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Re: Dark Matter Did It

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john <johnsefton288@gmail.com> wrote:
> MM
> “
>> Explain why it is "ludicrous" for 'invisible heavy stuff' to be unevenly ”
> 
> Invisible heavy stuff distributed right where your theory needs it? Oh
> no! Absolutely necessary!!
> 

Here’s a nice parable. 
Back in the 1920s there was this observational problem where beta decay
seemed to violate energy conservation: the total energy of the neutron
before the decay did not equal the energy of the proton and the beta
particle after the decay. Now, conservation of energy up to that point had
been a completely bulletproof principle, with thousands of confirmations.
But some physicists said, maybe energy isn’t conserved in beta decay. Maybe
it’s just as big a law as everyone thought. Maybe it’s flawed and we should
start over. 

Hold on, someone said. Maybe there is a new kind of matter that has no mass
or at most a tiny amount of mass, and it’s practically undetectable, and it
has no electric charge at all, and it just happens to carry away the
missing energy. 

What? some people spluttered. You have new invisible matter just where the
theory needs it, just to save this law of energy conservation? Are you
nuts? What do you call this invisible fairy of a particle no one has seen?

I call it a neutrino, the theorist said. 

How are we to prove that this particle even exists, other than just to
assume it’s there to save energy conservation? the critics spluttered. 

And that’s when the interesting thinking started to happen. Not that it was
easy to figure out. It took three decades to find even the first clear
evidence that neutrinos existed at all, and by then physicists were
supposing that there were at least four varieties of them. But the point
is, neutrinos DO exist. And yes, the guess that they did exist came purely
from an effort to explain an anomalous observation that appeared to violate
a sacred law of physics. 

Now, John, you may scoff that the neutrino story is not how physics should
be done, by inventing new kinds of matter just to try to preserve laws of
physics, rather than throwing the laws away. 

But, John, your scoffing is not compelling, especially since the neutrino
story was replicated over and over and over again, with new predicted kinds
of matter being proposed to save laws of physics and later discovering that
the predicted matter was indeed right where it was predicted. Pions, omega
minus baryon, muon neutrinos, quarks, charmed particles, gluons, W and Z
bosons, Higgs bosons....

And you’d be a fool to suggest that it was a bad idea ever to look for
these things. 

-- 
Odd Bodkin — Maker of fine toys, tools, tables

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Dark Matter Did It john <johnsefton288@gmail.com> - 2018-09-27 08:11 -0700
  Re:Dark Matter Did It Libor Striz <poutnik4REMOVEnntp@CAPITALSgmail.com> - 2018-09-27 19:04 +0200
  Re: Dark Matter Did It moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) - 2018-09-27 18:06 +0000
    Re: Dark Matter Did It john <johnsefton288@gmail.com> - 2018-09-27 18:59 -0700
      Re: Dark Matter Did It moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) - 2018-09-28 03:33 +0000
        Re: Dark Matter Did It john <johnsefton288@gmail.com> - 2018-09-28 05:48 -0700
          Re: Dark Matter Did It Odd Bodkin <bodkinodd@gmail.com> - 2018-09-28 15:55 +0000
            Re: Dark Matter Did It benj <benj.fake@gmail.com> - 2018-09-28 12:24 -0400
          Re: Dark Matter Did It moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) - 2018-09-28 16:24 +0000
            Re: Dark Matter Did It Alan Folmsbee <omnilobe@gmail.com> - 2018-09-28 11:21 -0700
  Re: Dark Matter Did It mitchrae3323@gmail.com - 2018-09-27 11:20 -0700
    Re: Dark Matter Did It Alan Folmsbee <omnilobe@gmail.com> - 2018-09-27 16:49 -0700
      Re: Dark Matter Did It mitchrae3323@gmail.com - 2018-09-27 19:56 -0700
        Re: Dark Matter Did It Alan Folmsbee <omnilobe@gmail.com> - 2018-09-27 21:00 -0700
  Re: Dark Matter Did It "Talk.origins T" <Talk.Origins@aol.com> - 2018-09-27 17:03 -0700

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