if you just introduced a known source that was "unnecessary", you might lose an Occum's razor argument, but when you stuff the argument with a "pure act of faith" it's not even a contest.

[Michael Mozina]

No there isn't! The laws of physics are completely independent of whether you or I or anyone else think an experiment is controlled or not.

An "experiment' without any control mechanism is called an "observation". Observations do not allow us to easily distinguish cause/effect relationships, where as real "experiments" with actual control mechanisms make it easy to isolate cause/effect relationships.

Our ability to isolate a specific phenomenon may depend on how well we understand the observations which may depend on the level of control we have over what we choose to observe. But that does not mean lab based experiments are always inherently better than non-lab based experiments. You only need to look at Kepler's laws to see that.

Could you define the "better" as it relates to determining "cause/effect" relationships? How can you tell from a distant observation of gamma rays, what that source of gamma rays might be?

[Tubbythin]

An "experiment' without any control mechanism is called an "observation".
You can call it a hippopotamus if you want. It doesn't stop the fact that the laws of physics are independent of how good we think we're doing things.


Observations do not allow us to easily distinguish cause/effect relationships, where as real "experiments" with actual control mechanisms make it easy to isolate cause/effect relationships.
Of course they do. We observe a white dwarf accreting matter from its binary companion. Subsequently we observe the supernova explosion of the white dwarf. Now, what do we conclude from our observations?
a) That the matter being accreted on to to the WD surface was the cause of the supernova explosion.
or
b) That the supernova explosion caused a message to be sent back in time to the white dwarf and told it to start accreting matter from its companion?


Could you define the "better" as it relates to determining "cause/effect" relationships? How can you tell from a distant observation of gamma rays, what that source of gamma rays might be?
By "better" I just mean more likely to give you the correct results. I thinks its obvious that in most cases for astrophysical phenomena its "better" to look at astrophysical entities than stuff that you think might vaguely approximate an astrophysical entity in a lab.

[Michael Mozina]

You could, similarly inaccurately, say the same thing about radio waves, optical photons, and x-rays. "Why are astronomers talking about quasars, quasar jets, accretion disks, supernovae, neutron star crusts, synchrotron radiation, type-II Fermi acceleration, and so on? It's all just electricity and normal matter."

Well, for one thing, your industry refuses to acknowledge the role of electricity in space, so you require a host of exotic terms. Is it really my fault that you call a stream of fast moving charged particles (aka "current flow") a "quasar jet"?

Why do you folks make up terms like "magnetic reconnection"? The only reason you do any of that stuff is to avoid EU theory at all costs. The moment you let electricity into astronomy classroom, a lot of your naming conventions will go bye-bye, starting with the term "magnetic reconnection".

Different sources have different spectra.

Different discharge processes produce different spectra too.

That's it in a nutshell. The SUSY gamma ray spectrum is expected not look like synchrotron radiation, nor like pulsars, nor like proton-proton collisions, etc.

How would you even know what these processes should "look like"? You haven't even included the EM field into the astronomy discussion or classroom so you really don't even have a clue what these things "should" do in the first place IMO.

SUSY theory is just *ONE* of several different *NON STANDARD* particle physics theories that all lack empirical support. That's why it is still a "non standard" theory in fact. If and when LHC finds something "exotic" let me know. The first thing I'll ask you is "how long did it last", followed by "did it emit anything"? Do you really think they'll find something, and do you really think it's going to support your argument? Even if it emitted gamma rays and disappeared immediately, the longevity issue would still remain. Even if it could be shown that some exotic form of matter did form, but we couldn't "see it", you'd have the gamma ray claim/issue still hanging over your head. About the only way that LHC could help you case is to show them being created in massive quantities and only emitting gamma rays very infrequently. What are the odds that's going to happen in your lifetime in your opinion?

The problem here is simple Ben. You've never provided an empirical connection between the observation in question (gamma rays) and the entity and the process that you claim is responsible for them. You skipped a huge empirical step in there and you simply expect me to "have faith" in these things with you. You expect me to accept on faith that that WIMPS exist, they live more than millisecond, and accept on faith that they create gamma rays too. It's a faith based "trilogy" of unsupported claims.

"Electricity did it" is a legitimate empirical scientific "explanation" (right or wrong) for an "observation" of gamma rays. "Invisible stuff did it" is not. There is no empirical connection between DM and gamma rays. That's a pure ad hoc assertion based on your "faith" in SUSY theory evidently.

[Michael Mozina]

You can call it a hippopotamus if you want. It doesn't stop the fact that the laws of physics are independent of how good we think we're doing things.

You're still intentionally blurring the distinction between a true "experiment" (with real control mechanisms) and an "observation" IMO. That is dangerous IMO.

Of course they do.

Well, sometimes the cause can be obvious. If I see a bolt of lightning in the distance and hear the sound of thunder a few seconds later, I might conclude they are related.

Sometime it's not so obvious, like the "cause" of those gamma rays.

By "better" I just mean more likely to give you the correct results.

I would/could agree to that concept if you were not also including a series of "hypothetical" arguments in the discussion. The binary star explanation seems "more than adequate" to explain these excess gamma rays. Why would any theory that requires hypothetical entities be "better than" such a simple explanation?

I thinks its obvious that in most cases for astrophysical phenomena its "better" to look at astrophysical entities than stuff that you think might vaguely approximate an astrophysical entity in a lab.

IMO what the industry is doing is intentionally avoiding including any EU oriented idea into the discussion, and emphasizing any solution based upon "dark" stuff. There's no empirical link between gamma rays and DM. There is no empirical link between DM and anything. How then could such a theory be "better than" the one I provided you with earlier? I can see our own sun emits gamma rays that Fermi is able to observe. I can see it traverse the Fermi images in fact. Fermi also observes these gamma rays from Earth. I see absolutely no need to invent additional variables to explain gamma rays in whatever quantities we might need. Since there is no link between "invisible Michaels" and gamma rays, no "theory" based upon mythical Michael particles can be "better than" an empirically oriented explanation, even if my math happens to work out better.

[Michael Mozina]

FYI RC, your real argument was.....

Stars, discharges (background) *and* DM(excess) did it.

It has three unique sources of gamma rays.

My claim was:

Stars and discharges did it.

Your argument has an additional variable. You don't get to subtract out the background gamma rays without acknowledging that your theory is also dependent upon them. You lose the Occum's razor debate simply by stuffing *any* additional variable in there. The fact your variable is also a purely hypothetical entity with hypothetical properties galore is simply icing on the cake.

[Reality Check]

Er, stars and EM fields are "known and demonstrated" entities RC. They are known to be directly involved with Fermi observations as well.

They are known and demonstrated entities.
So
Hypothesis 1: Stars and EM fields (and other known and demonstrated entities) and an previously unknown astrophysical mechanism involving black holes and electromagnetic fields produces the gamma rays excess using (2 additional entities).
Hypothesis 2: Stars and EM fields (and other known and demonstrated entities) and dark matter of a specific type produces the gamma ray excess (one additional entity)

Occam's razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor) is "Occam's razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.".
The hypothesis postulating the fewer entities and more likely to be correct is DM.


So let me get this straight......
No you did not get it straight.
The "binary star population of the core" has nothing to do with the Fermi data.

The unknown sources to explain the Fermi data include:

The X-ray binary star population of the core is one of the possible unknown sources of the Fermis haze.
Dark matter emitting gamma rays is one of the possible unknown sources of the Fermis haze (and the bump in gamma ray spectrum).
The nearby LOOP-1 supernova remnant is one of the possible unknown sources of the Fermis haze.
Heavy cosmic-ray elements faking gamma-ray photons is one of the possible unknown sources of the Fermi haze.
Tuned-up galactic models is one of the possible unknown sources of the Fermi haze.
So DM is just one of the possible unknown sources of the Fermi haze.
Are you getting the point?
The Fermi haze is not definitely caused by dark matter emitting gamma rays. That is just one of the possibilities after the known sources are accounted for.

If dark matter is SUZY particles (as the evidence suggests) then what we know about physics tells us that they will have a decay channel to gamma rays (as ben_m has stated). If they do not decay into gamma rays then we have to assume another entity - a mechanism to stop this.

[Michael Mozina]

They are known and demonstrated entities.

Got a gram of "dark matter"?

You continue to misrepresent these observations and my statements. In fact, this whole conversation demonstrates the elegance of EU theory and the absurdity of standard theory.

Every EU proponent since Birkeland has attempted to explain these high energy events in terms of "electrical discharges" and physical bodies in space. Birkeland turned the sun into a cathode and thereby created coronal loops, plasma "jets", and high energy photons. Every EU proponent would continue to suggest that gamma rays are the direct result of discharges in the atmospheres of bodies in space. Period. EU theory simplifies the whole thing to two variables, current flow and physical forms.

Let's compare that now with "mainstream" theory that evidently agrees it can observe discharges in the atmosphere of planets, but insists that the atmosphere of the sun does *NOT* generate them via a discharge process, but instead they require "magnetic reconnection" and two distinct types of physical bodies. They also now evidently require "dark matter" to kludge it all together properly. That's 5 distinct processes/entities that are required to make your gamma ray theories work properly. Mainstream theory isn't viable anymore because it's specifically and intentionally kludged together with anything *except for* electrical processes in space. It now therefore requires no less than 5 distinct variables to explain what should only require two variables.

[Tubbythin]

You're still intentionally blurring the distinction between a true "experiment" (with real control mechanisms) and an "observation" IMO. That is dangerous IMO.
I'm not intentionally blurring the distinction. I'm saying there is no distinction. The best experiments for testing of a hypothesis are those which can most easily and comprehensibly show whether the hypothesis is a good reflection of reality or not. Sometimes that means stuff we can do in a lab. Sometimes that means stuff we do with a telescope. Horses for courses etc. This, to me, seems really really really obvious.


Well, sometimes the cause can be obvious. If I see a bolt of lightning in the distance and hear the sound of thunder a few seconds later, I might conclude they are related.

Sometime it's not so obvious, like the "cause" of those gamma rays.
Right.


I would/could agree to that concept if you were not also including a series of "hypothetical" arguments in the discussion. The binary star explanation seems "more than adequate" to explain these excess gamma rays. Why would any theory that requires hypothetical entities be "better than" such a simple explanation?
Does the binary star explanation explain the complete spectrum quantitatively to within the size of the error bars?


