What's the matter?

Seriously, Dark Matter? A mysterious substance that fills much of the universe but no one can find? C.mon, who are you tryin' to kid?

Allow me to establish my credentials in astrophysics: I have undergraduate and graduate degrees, neither of them in mathematics or a physical science. So I'm just spitballin' here.

As I understand it, "Dark Matter" was originally proposed over a century ago as a hypothetical explanation for certain cosmological phenomena that appeared to lack other known causes. And we've been looking for Dark Matter ever since.

But I think the search for Dark Matter may simply represent a failure of imagination. Dark Matter may not exist at all. We need to be looking for something else entirely. It's just that so many scientists are hung up on the laws of physics, as if laws aren't meant to be broken.

Consider seaweed on a beach. An obvious hypothesis for the accumulation of marine plants on sandy stretches of shoreline is that the plants are attracted to the sand, itself. They may be drawn to its comforting warmth, its reassuring stillness, or even its cozy dryness. But how to prove which? One means of encouraging research might be through a cash prize offered by some beach resort's Chamber of Commerce to the first scientist who can provide evidence. And so the stampede begins. However, in reality, we all know that seaweed is actually dragged ashore by crabs for their nests. But see how things can become confused by predetermined parameters?

Dark Matter may simply be a distraction, a metaphor that has taken on a life of its own. There is, in its very name, an allure for the human psyche, which is likely how the term was first established. To my thinking, there is the same element of unscientific science that has made string theory so attractive. In that vein, recent research out of Hawaii suggests that the very inability to discover Dark Matter is further evidence of its existence.

Now consider these possibilities as a first step outside the Dark Matter box:  Perhaps the phenomena under question have multiple causes. Perhaps our Dark Matter exists in a parallel universe. Perhaps we should actually be searching for Dark Antimatter. Or not.

[?]

A man way after midnight

 A dozen or so years ago I discovered the music of ABBA and, wanting to know more about the group whose music I was enjoying, I looked them up on Wikipedia. There I discovered two facts which particularly surprised me.

First, that they were Swedish, yet the songs I enjoyed were in unaccented English. Second, that they had broken up thirty years before I'd even heard of them, nearly twenty years before Wikipedia was even a thing. It wasn't as if their music hadn't been popular everywhere on the planet, including the US. Yet, somehow, I had managed to be conscious for the better part of several decades and not have glommed onto their music. It was a real stranger-in-a-strange-land sensation.

Yet here I am again. Thanks to theoretical physicist and science philosopher,  Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder, I find out that string theory, of which I've barely become aware in recent years, has been losing credibility since the mid twenty-teens.

I feel like I've hurried to catch a train only to find the station torn down and the tracks pulled up for scrap.

[?]

A Many-Worlds Paradox?

Similar to several earlier posts involving quantum physics, this post will be presented in a manner that implies that I am, in some fashion, conversant with the concepts of quantum theory. However, in recognition of the notion of non-competence attributed to Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, I make no pretense to any manner of understanding quantum mechanics. Thus, corollarily to that postulated quantum axiom, one must eschew the understanding of quantum mechanics to have any hope of understanding it. I draw that mantle of inverse legitimacy close around me. Moreover, any issue regarding my competence has little, if any, bearing on the functions and principles of quantum physics, itself.

With any questions of my competence thus being suitably disclaimed, I would point out a
conundrum of the Many-Worlds answer to the question of quantum wave function collapse. If, as postulated by the many-worlds, or infinite universes theory, any and all universes are possible as a consequence of universal wavelength, then it must also be possible that a universe exists in which the many-worlds theory is not possible. What if we are living in that universe?

[?]

Just think about it

 

Most of those dots are galaxies and this is an area of the sky that could be viewed through the hole in a CheerioTM held at arm's length.

Go figure.

[?]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

What happens to a white rock when you throw it into the Red Sea?

It gets wet.

Classical Physics

Well, it was funny when I was eleven years old. But it got me to thinking about rocks (actually, it was the other way around, but this makes a better intro) ...

You see, most of my career, I worked in the mental health field. Much of it was in direct service to folks dealing with debilitating illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, problems specific to their brains. At different times, I worked in a state hospital and in a community mental health center where I witnessed all manner of effects of these conditions.

Quantum Mechanics

After some years, I became intrigued by so-called normal thought processes, as opposed to the troubled thought processes of those with whom I worked in Mental Health. Finally, I came to realize that there really was no such thing as pure rational thought, in that all thinking was heavily influenced by emotions.

Relativity

Truth be told, I pretty much suspect that thinking and feeling are companion functions of the same brain-based mental systems; one doesn't really occur without the other. But I've ranted about that elsewhere in my blogs, so I won't get into it again here.

Let's just say that these photos represent my approach to thinking about physics without actually ... uh, how to say this? ... without actually thinking about physics, I guess. Maybe I'll call it quantum thinking because ... well, just because. If you have to ask, then maybe you shouldn't.

[?]

Photo credits, from top: Ajith on flickr; publicdomainpictures.net; ibid.