- cross-posted to:
- forteana
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I mean, didn’t we pretty much already know the theory of gravity was incomplete? Hence dark matter / dark energy.
Edit: ok I see the article is much about the competing theories. I guess that’s why I shouldn’t react to headlines…
“SCIENTIST FEAR KILLER AStEROID HEADING TO EARTH headline might be different than the article”
No. MOND will never be the explanation. Its just not capable of explaining what its supporters claim that it can.
I’m not a physicist (read "couldn’t do the maths“) but MOND feels closer to an natural, organic explanation than Dark Matter. Are there planets formed from Dark Matter? Are there elements and dark molecular structures?
Please can I have a motorcycle made of it?
There’s a few other things that dark matter explains which MOND doesn’t, such as the relative abundances of the light elements and galaxies with seemingly no dark matter present.
One of the things with dark matter (specifically WIMPs, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) is that they don’t seem to interact with any force other than gravity. This means they can shed momentum, by interacting with each other, or normal matter. In order for a dense object to form from a cloud, the cloud, as a whole, must shed, or cancel out the momentum of the particles involved. WIMPs would not be able to do this via anything other than gravity. This limits their collapse to around galaxy scale.
In short WIMPs can’t form anything more complex than an incredibly diffuse inert gas cloud. We can only detect those clouds on a galactic scale, via their gravity effect.
Damn. So no totally dark motorcycle then. Ah well
WIMP is such a great acronym for those lol
One of the recent theories I’ve heard is that dark matter is made of particles with a wavelength measured in light-years. They can’t be localized to something as small as a star system, much less a planet.
That’s a really cool idea I haven’t heard before. I like it.
https://youtu.be/M3hb67BMhzg?si=4MYRnG6RDrx_HjWx&t=338
Anton covered it a little in one of his videos.
Thank you I’ll be watching that haha
Are there planets formed from Dark Matter?
Last time I looked, planets didn’t glow.
They are just not numerous enough to explain all the things dark matter is supposed to explain.
Good point.
I find that fascinating, picturing a bunch of astrophysicists staying up late smoking pot, while rooting for the underdog theory…. Plus if true, that would make physics even weirder