IMO what the industry is doing

What industry?


is intentionally avoiding including any EU oriented idea into the discussion, and emphasizing any solution based upon "dark" stuff.
Why would anyone pay any attention to EU if it gets things wrong all the time?


There's no empirical link between gamma rays and DM. There is no empirical link between DM and anything.
Galactic and cluster rotation curves require the existence of dark matter. That is the empirical evidence for dark matter.


How then could such a theory be "better than" the one I provided you with earlier? I can see our own sun emits gamma rays that Fermi is able to observe. I can see it traverse the Fermi images in fact. Fermi also observes these gamma rays from Earth. I see absolutely no need to invent additional variables to explain gamma rays in whatever quantities we might need.
Does it explain it quantitatively?


Since there is no link between "invisible Michaels" and gamma rays, no "theory" based upon mythical Michael particles can be "better than" an empirically oriented explanation, even if my math happens to work out better.
We have an empirical explanation for dark matter. The existence of dark matter is supported by galactic and cluster rotation curves (among other things).

[Tubbythin]

Got a gram of "dark matter"?

You continue to misrepresent these observations and my statements. In fact, this whole conversation demonstrates the elegance of EU theory and the absurdity of standard theory.

Every EU proponent since Birkeland has attempted to explain these high energy events in terms of "electrical discharges" and physical bodies in space. Birkeland turned the sun into a cathode and thereby created coronal loops, plasma "jets", and high energy photons. Every EU proponent would continue to suggest that gamma rays are the direct result of discharges in the atmospheres of bodies in space. Period. EU theory simplifies the whole thing to two variables, current flow and physical forms.

The fact that its simple is irrelevant. The fact that its completely wrong is the only thing that matters.

[Tubbythin]

FYI RC, your real argument was.....

Stars, discharges (background) *and* DM(excess) did it.

It has three unique sources of gamma rays.

My claim was:

Stars and discharges did it.

Your argument has an additional variable. You don't get to subtract out the background gamma rays without acknowledging that your theory is also dependent upon them. You lose the Occum's razor debate simply by stuffing *any* additional variable in there. The fact your variable is also a purely hypothetical entity with hypothetical properties galore is simply icing on the cake.

Occam's razor is completely totally and utterly irrelevant unless more than one theory can quantitatively explain the facts.
Even then its only a rule of thumb.

[DazzaD]

You're still intentionally blurring the distinction between a true "experiment" (with real control mechanisms) and an "observation" IMO. That is dangerous IMO.

So, to borrow your term, what is the "control" for our universe?


You're right, I cannot do that. What I can do is verify that fusion actually occurs here on Earth and I can isolate the physical conditions where it can occur. I can verify the fusion process to be an 'energy source" under specific conditions.

But that is my point.

The fusion that happens in the core of the Sun is NOT the same as the fusion that happens here on Earth in our labs.

They are not the same processes.


That is quite different in the case of fusion. I can't verify the conditions in the core or a hydrogen sun are capable of producing the fusion process, but I can verify that the fusion process is a known power source. In the case of fusion, you're simply "scaling" a known process to something larger than can be created here in a lab, and the only unverified claim is that the core produces the conditions necessary to drive this process on an ongoing basis. Things like neutrino measurements can/should be used to validate such a claim.

So by that argument, logically, if I claim that fusion of uranium is what powers the Sun then by virtue of the fact that we have a version of fusion happening here on Earth any type of fusion can possibly happen anyway and it should be given serious credence.

no?



By the way White Dwarfs were brought up.

Can you show me where here on Earth the experiments show the degenerate matter as evidence in White Dwarfs?

Or Neutron Stars?


That is what was at the heart of my statement that "This constant statement about having to be able to repeat the experiment on Earth is a misnomer."

I hope I have put myself across a little more clearly this time.

[Reality Check]

The answers to these questions seem to be outstanding, MM:


Michael Mozina rocks = dark matter idea Question 1 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=5304384#post5304384):
Why do astronomers not see that the number of stars increases manyfold as they look back in time?
Basically where does the "lumpy stuff" (rocks or black holes since it cannot be "dusty plasma" or MACHOs) come from?
Michael Mozina rocks = dark matter idea Question 2 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=5304384#post5304384):
Why have astronomers not noticed 40 Milky Ways of "lumpy stuff" between us and the Andromeda Galaxy?
Michael Mozina rocks = dark matter idea Question 3 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=5304442#post5304442):

Why have astronomers not found your "lumpy stuff"

Passing through the Solar System?
Floating in interstellar space?

Michael Mozina rocks = dark matter idea Question 4 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=5314019#post5314019):
Why have astronomers not found seen that galaxies become less dense with increasing distance from us?
Michael Mozina rocks = dark matter idea Question 5 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=5314019#post5314019):
Why is the "lumpy stuff" in intracluster space so much of the mass of the cluster when there has been ~13 billion years for the galaxies to vacuum up the "lumpy stuff"?
What is wrong with the computer simulations of colliding galactic clusters that include dark matter as WIMPs and match the observations? (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=5313963#post5313963)
The observations include: NASA finds further proof of dark matter (http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/1324/nasa-finds-further-proof-dark-matter)(I really dislike that "proof" word - it should be "evidence").
In addition, ben_m pointed out in this post (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5304563&postcount=443) the the collision frequency of "lumpy stuff" as rocks means that sub-MACHO size rocks will turn into dust and plasma.
Your reply was to revert to your "dusty plasma" idea as the majority of dark matter. ben_m pointed out that the collision rate of dust is measured in years so you are back to easily detectable plasma for the dust.
And then there is the problem of why the plasma part of "dusty plasma" is not interacting electromagnetically.

Another observation that may be pertinent:
Evolving Chemicals (http://angryastronomer.blogspot.com/2009/11/evolving-chemicals.html) is a blog entry about a review paper that plots the "metallicity" (the percent of elements heavier than helium) of the Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) and Quasars (QSO) against redshift. There is a large amount of scatter in the plot but it is clear that the metallicity has increased (possibly logarithmically).
IMO Your "lumpy stuff" idea means that stars will form with a large metallicity because they will include lots of dark matter rocks. Thus the data should not fit a logarithmic decrease to zero. It should be a decrease on top of a "dark matter rocks" background, i.e. not to zero and maybe not even logarithmic.

N.B.
The Wikipedia article about the intracluster meduim has an error wehere it states that the mean free path of the ICM is about a light year.
I found a couple of PDFs that look more trustworthy:
The Intracluster Medium (http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/rbc/a480/lec17n.pdf)
Gas Dynamics in Clusters of Galaxies (http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~cls7i/papers/Mexico.pdf)
and give an actual equation: Mean free path = 23 kpc (T/108)2 (n/10-3 cm-3)-1

Thus a typical ICM particle has a mean free path of 23 kpc. This is 1% of the usual scale of galactic clusters (~2 Mpc) or 2% if we keep with the 1 Mpc scale that I have been using based on the Bullet Cluster observation. That implies to me that the dark matter blobs could include as much as 2% from the ICM plasma. In other words the contribution from the ICM is insignificant.

In fact even if all of the ICM ended up in the dark matter blobs (it does not!), the contribution would still be minor. Someone would still have to find ~33 galaxies worth (for each visible galaxy) of "lumpy stuff" to make up the observed mass in the dark matter blobs.

[Michael Mozina]

I'm not intentionally blurring the distinction. I'm saying there is no distinction.

I think I'm going to tackle this statement separately from the rest of your post. IMO you're dead wrong. There is a clear distinction between a true "experiment" like the kind that Birkeland performed and a pure "observation" without any control mechanisms. This clear difference has significant implications to science in general and astronomy in particular.

It seems to be a common mistake in the industry of astronomy today to ignore, misrepresent, or simply deny the difference between a real experiment with a real control mechanism vs. a pure observation and absolutely no control mechanisms. That is simply wrong IMO.

Birkeland didn't just say "electricity did it" when pointing at aurora. He sat down and created "real experiment" with actual "control mechanism" to study his beliefs in an empirical manner. He didn't rely strictly on a mathematical model, but rather he built actual physical experiments to physically "test" his models and beliefs in the real world. He "learned things" from his actual experiments and wrote about them. That is the nature of real 'experimental science'. Experimental physics is not just "point at the sky and add math", it's "roll up your sleeves and see if it works in the lab". Electrical discharge theory works in the lab. It works empirically in the lab. We don't have to "have faith", we can recreate his physical experiments and see that they work.

Today's brand of 'astronomer' is lazy IMO. They don't want to get their fingernails dirty so they never bother to roll up their sleeves and test their ideas outside of a computer simulation. "Magnetic reconnection" has never been associated with gamma rays, but every high energy physical process on the sun is attributed to magnetic reconnection anyway. Never once has anyone recreated Birkeland's experiments using "magnetic reconnection" to generate aurora around spheres in a lab. The whole thing is one big "made up" computer simulation that is an "epic fail" in the lab.

This gamma ray argument is simply another case in point of the mainstream intentionally and willfully ignoring the obvious "solution", and interjecting complexity where absolutely none is required or warranted.

Birkeland would have taken one look at those discharge process in the solar atmosphere and he would have instantly recognized them as being "discharges". He would never have attempted to claim "magnetic reconnection did it" without trying to make it work in a real "experiment".

Like I said, I think today's brand of astronomer is simply lazy. They've traded a computer simulation for a real "empirical experiment" and now they can't even tell the difference between the two.

[Reality Check]

Got a gram of "dark matter"?
Got a gram of quarks?
Got a gram of the Sun's core?
Got a gram of the degenerate matter in a neutron star?
Got a gram of neutrinos?
Got a super massive black hole in your lab?
Got a gram of antimatter? (Fermilab in 20 years of operation has produced about 2.3 billionth of a gram (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1N1-106129336237DADE.html)).
Got a gram of W bosons?
Got a gram of quark-gluon plasma?

[Tubbythin]

I think I'm going to tackle this statement separately from the rest of your post. IMO you're dead wrong. There is a clear distinction between a true "experiment" like the kind that Birkeland performed and a pure "observation" without any control mechanisms. This clear difference has significant implications to science in general and astronomy in particular.
There are control mechanisms. And there is no difference. The laws of physics do not care how well you think you're doing things.
Suppose you have some hypothesis:
y = f(x).
That is, some quantity y, is related to some other quantity x by some function or other. How do we do a controlled experiment? We measure y for a series of specific values of x and see how well f(x) matches y. We can then compare this with some other hypothesis:
say
y = g(z)
or
y = h(x,z)
by varying z and measuring y and by varying z and keeping x constant for various values of x.
Of course there is always some possibility that when we're varying x we're also varying something else or we're not varying x by as much as we think we are. That's why we do different experiments to measure the same things. When multiple, independent experiments come up with the same results then we start to gain confidence our results are reliable.
At no point have I stated whether y is measured in the lab or with a telescope. Why? Because it doesn't matter because the laws of physics do not care how well I think I measured something.


It seems to be a common mistake in the industry of astronomy today to ignore, misrepresent, or simply deny the difference between a real experiment with a real control mechanism vs. a pure observation and absolutely no control mechanisms. That is simply wrong IMO.
See above.


Birkeland didn't just say "electricity did it" when pointing at aurora. He sat down and created "real experiment" with actual "control mechanism" to study his beliefs in an empirical manner. He didn't rely strictly on a mathematical model, but rather he built actual physical experiments to physically "test" his models and beliefs in the real world. He "learned things" from his actual experiments and wrote about them. That is the nature of real 'experimental science'. Experimental physics is not just "point at the sky and add math", it's "roll up your sleeves and see if it works in the lab". Electrical discharge theory works in the lab. It works empirically in the lab. We don't have to "have faith", we can recreate his physical experiments and see that they work.
Models of the Sun are not the Sun.


Today's brand of 'astronomer' is lazy IMO.
Today's astronomers travel all around the world in order to use the best facilities available to test their theories.


Like I said, I think today's brand of astronomer is simply lazy. They've traded a computer simulation for a real "empirical experiment" and now they can't even tell the difference between the two.
No. They just have an idea of when a lab based experiment is possible and when the situation they want to create in a lab is utterly impossible.

[ben m]

Well, for one thing, your industry refuses to acknowledge the role of electricity in space, so you require a host of exotic terms.

Listen: you know that all mainstream astronomers/astrophysicists/physicists think that EC is bunk when it tries to "explain" stars, solar flares, planets, the ISM, and whatever else. Don't imagine that we suddenly give it more credence when you get around to "explaining" dark matter.

Is it really my fault that you call a stream of fast moving charged particles (aka "current flow") a "quasar jet"?

Please note don't use the word "current flow" to describe Niagara Falls, Highway 405, the Boston Marathon, the exhaust plume of the Space Shuttle, nor the SagDEG tidal stream. All of these, of course, are net-neutral beams of + and - charged particles, just like quasar jets.


How would you even know what these processes should "look like"?


By doing astrophysics and physics.


You haven't even included the EM field into the astronomy discussion or classroom so you really don't even have a clue what these things "should" do in the first place IMO.


Yes we do. Any physics/astro undergrad learns enough E&M to understand that stars cannot carry a net electric charge, for example. Any graduate (or advanced undergrad) plasma physicist learns enough E&M to understand magnetic reconnection and how it transfers energy in solar flares.


SUSY theory is just *ONE* of several different *NON STANDARD* particle physics theories that all lack empirical support.


I've been using the word HYPOTHESIS over and over, MM. You have not caught on, have you? Yes, SUSY is a hypothesis.

The first thing I'll ask you is "how long did it last", followed by "did it emit anything"?

Standard SUSY---the SUSY that predicts the dark matter WIMPS to begin with---tells you exactly how the WIMPs will behave at the LHC. WIMPS escape from the interaction vertex without emitting anything and without decaying. You find them by doing the same sort of missing-momentum measurement that Fermi used to discover the neutrino. (SUSY also contains non-WIMP particles---squarks, etc.---which do decay in more-informative ways.)

Finally: you have not once acknowledged in this thread that the evidence for dark matter is the GRAVITATIONAL DATA on clusters, galaxies, large-scale-structure, and CMB acoustics. That data tells us dark matter exists. Fermi cannot tell us "generally" whether dark matter exists---but we don't need it to, we already know (again: gravitationally) that dark matter exists. Fermi will tell us whether or not KNOWN DARK MATTER is of the heavy-particle-that-annihilates-to-photons.

Can you get the following straight?

dark matter = gravitationally-known missing mass.
gamma rays = obviously expected if the dark matter is of one of the hypothesized self-annihilating-to-gamma varieties.
Fermi = measure gamma ray spectrum in various dark-matter-rich parts of the galaxy.

[Tubbythin]

You haven't even included the EM field into the astronomy discussion or classroom so you really don't even have a clue what these things "should" do in the first place IMO.


You're the one that doesn't seem to have a clue Michael. The idea that anyone with a degree in astronomy (let alone a PhD) hasn't done any E&M is truly absurd.

[ben m]

"mainstream" theory that evidently agrees it can observe discharges in the atmosphere of planets, but insists that the atmosphere of the sun does *NOT* generate them via a discharge process,

Planet atmosphere = rather good insulator
Stellar corona = highly conductive plasma

You like using the word "electricity" but you don't seem to like using E&M. Standard E&M finds that insulators and plasmas have different behaviors. Among these differences are the difficulties of building up static charge and electrostatic voltage (as opposed to Faraday's Law EMFs) in a plasma. Among these differences, additionally, is the fact that magnetic reconnection in a plasma tends to transfer magnetic-field energy into particle kinetic energy. Etc.

[Dancing David]

Hi, I have been following this thread and always learn a lot.

Just so you know MM will not give up on the 'experimental' idea of his. It is ingrained and not subject to critical thought.

The fact that he can not demonstrate that his ideas have any credibility does not matter to him at all, havinh watched his technique it is mainly an argument of the gaps, especially when he presents his unsupported ideas.

So while he may pretend that he understands what MACHOs are, he does not understand any of the information for why they do not explain galaxy rotation curves, because he is stuck.

[ben m]

MM's repeated invokation of "binary stars" illustrates his unfamiliarity with this science.

There is only one place that a binary star population was found to correlate with a hitherto-interesting-for-dark-matter gamma ray line. That is the 511 keV gamma ray excess, once thought to come from the (dark matter rich) galactic center but now known to come---or rather, 50% of it comes---from a LMXB-rich region a bit to the right. At the time this low-energy gamma line was less well studied, people presented various new, modified SUSY hypotheses which could generate such abnormally low energy gamma rays.

This is utterly immaterial to Fermi, which is looking at gamma rays with energies from 10,000 keV to 100,000,000 keV. The higher energies here are the spectral region where "standard" SUSY WIMPs are often hypothesized to emit.

LMXBs ("binaries") are not a *generic* gamma ray source; they're certainly not an ultra-high-energy gamma rays source. They're a specific source associated with this specific low-energy line which has nothing to do with Fermi.

[Michael Mozina]

MM's repeated invokation of "binary stars" illustrates his unfamiliarity with this science.

There is only one place that a binary star population was found to correlate with a hitherto-interesting-for-dark-matter gamma ray line. That is the 511 keV gamma ray excess, once thought to come from the (dark matter rich) galactic center but now known to come---or rather, 50% of it comes---from a LMXB-rich region a bit to the right. At the time this low-energy gamma line was less well studied, people presented various new, modified SUSY hypotheses which could generate such abnormally low energy gamma rays.

Ya, and that is the big problem with your "anything goes" just point at the sky and add math exercises. You folks first claimed the annihilation line was related to "dark matter". Now that this jig is up, you've moved on to what is evidently a supernova "circle in the sky" and claim *those* gamma rays are not evidence of "dark matter". Whenever one of your "blame the dark matter games" gets busted, you just move on to something else. Nobody can check a single thing you folks claim either, because never does this stuff happen here on Earth. We just have to have "faith" in SUSY theories that you get to modify at your leisure and you folks get to change what you point at every other month.

This is utterly immaterial to Fermi, which is looking at gamma rays with energies from 10,000 keV to 100,000,000 keV. The higher energies here are the spectral region where "standard" SUSY WIMPs are often hypothesized to emit.

And yet they never do so in a controlled experiment. Faith, faith and more faith.

LMXBs ("binaries") are not a *generic* gamma ray source; they're certainly not an ultra-high-energy gamma rays source. They're a specific source associated with this specific low-energy line which has nothing to do with Fermi.

The only thing that has to do with Fermi images are "gamma rays". Select any energy state Fermi can see, and that is now what you're going to claim relates to "dark matter". Anything goes and the rules change regularly. Nobody can check any of this work empirically, it's all a faith based mathematical exercise. The math will work out of course because it's "fudged to fit", so we're always left with that statement of "faith" that "WIMPS (or whatever you decide to play with next) did it".

[Michael Mozina]

Hi, I have been following this thread and always learn a lot.

Just so you know MM will not give up on the 'experimental' idea of his. It is ingrained and not subject to critical thought.

My belief system and your belief system are both subject to critical thought. From my perspective the problem is that you folks refuse to skeptically review your belief systems. They are based upon 4% empirical physics and 96% faith.

Empirical physics isn't going to "let me down". At worst it's going to be modified over time to incorporate new things we've learned. The mainsteram belief system however seems be "beyond scrutiny" at this point in time because it is 96% beyond the scope of empirical physics. I can't verify for instance that SUSY particles exist, that they emit anything, or that they emit gamma rays at any energy state. It's all something I have to "accept on faith". I don't have faith in such things. Now what? Shall I simply give your faith a "free pass" every time that you folks point at the sky and claim "dark something did it"?

Sure, anything is "possible", but how "probable" is it that LHC will find something new that exactly fits your specifications and needs? Sorry, but I think that the odds are very low frankly. Even if some other particles do exist, they could be related to *ANY* non standard theory of particle physics and SUSY theory is simply one of those "fringe" particle physics theories.

Such a particle might only last a millisecond. It might not decay into any sort of gamma ray. I have no idea what such a hypothetical particle might do, but I have no evidence at all that any such particle would emit gamma rays.

What are the odds in your opinion that this is going to occur in our lifetimes? I'd guess it's rather unlikely. In the mean time I intend to pursue "empirical' solutions to problems, things that "work in the lab" and therefore work in nature. I have no idea if DM or DE exist at all, and without them your theories are DOA. Sorry, but I just can't see abandoning empirical physics only because you insists I am obligated to do so.

The fact that he can not demonstrate that his ideas have any credibility does not matter to him at all, havinh watched his technique it is mainly an argument of the gaps, especially when he presents his unsupported ideas.

That is pure nonsense IMO. Birkeland already empirically (with real "experiments' with real "control mechanisms") demonstrated all of my core ideas and beliefs. You personally are capable of replicating his experiments and seeing them work anytime you like. I've seen that Birkeland's core ideas work perfectly in the lab, and this is an electric universe. There is no need for me to resort to mythical particles to explain gamma rays. "Discharges" do this all the time. Supernova events are capable of creating even higher energy gamma rays. I have no need for any "dark matter" to explain gamma rays.

So while he may pretend that he understands what MACHOs are, he does not understand any of the information for why they do not explain galaxy rotation curves, because he is stuck.

I am in fact "stuck" by playing "by the rules" of empirical physics. I realize that larger sized objects would be detected by our current technologies but I also recognize that smaller particles will not be seen by such techniques. I can't simply "make up" what I can't see. I don't do things that way. Yes, I am "stuck", but then so are you. Just because neither of us can explain what we observe yet does not mean that you get to simply "make up the properties of the stuff that you want and need" to fit the observation in question. Evidently you think that if you and I can't "explain" what we observe, I am somehow obligated to join your faith based organization or be ridiculed. Sorry, but you folks will have to do better than ridicule. You'll need some real "physical empirical evidence" to go with your math. At that point in time you get to call it "empirical physics". Right now all you get to call it is "faith in hypothetical entities" aka "religion".

[Michael Mozina]

You're the one that doesn't seem to have a clue Michael. The idea that anyone with a degree in astronomy (let alone a PhD) hasn't done any E&M is truly absurd.

If you folks weren't promoting what Alfven called "pseudoscience", and you (collectively) weren't doing everything possible to smear Alfven's PC/EU theories, I might actually believe you. :)

[Michael Mozina]

There are control mechanisms.

Birkeland's "control mechanism" was an on/off switch and dial. What are you using to "control" dark matter?

And there is no difference. The laws of physics do not care how well you think you're doing things.

Er, ditto?

No. They just have an idea of when a lab based experiment is possible and when the situation they want to create in a lab is utterly impossible.

It's entirely "possible" to create gamma rays from discharges. Why did I need hypothetical entities to explain gamma rays?

[ben m]

The only thing that has to do with Fermi images are "gamma rays". Select any energy state Fermi can see, and that is now what you're going to claim relates to "dark matter".

That's funny, when I go to the ArXiV looking for recent gamma ray papers, I find dozens and dozens of Fermi discoveries of gamma ray pulsars, gamma rays from supernovae, and gamma rays from cosmic-ray proton collisions.

When I look at the specific Fermi paper on the Galactic Center excess, I see them describing most of the gamma rays as a mix of electron-inverse-Compton-on-starlight (with an electron spectrum like E^-3, resembling that near Earth) and pion decay from CR proton-proton collisions. It's only the gamma rays that fit neither of these non-dark-matter models that are declared to be possibly interesting for further investigation.

Really, you seem to be subscribing to a bizarre fantasy of what Fermi could do wrong if they were unscientific morons. They are not, in fact, doing any of those things wrong---you're inventing them all out of whole cloth.

[ben m]

I am in fact "stuck" by playing "by the rules" of empirical physics. I realize that larger sized objects would be detected by our current technologies but I also recognize that smaller particles will not be seen by such techniques.

You again ignored the fact that smaller particles would be seen by other techniques.

gravitating dark matter: not star-mass, not planet-mass, not rock-mass, not dust-mass, not gases. What do you think it is when you don't ignore the data?

[Michael Mozina]

Listen: you know that all mainstream astronomers/astrophysicists/physicists think that EC is bunk when it tries to "explain" stars, solar flares, planets, the ISM, and whatever else. Don't imagine that we suddenly give it more credence when you get around to "explaining" dark matter.

This statement just seems utterly irrational from my perspective. We point Rhessi and Fermi at the Earth and we observe gamma rays from "powerful electrical discharges" in the Earth's atmosphere. Alfven looked at skylab x-ray images of sun and attributed these high energy events to "discharges' in the solar atmosphere, as did Birkeland before him and Bruce and many other folks as well. They "explained" these solar events in terms of discharges in plasma.

Birkeland and his team (it wasn't just one guy by the way) actually created/simulated "coronal loops", "jets", all the same high energy events we see in the solar atmosphere in a lab in real experiments. He did so "empirically" in real "experiments" with real control mechanisms. You *REFUSE* to accept what has already been "explained" empirically. You can't explain coronal loops. You can't explain what they individually reach millions of degrees and stay that way for hours on end. Birkeland certainly could do so. He even "predicted" them in real physical experiments. He "predicted" high speed solar wind. He "predicted" jets. The mainstream *refuses* to embrace these "solutions" because they are part of EU theory. Your biases are utterly irrational. It's making your beliefs systems become "irrational" too. You'd rather put your faith in "dark matter gamma rays" than the gamma rays we see from our own sun and our own atmosphere. It makes no sense.

[Michael Mozina]

You again ignored the fact that smaller particles would be seen by other techniques.

What technique would see our own moon?

gravitating dark matter: not star-mass, not planet-mass, not rock-mass, not dust-mass, not gases. What do you think it is when you don't ignore the data?

From my perspective Ben you're simply "assuming" that you can already be "so certain" that you haven't missed anything that you "put your faith" in a hypothetical particle with a half dozen required "properties" to make your beliefs systems work. That's bizarre IMO. Our technologies simply are not that sophisticated or that precise. We don't even know what we don't know. Hell, we're still finding satellite galaxies around our own galaxy and we've been underestimating the amount of light being blocked by dust by at least a factor of 2! Come on. There is no way that you can claim to have already eliminated all possible forms of baryonic matter. You just "think" you have.

[Michael Mozina]

That's funny, when I go to the ArXiV looking for recent gamma ray papers, I find dozens and dozens of Fermi discoveries of gamma ray pulsars, gamma rays from supernovae, and gamma rays from cosmic-ray proton collisions.

You don't hear me bitching about those papers do you?

When I look at the specific Fermi paper on the Galactic Center excess, I see them describing most of the gamma rays as a mix of electron-inverse-Compton-on-starlight (with an electron spectrum like E^-3, resembling that near Earth) and pion decay from CR proton-proton collisions.

You didn't hear be complain about that either.

It's only the gamma rays that fit neither of these non-dark-matter models that are declared to be possibly interesting for further investigation.

The fact you can't explain them is not a justification for 'dark matter did it".

Really, you seem to be subscribing to a bizarre fantasy of what Fermi could do wrong if they were unscientific morons. They are not, in fact, doing any of those things wrong---you're inventing them all out of whole cloth.

You know Ben, when I was in my 20's, fresh out of college, I had the greatest respect for astronomers. Since that time however I've watched what used to be a wonderful branch of physical science go to hell in a metaphysical hand basket. I've see the industry make about every bad decision that I can possibly think of when it comes to cosmology theory. What used to be a branch of empirical physics has turned into a faith based religion that is 96% useless metaphysical mumbo jumbo that is about as useful as numerology, and only 4% actual physics.

I'm certainly not "inventing" the fact that astronomers have stuffed the "Big Bang" theory that I was taught in college with metaphysical entities galore like "inflation", "dark energy" and now exotic forms of mythical matter, none of which can be empirically verified in any sort of actual experiment. Many of the astronomers I've met online recently and in this conversation (including you evidently) can't even tell the difference between a real physics "experiment" (with actual control mechanisms) and a pure "observation" where we have no control at all.

Sorry Ben, but I've seen this industry in action now for a long time.

[Tubbythin]

If you folks weren't promoting what Alfven called "pseudoscience", and you (collectively) weren't doing everything possible to smear Alfven's PC/EU theories, I might actually believe you. :)

I don't recall having smeared Alfven's theories of PC/EU. I've just at various times that your PC/EU theories are inconsistent with the data. Which is all that really matters.

[Tubbythin]

Birkeland's "control mechanism" was an on/off switch and dial.
That's nice. An astronomer can stop observing whenever they like. What exactly is your point?


What are you using to "control" dark matter?
Nothing. If I had some dark matter in my possession I'd probably have a Nobel prize. Sadly, I don't have either. We're talking about a controlled experiment not a controlled manipulation of matter. "We" can do a controlled experiment to search for dark matter using the basic principles I outlined above. I'm fast coming to the conclusion that you don't know what a controlled experiment is.



Er, ditto?
???


It's entirely "possible" to create gamma rays from discharges. Why did I need hypothetical entities to explain gamma rays?
Can you quantitatively explain the whole observed gamma ray spectrum with discharges?

[ben m]

What technique would see our own moon?


See this post: http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5304563&postcount=443 If you try to make the gravitating dark matter out of a collection of moons (that's the 2nd-to-last column of my table) you expect 0.2% of these moons to collide with one another per gigayear; 2% collide over the life of the Galaxy. That's not dark matter, that's a completely absurd quantity of metal-rich (no, make that absurdly metal rich), opaque, trivially-detectable dust---that's a Galaxy with more dust than stars and about as much dust as gas altogether. That is not the galaxy we live in.


From my perspective Ben you're simply "assuming" that you can already be "so certain" that you haven't missed anything

Thirty years of constantly-improving, dead-on-consistent data can get you that kind of certainty.

How long have you been proving that SUSY is a false hypothesis? How many papers and cross-checks have you used to reinforce your certainty that the Standard Model is 100% complete and cannot additional sub-TeV particle content? You sound pretty certain about it.

[ben m]

You don't hear me bitching about those papers do you?


You said "select any energy Fermi can see" and they'll attribute it to dark matter. Would you like to retract that statement in face of evidence to the contrary?

[Michael Mozina]

So, to borrow your term, what is the "control" for our universe?

There obviously isn't one. :)

But that is my point.

The fusion that happens in the core of the Sun is NOT the same as the fusion that happens here on Earth in our labs.

They are not the same processes.

That would be "your" assumption but not necessarily mine. :)

So by that argument, logically, if I claim that fusion of uranium is what powers the Sun then by virtue of the fact that we have a version of fusion happening here on Earth any type of fusion can possibly happen anyway and it should be given serious credence.

no?

If you can show me an example of uranium fusing to anything else, sure. If not, no.

By the way White Dwarfs were brought up.

Can you show me where here on Earth the experiments show the degenerate matter as evidence in White Dwarfs?

Or Neutron Stars?

No, but these are basically just reconfigurations of known and standard baryonic materials. Neutrons certainly exist in nature.

That is what was at the heart of my statement that "This constant statement about having to be able to repeat the experiment on Earth is a misnomer."

I hope I have put myself across a little more clearly this time.

I'm not even complaining about "quark stars" or "black holes"!

Keep in mind that I have never had a problem with "scaling' any known entity to size, nor am I adverse to any reconfiguration of known forms of matter that you might postulate. It's only if you intend to introduce some other new form of matter or new type of energy that I will require additional support of that specific claim. That hardly seems "unreasonable", particularly in the case of "dark energy" which supposedly makes up 70+
% of the universe and "dark matter" that is supposedly many time more abundant than the dirt in my backyard.

[Michael Mozina]

You said "select any energy Fermi can see" and they'll attribute it to dark matter. Would you like to retract that statement in face of evidence to the contrary?

So the fact that they USED to attribute annihilation signatures to "dark matter', but now they don't do so any longer is supposed to erase the fact that they did it in the first place? Would you be you happier if I said "every high energy gamma ray they can think of (and can't otherwise explain)" they will now try to attribute to "dark matter"?

[Reality Check]

I am in fact "stuck" by playing "by the rules" of empirical physics. I realize that larger sized objects would be detected by our current technologies but I also recognize that smaller particles will not be seen by such techniques.
Wrong:
You are actually ignoring the rules of empirical physics.

ben_m already pointed out the empirical physics of the collision rates of clouds of rocks many days ago (13 November 2009, see below). This empirical physics is easy to understand. It shows that your "smaller particles" collide at a rate that turns them into hot plasma in cosmologically short times.

Another chunk of of empirical physics that you are ignoring is the question of where do your rocks come from?

And then there are all the other questions that you are ignoring. (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=5337137#post5337137)

I went ahead and did a calculation: how collisionless would "rocky" dark matter be?

rock size (m) vs. time between collisions (gigayears)
0.001 1.93013e-09
0.003 5.79039e-09
0.009 1.73712e-08
0.027 5.21135e-08
0.081 1.5634e-07
0.243 4.69021e-07
0.729 1.40706e-06
2.187 4.22119e-06
6.561 1.26636e-05
19.683 3.79907e-05
59.049 0.000113972
177.147 0.000341917
531.441 0.00102575
1594.32 0.00307725
4782.97 0.00923175
14348.9 0.0276952
43046.7 0.0830857
129140 0.249257
387420 0.747772
1.16226e+06 2.24331
3.48678e+06 6.72994
1.04604e+07 20.1898
3.13811e+07 60.5695
9.41432e+07 181.709
2.8243e+08 545.126
8.47289e+08 1635.38


That calculation is done for the Earth's "local" dark matter: isotropic 220 km/s orbits through a 0.3 GeV/cm^3 mean density. I gave it 5g/cm^3 density, somewhere between stone and iron.

Look at those numbers. If you built the Milky Way using Volkswagen-sized rocks as the dark matter, they'd last four thousand years between collisions; they'd be dust and plasma. Use 500 m asteroids, they'd last a million years before colliding and pulverizing. (Remember, these are 220 km/s collisions; they make Shoemaker-Levy look wimpy.) A 10^6 m planetoid could last for a gigayear---at least that survives a full Galactic orbit!---but at that point we're into the stuff that the EROS surveys have ruled out. Sub-meter-scale dust, of course, is not collisionless at all which is why it's never been even in the ballpark of viable dark matter candidates.

MM might object to these numbers all being so small: how has Earth survived for 4 Gy, he might ask, if Earthlike objects are supposedly so collision-prone? The answer is twofold: (a) dark matter is much DENSER than regular matter. The number density of actual rocks/planets/Earths is much, much lower than the number density I need to hypothesize to make them dark matter. (b) Dark matter is isotropic---it seems to orbit the Milky Way in a spherical halo, which implies orbits that intersect one another all over the place. The Earth (and most of the Galaxy's baryonic matter) is in the Galactic Disk, where intersections are much, much sparser than those in the halo.

Conclusion: rocks cannot be dark matter. Anything small would be highly collisional, and could not possibly remain "rocky" in a dense halo full of other rocks. Anything large would have been seen by EROS. The two ranges overlap generously.

and

I just showed you that dust doesn't pass through. The mean free flight time of sub-meter dust, IF there's enough of it to make up the dark matter halo, is measured in years---look at the early entries of the table. It orbits a short distance and then it collides. The collisions (a) make it NOT neutral dust anymore, they make it a hot plasma which is trivially visible in both absorbtion and emission. (The mean collision kinetic energy is over 200 eV per nucleon, far above ionization energies.) The collisions (b) remove material from halo orbits and drop it into non-intersecting disk orbits. Dark matter is not in the disk, it's in the halo.

Don't like my assumptions? Propose your own. Can you find *any* configuration of dust, rocks, and planets which can peacefully fill the Galactic halo for more than a gigayear or so?

[Tubbythin]

Keep in mind that I have never had a problem with "scaling' any known entity to size, nor am I adverse to any reconfiguration of known forms of matter that you might postulate.

Bosons exist with masses below the TeV range. I propose scaling this up to get bosons in the TeV range. That ok with you?

[Michael Mozina]

That's nice. An astronomer can stop observing whenever they like. What exactly is your point?

Hoy. So you really mean to tell me that you can't personally tell the difference between "observation" and a "control mechanism"? A control mechanism isn't created by "looking away". A control mechanism is a variable that you can change *WHILE STILL OBSERVING THE EXPERIMENT* so you can see what happens as the result of your changes to the control mechanism. :)

In Birkeland's case, he didn't "stop looking" at the experiment. He changed variables. He modified the surface of the sphere. He changed the magnetic field strength inside the sphere. He changes the "current flow" coming from the sphere. He changed the amount of gas inside the chamber. These are "control mechanisms" that have an effect on the experiment. "Looking away" isn't a "control mechanism". :)

[Tubbythin]

Hoy. So you really mean to tell me that you can't personally tell the difference between "observation" and a "control mechanism"? A control mechanism isn't created by "looking away". A control mechanism is a variable that you can change *WHILE STILL OBSERVING THE EXPERIMENT* so you can see what happens as the result of your changes to the control mechanism. :)

In Birkeland's case, he didn't "stop looking" at the experiment. He changed variables. He modified the surface of the sphere. He changed the magnetic field strength inside the sphere. He changes the "current flow" coming from the sphere. He changed the amount of gas inside the chamber. These are "control mechanisms" that have an effect on the experiment. "Looking away" isn't a "control mechanism". :)

Exactly! Its no more or less a control mechanism than an on/off switch. And yet you just claimed:
Birkeland's "control mechanism" was an on/off switch and dial.

:jaw-dropp

[Michael Mozina]

I don't recall having smeared Alfven's theories of PC/EU. I've just at various times that your PC/EU theories are inconsistent with the data. Which is all that really matters.

That depends. It depends on *why* something might be inconsistent with whatever data we're discussing. IMO you folks don't even *TRY* to make it work with any creativity before going back to playing around with metaphysics. :) With you guys it's like "Oh look, we found a mathematical flaw in this EU paper. EU is obviously bunk and dark stuff obviously did it." :)

Birkeland IMO puts us *ALL* (myself certainly included) to shame as an example of "real astronomer". The guy risked his very life (and the lives of his best friends) to take in-situ measurements in the most hostile environments on Earth so that he could then compare his measurements to his exhaustive experiments. He (actually they) conducted *real* experiments too. He didn't just point at the sky and add math although he certainly quantified his ideas. He built real life "working models" of this theories. He created "real aurora' around 'real spheres' by bombarding the sphere with cathode rays. He then turned his sphere into a cathode and watched it "work" in a 'real world experiment'. He use "actual control mechanisms" in his experiments too, he didn't just "stop looking". :)

[Michael Mozina]

Exactly! Its no more or less a control mechanism than an on/off switch. And yet you just claimed:


:jaw-dropp

Man. I've seen people cling to a sinking ship before but you're close to winning a cyber-award or something. :)

Come on. You mean to tell me you can't honestly tell the difference between a control mechanism and "blinking"? :)

[Michael Mozina]

Wrong:
You are actually ignoring the rules of empirical physics.

How ironic. This coming from the guy that probably hasn't even read Birkeland's work, let alone Alfven's work.

ben_m already pointed out the empirical physics of the collision rates of clouds of rocks many days ago (13 November 2009, see below). This empirical physics is easy to understand. It shows that your "smaller particles" collide at a rate that turns them into hot plasma in cosmologically short times.

What kind of assumptions was he making anyway? We'll have to save that conversation for the other thread because unless you can show some correlation between "dark matter" and "gamma radiation", it has nothing whatsoever to do with this thread.

Another chunk of of empirical physics that you are ignoring is the question of where do your rocks come from?

Supernova events.

[ben m]

So the fact that they USED to attribute annihilation signatures to "dark matter', but now they don't do so any longer is supposed to erase the fact that they did it in the first place?

That's how science is supposed to work. The 511-keV-from-dark-matter claim was a hypothesis, posed in response to data. That particular hypothesis made further predictions for future data. In this case, the new data (thanks to higher spatial resolution) ruled out the 511-kev-from-dark-matter hypothesis.

Would you be you happier if I said "every high energy gamma ray they can think of (and can't otherwise explain)" they will now try to attribute to "dark matter"?

They will try to explain the actual observed properties of the gamma rays, including spectral, spatial, and timing data. If dark matter is a better explanation than the alternatives, then this will be taken seriously. If not, it won't. Just like it has been so far. If higher resolution and more careful future work really nails it down, you may find people calling it a "discovery" rather than a "candidate" or a "hypothesis".

[Tubbythin]

Man. I've seen people cling to a sinking ship before but you're close to winning a cyber-award or something. :)

Come on. You mean to tell me you can't honestly tell the difference between a control mechanism and "blinking"? :)

We were talking about controlled experiments...

The ability to blink does not make the experiment a controlled experiment.

Looking away does not make the experiment a controlled experiment.

An on/off switch does not make the experiment a controlled experiment.

A controlled experiment is one in which we can vary one parameter and keep all other independent variables constant (or as near as damn it).
This is neither an exclusive property of a lab-based experiment nor a guarantee certainty in a lab based experiment.

[ben m]

Supernova events.

Snap! Like magic! Tell me, what properties exactly do you need to hypothesize that supernovae have, in order for this hypothesis ("supernovae produce rocks") is compatible with (a) abundant data on supernovae spectra, time evolution, and post-shock environments, (b) gravitational data on dark matter, and (c) everything else we know about the metallicity of the Milky Way?

That is, of course, exactly what we have done (repeatedly) with
our various dark matter hypotheses. When I say (for example) "I hypothesize that axions are the dark matter" I mean that I can state a coherent, compact axion hypothesis which is consistent with all of these things and which anyone can evaluate and compare to data.

[Michael Mozina]

That's how science is supposed to work. The 511-keV-from-dark-matter claim was a hypothesis, posed in response to data. That particular hypothesis made further predictions for future data. In this case, the new data (thanks to higher spatial resolution) ruled out the 511-kev-from-dark-matter hypothesis.

The problem is that there was no empirical basis to make the assertion that "dark matter did it" in the first place. The fact it was 'entertained' at all is amusing, but after awhile don't you think it's eroding your credibility (collectively)? How many times do I have to watch you rush to try to explain something in the sky with 'dark matter' before I start thinking you're crying wolf? It seems to me like you're looking for any excuse to stuff the gaps of our ignorance with "dark stuff" of some kind.

They will try to explain the actual observed properties of the gamma rays, including spectral, spatial, and timing data.

Will they include any EU oriented concepts of any sort? If so I certainly see few if any examples of such things on Arxiv, and fewer still in mainstream publications.

If dark matter is a better explanation than the alternatives, then this will be taken seriously.

Why? You can't demonstrate any of it. It's pure mathematical speculation.

If not, it won't. Just like it has been so far. If higher resolution and more careful future work really nails it down, you may find people calling it a "discovery" rather than a "candidate" or a "hypothesis".

It seems to me that the one and only thing that astronomers do not wish to 'discover' in astronomical data is "current flow". They therefore go out of their collective way to minimize the role of electricity in space and stuff every gap in their gravity-centric theory with "dark stuff".

Don't you find it even a little odd that 70% of the universe is supposedly composed of "dark energy' and yet we see no physical evidence of it here on Earth? Then again, if your 'dark energy' turns out to be a misconceived understanding of an ordinary EM field, Birkeland's work fit's nicely into your theory. And oh ya, it also produces gamma rays. :)

[Michael Mozina]

Snap! Like magic!

Um, in what way is my statement even inconsistent with 'standard' theory? Doesn't standard theory insist that all heavy elements originate in supernova events?

[ben m]

The problem is that there was no empirical basis to make the assertion that "dark matter did it" in the first place.


You are still confused about "hypotheses". A hypothesis is something you don't have evidence for yet.

Given that we have gravitational evidence for dark matter, and that we don't know what it's made of, any hypothesis whatsoever for what this matter is made of is worth pursuing until the data rules it out. MACHOs and MOND were worth pursuing in the past but now the data has ruled them out.


How many times do I have to watch you rush to try to explain something in the sky with 'dark matter' before I start thinking you're crying wolf?


If watching people hypothesize hurts you somehow, MM, perhaps the sciences are not a good career track for you. It's what we do. Astro does it, particle physics does it, nuclear and solid-state and plasma and so on all do it.


It seems to me like you're looking for any excuse to stuff the gaps of our ignorance with "dark stuff" of some kind.


That would sound more reasonable if, somehow, we didn't have a 20-year-old concordance cosmology in which gravity, CMB, and BBN data all agree that there is extra non-baryonic matter.


Well they include any EU oriented concepts of any sort?


We don't rule out generic "concepts". We rule out hypotheses. Do you have a specific EU hypothesis about what the gravitating dark matter is? Oh, wait, you hypothesized that it was rocks, then moons, then dust, then RAMBOs, etc., all of which are ruled out by data. "Don't you think you are eroding your credibility?" etc.

[ben m]

Um, in what way is my statement even inconsistent with 'standard' theory? Doesn't standard theory insist that all heavy elements originate in supernova events?

Standard supernova theory agrees with the standard heavy element budget in which the Milky Way is about 0.5% carbon, 0.5% oxygen, 0.1% neon, and 0.1% iron. It would not agree with your new proposed heavy element budget in which the Milky Way is something like 80% carbon, or 80% iron/silicon/oxygen (those are your "rocks", aren't they?), while all stars/winds/nebulae/ICMs/etc remain mysteriously 74% H + 24% He as usual. (And where you either don't make any neon or you keep the neon stuck in the rocks ... ?? )

Yeah, sure, "the dark matter is probably rocks" is easy to say, isn't it? But the numbers matter. Numbers matter in ruling out MACHOs in the same way that numbers matter in calculating the electrostatic charge of the Sun, and the same way that numbers matter in calculating whether a SUSY dark-matter hypothesis is or is not compatible with both collider data and with astrophysics.

[Reality Check]

How ironic. This coming from the guy that probably hasn't even read Birkeland's work, let alone Alfven's work.

You really are forgetful.
I have read both Birkeland's work and many of Alfven's papers. Other posters have also read both.

You have made several unsupported assertions about Birkeland's work in another thread so it seems appropriate to mention them here:

Where is the the solar wind and the appropriate math in Birkelands book? (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4880323&postcount=710) First asked 7th July 2009
Please cite where in his book Birkeland identified fission as the "original current source" (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4876906&postcount=652) and in the same post
Please cite where in his book Birkeland identified a discharge process between the Sun's surface and the heliosphere (about 10 billion kilometers from the Sun). (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4876906&postcount=652) First asked 7th July 2009
Is Saturn the Sun? (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4899982&postcount=932) First asked 14 July 2009
(Birkelands Fig 247a is an analogy for Saturn's rings but MM compares it to to the Sun).

What kind of assumptions was he making anyway?

Read his post or my quote of his post.


We'll have to save that conversation for the other thread because unless you can show some correlation between "dark matter" and "gamma radiation", it has nothing whatsoever to do with this thread.

This is the thread for the MM "lumpy stuff" = dark matter (and so cannot emit gamma rays) idea so we will discuss it here.

There is a correlation between dark matter and gamma radiation. If dark matter is SUSY particles then it will emit gamma rays. Try reading some of ben_m's posts.

[Reality Check]

Supernova events.
Michael Mozina rocks = dark matter idea Question 1 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=5304384#post5304384):
Why do astronomers not see that the number of stars increases manyfold as they look back in time?
Basically where does the "lumpy stuff" (rocks or black holes since it cannot be "dusty plasma" or MACHOs) come from?

And another observation that may be pertinent:
Evolving Chemicals (http://angryastronomer.blogspot.com/2009/11/evolving-chemicals.html) is a blog entry about a review paper that plots the "metallicity" (the percent of elements heavier than helium) of the Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) and Quasars (QSO) against redshift. There is a large amount of scatter in the plot but it is clear that the metallicity has increased (possibly logarithmically) from a low value.

IMO Your "lumpy stuff" idea means that stars will form with a large metallicity because they will include lots of dark matter rocks. Thus the data should not fit a logarithmic decrease to zero. It should be a decrease on top of a "dark matter rocks" background, i.e. not to zero and maybe not even logarithmic

[Bill Thompson]

Correct me if I am wrong.

Isn't Dark Matter something that was determined after figuring out the mass of a galaxy and then figuring the mass of all the galaxy's stars and noticing that there was a huge gap between the two?

[ben m]

Correct me if I am wrong.

Isn't Dark Matter something that was determined after figuring out the mass of a galaxy and then figuring the mass of all the galaxy's stars and noticing that there was a huge gap between the two?

Almost right---you're adding up both stars and (much more massive) non-star gas clouds. That's one of five or six major dark matter observations, all of which point to the same missing mass.

[Bill Thompson]

Almost right---you're adding up both stars and (much more massive) non-star gas clouds. That's one of five or six major dark matter observations, all of which point to the same missing mass.

So why would anyone think there is no such thing as Dark Matter?

[Tubbythin]

So why would anyone think there is no such thing as Dark Matter?

Seeing is believing?

[Michael Mozina]

So why would anyone think there is no such thing as Dark Matter?

I have no doubt that our technology prohibits us from identifying all the mass in a distant galaxy. I simply "lack belief" that any of that unidentified mass is contained in exotic forms of matter like hypothetical SUSY particles.

[Reality Check]

So why would anyone think there is no such thing as Dark Matter?
If you are referring to Michael Mozina then that is not his position.
His position is that dark matter exists but that without "empirical evidence" it can never be SUSY particles that emit gamma rays that could explain features in the Fermi data.
He has his own personal definition of empirical evidence which seems to be only that evidence that can be tested in controlled experiments in labs here on Earth.
The actual definition of empirical (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical) used in science and by scientists includes observations, i.e. most of astronomy, evolution and lots of geology. The definition also does not say anything about experiments being controllable. An observation of a supernova is empirical evidence despite the fact that we have no control over the supernova.

The empirical evidence is that dark matter is made of SUSY (or more exotic) particles.

Much of the thread is now about Michael Mozina's idea that dark matter must be normal matter, e.g. rocks. This is easily shown to be wrong. Planet sized (or bigger) rocks are ruled out by the search for MACHO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MACHO)s in the Milky Way halo only finding at most 8% of the mass needed for dark matter.
Smaller rocks are ruled out by the frequency of collisions between them This turns them into either bigger rocks (if they stick) and so ruled out above or more likely into even smaller rocks with a higher collision rate. It also heats them up. The end result is an easily detected plasma of the elements of rocks (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and others).

Another problem is the origin of the rocks. If 70% or even 96% of the universe (since Michael Mozina does not believe that dark energy exists) is rocks then where did they come from?
The elements in the rocks could come from supernovae but I doubt that the observed rate of supernovae could supply that much within the lifetime of the universe (13.7 billion years).
If by some magic supernovae supply the elements then you need stars to form to condense the elements into rocks. But only 0.4% of the universe is stars!


Once you have rocks as dark matter then you have real problems with the formation and evolution of stars.

They will form from a mixture of rocks and the interstellar medium. Thus all stars will have a high percentage of C, N, O, etc in them (a high metalicity). This is not observed.
It is even possible that the metalicity of the cloud of gas and rocks is so high that stars cannot form. What you may get is a hot plasma that is not undergoing fusion. After some millions of years you have a realy big and cold rock.
IMO stars with a high metalicity will screw up the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertzsprung%E2%80%93Russell_diagram) by truncating the main sequence at a lower color, e.g. no stars like the Sun.
And yet another problem with rocks as dark matter:
The large scale structure of the universe is well matched by the Lambda-CDM model (CDM = cold dark matter) using the current amount of dark matter. This structure is established early in the history of the universe, e.g. galaxies are formed before 1 billion years after the Big Bang. Thus all of these rocks must have also formed early.
So there is only a couple of billion years for some process to convert 70% or 96% of the mass of the universe into rocks.
This process then stops! Otherwise 100% of the universe could be rocks.

[ben m]

I have no doubt that our technology prohibits us from identifying all the mass in a distant galaxy.

a) Not just distant galaxies: the Milky Way too.

b) I presume you mean "prohibits us from identifying all the baryonic/stellar/gas mass". The people who invented this technology, who have decades of experience with this technology and with the huge variety of ways that dust/gas/stars present themselves, disagree with you. Your confidence is misplaced.

c) The CMB and BBN constraints on dark matter have nothing to do with our ability to identify matter in galaxies. They provide separate baryon and nonbaryon mass measurements at a moment in time before stars or galaxies existed.

[Michael Mozina]

If you are referring to Michael Mozina then that is not his position.
His position is that dark matter exists but that without "empirical evidence" it can never be SUSY particles that emit gamma rays that could explain features in the Fermi data.

Let me try an analogy here that may help.

I'm sure that there are many "unidentified flying objects" that get reported every year. I don't have any evidence that any of these sitings relates to an object from another planet. In fact if I had to bet money on it, I would consistently bet against the unidentified flying object being from another planet, and I would be correct at least *most* of the time. :)

I'm sure there are lots of forms of matter that our technologies cannot "see", but that does not mean that the "unidentified flying matter' must exist in some exotic form of matter.

[Reality Check]

Let me try an analogy here that may help.
It is not an anology.
It is a statement that you will only believe in the things you believe in.


I'm sure there are lots of forms of matter that our technologies cannot "see", but that does not mean that the "unidentified flying matter' must exist in some exotic form of matter.

Dark matter can be detected.
All of the evidence supports that dark matter is some exotic form of matter:

It cannot be normal matter because it would be detected as pointed out many times in this thread.
It acts as if it is not normal matter since it passes through normal matter when normal matter does not: Bullet Cluster (http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/), MACS J0025.4-1222 (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/32/) and Abell 520 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abell_520).

[ben m]

I'm sure there are lots of forms of matter that our technologies cannot "see"

Again, you mean "forms of stellar/gas/baryonic matter". Your confidence is misplaced---keep in mind that a few days ago you seemed to be "sure" that rocks, moons, dust, and RAMBOs were "forms of matter that our technologies cannot see", and you were wrong.

So you're now just hoping, in the vaguest possible terms, that there's some other form of baryonic matter other than the ones we've ruled out. What elements, what phase, what density, what collision cross-section, what behavior in collisions? You don't seem to care. The vaguer the better, because you don't want your hypothesis to be ruled out using (say) things we know about baryonic matter, about light, and about telescopes.

[Dancing David]

I have no doubt that our technology prohibits us from identifying all the mass in a distant galaxy. I simply "lack belief" that any of that unidentified mass is contained in exotic forms of matter like hypothetical SUSY particles.

If you were understanding the arguments, it is that the data do not match the theory that it is normal baryonic matter. That is why, the evidence does not match it in our own close up agalxy either. You are saying That there is all this baryoinic mass is our own galaxy that we can not detect.

Why not? Where is it?

[Michael Mozina]

If you were understanding the arguments, it is that the data do not match the theory that it is normal baryonic matter. That is why, the evidence does not match it in our own close up agalxy either. You are saying That there is all this baryoinic mass is our own galaxy that we can not detect.

Why not? Where is it?

Evidently the answer is "everywhere".

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Cosmic_Dig_Reveals_Vestiges_Of_Milky_Ways_Building _Blocks_999.html

Through the sharp eye of the VLT, the astronomers also found that Terzan 5 is more massive than previously thought: along with the complex composition and troubled star formation history of the system, this suggests that it might be the surviving remnant of a disrupted proto-galaxy, which merged with the Milky Way during its very early stages and thus contributed to form the galactic bulge.

Happy Thanksgiving. :)

[Michael Mozina]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18202-energetic-gamma-rays-spotted-from-microquasar.html

Now, two orbiting telescopes, the Italian Space Agency's AGILE telescope and NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, have detected gamma rays emanating from Cygnus X-3, some more than 1000 times more energetic than previous measurements.

So evidently we have another "natural" source of high energy gamma rays, and we have no need for "dark matter did it" explanations related to very high energy gamma rays.

It is not clear how these high-energy photons are produced, Tavani says.......


But of course anything related to "ELECTROmagnetic fields in "out"" and "magnetic" explanations are "in". We can't have that dreaded "electrical" concept in there. Yep. Look at the "explanation".

The gamma rays could be generated when charged particles are accelerated by strong magnetic fields around the stellar remnant.

Yep. "Magnetism" is "ok" by you folks. Anything that combined the *WHOLE EM FIELD* (like the term "electromagnetic fields") is "never discussed". :) You guys are so predictable. :)

[ben m]

Yep. "Magnetism" is "ok" by you folks. Anything that combined the *WHOLE EM FIELD* (like the term "electromagnetic fields") is "never discussed". :) You guys are so predictable. :)

There is no mechanism for generating nor sustaining electrostatic fields in these systems. There is a mechanism for generating and sustaining magnetic fields; magnetic fields are directly observed.

[ben m]

So evidently we have another "natural" source of high energy gamma rays, and we have no need for "dark matter did it" explanations related to very high energy gamma rays.

Please note that Fermi sees Cyg X3 (a pulsar) as it sees many pulsars. It does not mistakenly associate them with dark matter.

Your whole thesis seems to revolve around "the Fermi team is trigger-happy on discovering dark matter", but every link you provide refutes this.

Anyway: does the observed Fermi galactic-center haze have the spatial and spectral properties of pulsar gamma ray emission? No it does not. You can't "explain" a phenomenon that looks like X by pointing out that there other phenomena look like Y.

[Reality Check]

Evidently the answer is "everywhere".

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Cosmic_Dig_Reveals_Vestiges_Of_Milky_Ways_Building _Blocks_999.html

Happy Thanksgiving. :)
Evidently the answer is "in Terzan 5" (a globular cluster) according to MM.

FYI MM: Terzan 5 is inside our galaxy. The Milky way has dust clouds in it. That makes it harder to see things in the Milky Way and less easy to estimate the masses of obscured parts of the galaxy.

The Bad Astronomer has a good post on Terzan 5 (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/11/25/the-milky-way-bulges-with-cannibalized-corpses/).
It’s just over 19,000 light years away, toward the galactic center. That area is lousy with thick patches of dust, making it very difficult to see anything, like trying to see a forest through a thick fog.

Happy Thanksgiving. :)

Once you have digested your turkey perhaps you can explain exactly why dark matter cannot be exotic matter.
We already know that dark matter cannot be anything that you have suggested, e.g. rocks.
We already have evidence that it acts differently than normal matter.

[Michael Mozina]

There is no mechanism for generating nor sustaining electrostatic fields in these systems.

Ben, the whole universe might have an electromagnetic field who's origins lie beyond our little visible sliver of the visible universe. So what if we don't understand the "mechanism"?

There is a mechanism for generating and sustaining magnetic fields; magnetic fields are directly observed.

The moment charged particles begin to move around it becomes an 'EM" field Ben. Space is not a "sterile' magnetic environment, nor is it "neutral", it's "current carrying" plasma.

For example, our own sun presumably has a strong magnetic field, but it's cause is *ELECTROMAGNETIC* in nature, and it's physical manifestation in the sun's plasma atmosphere is also *ELECTRO*magnetic in nature. You guys keep trying to sterilize an *ELECTRO*magnetic process, and remove the "electro" part so that the dreaded EU theory doesn't grow. It's bizzare behavior IMO, but I've watched it go on now for years.

Anything and everything is "ok" as it relates to explaining gamma rays with mythical particles because mythical particles fit with the party line dogma. Anything with "electro" in it is "out" and "forbidden", lest thou not be published and shunned forever from mainstream publications.

[Michael Mozina]

Evidently the answer is "in Terzan 5" (a globular cluster) according to MM.

No, evidently the answers are 'out there' pretty much all around us because our technologies have always been extremely limited, but they keep being improved over time. As a result, we're going to continue to identify more and more ordinary matter over time.

FYI MM: Terzan 5 is inside our galaxy. The Milky way has dust clouds in it. That makes it harder to see things in the Milky Way and less easy to estimate the masses of obscured parts of the galaxy.

Yes, but that did not stop us from 'estimating' it improperly to begin with. That's my whole point. The universe is more dusty than we realize, and it absorbs and blocks more light than we realize. It's not that the mass is found in some exotic form, it's that we are incapable of identifying all normal matter in even our own physical galaxy, let alone distant ones.

The Bad Astronomer has a good post on Terzan 5 (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/11/25/the-milky-way-bulges-with-cannibalized-corpses/).

No thanks, I prefer "good" astronomy where you get to speak freely and question authority openly in scientific integrity. :)

Once you have digested your turkey perhaps you can explain exactly why dark matter cannot be exotic matter.

Because no forms of exotic matter are known to exist. From the standpoint of empirical physics you have one strike against you from the outset. There's no way you can claim that our current technologies enable us to fully identify all objects in space. We have to "estimate" a lot of stuff, based on a slew of questionable "assumptions" that may or may not be accurate. To date I have no evidence that any exotic forms of matter exist. When you find some that fit all your necessary qualifications, let me know. I'll change my tune. Until then I have better things to do that play around with mythical particle formulas.

We already know that dark matter cannot be anything that you have suggested, e.g. rocks.

No you don't know that. I will take up that topic in another week or so. I need another week to finish up what I'm working on at work and then I'll be happy to bust that show of yours. You keep *oversimplifying* (that's your whole trick by the way) every process to make it "fit" some preconceived formulas you've seen, and you've spent little or no time being even the least bit creative about the layouts of matter in space, or the processes that bind them.

We already have evidence that it acts differently than normal matter.

No, you do not. Ordinary "pebbles" in a distant intercluster medium are going to be "dark" to our technologies. As it relates to this specific thread, you have *ZERO* and I mean "no" physical evidence that exotic matter emits anything, let alone gamma rays.

[Tubbythin]

Yes, but that did not stop us from 'estimating' it improperly to begin with. That's my whole point. The universe is more dusty than we realize, and it absorbs and blocks more light than we realize. It's not that the mass is found in some exotic form, it's that we are incapable of identifying all normal matter in even our own physical galaxy, let alone distant ones.
Dust cannot possibly be the answer. Dust blocks out light. Thta's precisely why we it can be difficult to study the centre of our own galaxy in the optical. If we were in a halo of dust we wouldn't see other galaxies Not to mention the fact that dust wouldn't form a halo.


Because no forms of exotic matter are known to exist.
Huh??? Exotic matter is, by definition, difficult to observe. But many many exotic forms of matter have certainly been made. Positronium, lithium-11, muonium, J/psi, antihydrogen...



From the standpoint of empirical physics you have one strike against you from the outset. There's no way you can claim that our current technologies enable us to fully identify all objects in space. We have to "estimate" a lot of stuff, based on a slew of questionable "assumptions" that may or may not be accurate.
The fact that we can see other galaxies is not a questionable assumption.


To date I have no evidence that any exotic forms of matter exist.
This is obviously false. See above.


No, you do not. Ordinary "pebbles" in a distant intercluster medium are going to be "dark" to our technologies.
Pebbles that don't emit or absorb in any measured wavelength. That's some pretty exotic pebbles you got there.

[Tubbythin]

Ben, the whole universe might have an electromagnetic field who's origins lie beyond our little visible sliver of the visible universe. So what if we don't understand the "mechanism"?


:jaw-dropp

[Michael Mozina]

Dust cannot possibly be the answer.

It can be "part of" the answer.

Dust blocks out light. Thta's precisely why we it can be difficult to study the centre of our own galaxy in the optical. If we were in a halo of dust we wouldn't see other galaxies Not to mention the fact that dust wouldn't form a halo.

Yes, and evidently it *does* block out a higher percentage of light than we first realized according to those recent papers. Dust does in fact have a greater influence on our measurements than we first realized. If these distant galaxies are twice as bright as we first realized, don't you figure that is going to have an impact on our "guetimates" about the amount of standard baryonic material in a galaxy?

Huh??? Exotic matter is, by definition, difficult to observe. But many many exotic forms of matter have certainly been made. Positronium, lithium-11, muonium, J/psi, antihydrogen...

These are all based upon standard particle physics theory and most/all of them enjoy empirical support. "Difficult" doesn't necessary seem to apply to hypothetical, non standard SUSY theory. "Darn near impossible" seems to be more applicable to SUSY theory. LHC is probably your only hope, but there's no guarantee that any new particle found by LHC would in any way relate to SUSY theory.

The fact that we can see other galaxies is not a questionable assumption.

How much light we observe and how much is blocked is based upon a "questionable" assumption, one that's been challenged relatively recently. The amount of small stars in a galaxy per large stars has also been based upon questionable assumptions that have also been recently challenged. A lot of what we think we know about distant galaxies are based upon questionable assumptions.

[DazzaD]

Yes, and evidently it *does* block out a higher percentage of light than we first realized according to those recent papers. Dust does in fact have a greater influence on our measurements than we first realized. If these distant galaxies are twice as bright as we first realized, don't you figure that is going to have an impact on our "guetimates" about the amount of standard baryonic material in a galaxy?

No.

Because some of those "guestimates" dont rely at all upon how much dust there is or where it is or how much it "blocks" light.



These are all based upon standard particle physics theory and most/all of them enjoy empirical support. "Difficult" doesn't necessary seem to apply to hypothetical, non standard SUSY theory. "Darn near impossible" seems to be more applicable to SUSY theory. LHC is probably your only hope, but there's no guarantee that any new particle found by LHC would in any way relate to SUSY theory.

Can you outline the key differences then between "standard particle physics theory" and "non-standard SUSY theory"?

Or does your definition each and every time amount to "I have seen it, check, that ones ok, I have not seen that personally, no way it can be the case"?



How much light we observe and how much is blocked is based upon a "questionable" assumption, one that's been challenged relatively recently. The amount of small stars in a galaxy per large stars has also been based upon questionable assumptions that have also been recently challenged. A lot of what we think we know about distant galaxies are based upon questionable assumptions.

By definition an assumption is questionable.

I would like to hear how a purely electromagnetic approach does as good a job or better though.

Without referring to how "the standard model is in disarray and is grasping at straws because we have not fleshed everything out", how is it that the amazingly successful standard model can quantitatively and in great detail account for a such a wide variety of phenomena that a purely electromagnetic approach cannot even dare to match at present?

I dont know a single astrophysicist who seriously believes they know exactly how much light is blocked or that all distances to galaxies are set in stone and wont be challenged by some future experiment.

Anyone who has worked in the field understands the complexities of the issues but to take a particular (few) papers and then to contend that the whole subject is falling down around its ears is a bit too much I would argue.

[Tubbythin]

It can be "part of" the answer.
No, it can't.


Yes, and evidently it *does* block out a higher percentage of light than we first realized according to those recent papers. Dust does in fact have a greater influence on our measurements than we first realized. If these distant galaxies are twice as bright as we first realized, don't you figure that is going to have an impact on our "guetimates" about the amount of standard baryonic material in a galaxy?
Not much, no. The rotation curves tell us that the distribution of mass does not reflect the distribution of visible mass. No amount of dust is going to change that.


These are all based upon standard particle physics theory
And SUSY is the simplest extension to the standard model that can explain some of the standard model's shortcomings.


and most/all of them enjoy empirical support.
Right. But they didn't before they were made (obviously). And yet they exist. How can it possibly be that things that once lacked empirical support were found to exist?


"Difficult" doesn't necessary seem to apply to hypothetical, non standard SUSY theory.
I'm not talking about non-standard SUSY theory. I'm talking about the MSSM, the simplest implementation of supersymmetry.


"Darn near impossible" seems to be more applicable to SUSY theory.
Why? What do you know that those physicists at CERN don't? I'd be quite surprised that somebody who knows little about particle physics could have strong evidence of the non-existence of supersymmetric particles and yet those who are dedicating their careers to the search for them are completely unaware of it.


LHC is probably your only hope, but there's no guarantee that any new particle found by LHC would in any way relate to SUSY theory.
A fairly meaningless statement.



How much light we observe and how much is blocked is based upon a "questionable" assumption, one that's been challenged relatively recently. The amount of small stars in a galaxy per large stars has also been based upon questionable assumptions that have also been recently challenged. A lot of what we think we know about distant galaxies are based upon questionable assumptions.
All I've seen is some papers suggesting dwarf galaxies may have more mass than some thought. That in now way changes the dark matter picture.

[ben m]

Ben, the whole universe might have an electromagnetic field who's origins lie beyond our little visible sliver of the visible universe. So what if we don't understand the "mechanism"?


a) No, EM fields propagate at the speed of light. If it generates a field here, it has to be within the visible universe.

b) That doesn't sound like the field you keep invoking to cause "discharges" on stars and whatnot.


The moment charged particles begin to move around it becomes an 'EM" field Ben. Space is not a "sterile' magnetic environment, nor is it "neutral", it's "current carrying" plasma.


You've tried to hold this argument dozens of times, MM. This thread is not the place to restart it. Do you want to get back to dark matter and Fermi?

[ben m]

It can be "part of" the answer.


No it can't. We've been through this a dozen times. There may be unseen baryons (and new CMB/BBN physics) which increase the baryon budget by 10%, 20%, etc., over what is known today. There cannot be unseen baryons which increase the budget by 500%.

Keep this in mind: current baryon budgets, based on star/gas/dust counting, tend to err very low. BBN and CMB constraints tell us that 4% of the Universe is in baryons. Star/gas/dust mass counting, done naively, tends to locate about 2%-3% of this material "easily". A lot of recent work (having nothing to do with dust, and fairly little to do with stars---it's mostly a question of cold gas distributions), which you would probably find in your enthusiastic Google searches for "missing mass", is involved with getting the visible budget balance up *from* 2-3% to the full expected 4%. There no work whatsoever suggesting that newly-discovered baryons are pushing the baryon budget higher, nor suggesting that some of the nonbaryonic dark matter mass is actually baryons.

Keep that in mind next time you Google. Astronomers expect to need to find some more baryons in order to complete accounting for 4% of the Universe---and indeed they are doing so, gradually. Astronomers have completely ruled out, repeatedly, the hypothesis that baryons make up 24% of the Universe.

[Reality Check]

No, evidently the answers are 'out there' pretty much all around us because our technologies have always been extremely limited, but they keep being improved over time. As a result, we're going to continue to identify more and more ordinary matter over time.

Since the discovery of dark matter in 1933 astronomy has managed to measure more and more ordinary matter. They passd the point of dark matter being stars a couple decades ago. Stars are 11% of the mass of galactic clusters. The measured energy/mass of the universe is

0.4% stars
3.6% intracluster meduim
~23% dark matter
~73% dark energy
Doubling the number or mass of stars does not effect the need for dark matter. You need to show that it is possible for astronomers to be out by a factor of 60 for the number or mass of stars. Yu have failed to even get close.


Because no forms of exotic matter are known to exist.

Wrong: Dark matter acts as if it is exotic matter. Thus exotic matter is "known to exist".

[Aitch]

Wrong: Dark matter acts as if it is exotic matter. Thus exotic matter is "known to exist".

The problem is, if I'm interpreting MM correctly, the only way he'll believe in dark matter is if you give him a little glass* jar labeled 'Dark Matter' and containing something really strange. ;)

* a really special sort of glass, obviously. :cool:

[Reality Check]

The problem is, if I'm interpreting MM correctly, the only way he'll believe in dark matter is if you give him a little glass* jar labeled 'Dark Matter' and containing something really strange. ;)

* a really special sort of glass, obviously. :cool:
That is the problem withh MM's personal definiton of empirical - it does not agree with the one that scientists use. As I asked in a previous (of course ignored by MM) post

Originally Posted by Michael Mozina http://forums.randi.org/helloworld2/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=5337075#post5337075)
Got a gram of "dark matter"?

Got a gram of quarks?
Got a gram of the Sun's core?
Got a gram of the degenerate matter in a neutron star?
Got a gram of neutrinos?
Got a super massive black hole in your lab?
Got a gram of antimatter? (Fermilab in 20 years of operation has produced about 2.3 billionth of a gram (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1N1-106129336237DADE.html)).
Got a gram of W bosons?
Got a gram of quark-gluon plasma?

I really should have mention that fact "exotic matter" is not the leading candidate for dark matter. The leading candidate is SUSY particles. We know that the Standard Model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model#Challenges_to_the_standard_model) has flaws, e.g. cannot account for the observed neutrino oscillations (evidence for massive neutrinos). The addition of supersymmetry (SUSY) to the standard model is one way to fix its flaws. SUSY has weakly interacting massive particles that are as "exotic" as any other particle, e.g. electrons.