Wtf is dark matter. There's something out there that makes gravity not work the way we expect on a very large scale, and "dark matter" is a theoretical substance that makes the math work out properly. But the fact that such a huge portion of the galaxy's mass is this hypothetical, undetectable thing makes it seem very hand wavy. The last experiment to try to detect dark matter that I'm aware of concluded with "we successfully didn't detect anything" π having to deal with dark matter feels like trying to study atoms before the discovery of the neutron. I hope we figure this out in my lifetime.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
85 points (97.8% liked)
Ask Lemmy
26858 readers
1831 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Dark matter might not even exist, all we know is that gravity-based predictions break down after a certain point. Dark matter is the just the most popular proposed solution where you essentially just add extra undetectable mass until it works. The distant second is Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) or some variation of it, which is where you try to tweak the theories to fit observations instead. It has the same problem as dark matter where we keep coming up with better experiments which always fail to find anything.
There's a similar problem at the opposite end of the scale spectrum too; quantum mechanics doesn't play nice with our current understanding of gravity leading to the search for the "theory of everything". This is why I personally lean towards the idea that it's our theories that are wrong and not an undetectable mass, but this isn't my field so my opinion isn't worth much (especially since a majority actually working in the field lean towards dark matter as far as I can tell).
load more comments
(2 replies)
And dark energy for that [dark] matter ;)
load more comments
(1 replies)
In the depth of pandemic lockdown, after my roommate moved out to return closer to family, I was in my house alone for a month straight. One day I hear the tea kettle whistling on the stove.
It was the middle of summer, I hadn't made tea in weeks. Maybe I bumped the stove control? But there shouldn't have been any water in the kettle. And I hadn't been in my kitchen for over an hour and it wouldn't have taken that long for the water to boil had I put it on and just forgotten about it somehow. I keep my doors locked.
Idk, the only thing I can think of is the isolation really got to me that day, I put the kettle on and completely forgot I had done it five minutes later.
Was there any water actually in it or did you not check?
Maybe tinnitus or tv?
It was about half full of water and it was boiling.
So if there was nobody else there you must have done that and just blepped or been on autopilot. It happens lol
What kind of stove? Could you have bumped the knob and the kettle had water leftover from last time?
Where did the matter/energy for Big Bang come from? On that note, what is outside the border of the universe?
And then where did they matter and energy come from for that universe. It's turtles all the way down...
load more comments
(4 replies)
This question actually doesn't make sense, it's kind of a paradox in the same way the question of what happened before the Big bang is also strange in the sense that the universe and reality didn't exist in a form with causality in effect.
So asking a "before" question in reference to "before" time even started is paradoxical in and of itself. Since "before" wasn't even a concept in existence.
Which is why scientists don't really worry about anything "before" the Big bang.
load more comments
(9 replies)
The Daytlov Pass incident. A lot of it could be explained as hysteria brought on by either cold or just fear after being in an avalanche; but how the hell did some of the victims have radiation burns?
Apparently, there was the Kyshtym disaster in the area 2 years beforehand, so that may explain the radiation.
You're Wrong About podcast has an episode about this with Blair Braverman guesting, that I think posits a decent theory. Blair also appears on episodes about the Andes plane crash and the diphtheria serum run, both of which are well worth a listen.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Whether or not George Mallory summitted Everest.
Mallory was a great climber. People who knew him think he had the ability. Another member of his expedition saw Mallory and his partner, Andrew Irvine, close to the summit, but not close enough to be certain whether or not they made it.
Neither man returned from the mountain. Mallory's body was later found, many decades after he died. but Irvine was never seen again, dead or alive.
There are various other bits of circumstantial evidence, but the fact is we'll simply never know for sure. I like to think they made it.
How does the Universe expand? Isn't the Universe the container space of all that which exists, where does it expand to?
load more comments
(2 replies)
What caused the Bronze age collapse? Who were the Sea People?
Its all fun and games until the sea peoples arrive. Ruining all our parties with their looting, hogging all the tin so we can't make bronze. This is why we can't have nice things.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Why arenβt the basic laws of mathematics clean round numbers? Why are pi and e irrational? What secret is hidden down in the depths of these numbers?
It seems to me that the concept the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the radius is a finite value. It's cool that it turns out to be an irrational number for us but I think that's more a statement of how we handle math than some mystical thing.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Isn't nature lazy? Like everything is in search of equilibrium and once its optimized, saul goodman
There a infinitely more irrational numbers than rational numbers, so if one were to search for a special number like Ο or e, they are more likely to find them to be irrational than rational. It would be instance coincidence if those numbers would be something nice and even. And since almost everything in math is derived from either Ο or e and you can't simply divide or multiply away irrationality (except with another irrational number) this irrationality tends to stick around. We essentialy have a Ο centric number system inside the decimal system, that's why Ο gets its own symbol. No mathematician ever writes out Ο as a 3.1415...., so for all that matters the symbol Ο is nice and even.
Tunguska Event:
What's the mystery with this one? It's a very interesting event, but isn't it generally pretty well understood?
Generally considered a meteor air burst, but there's no crater and no evidence so it's still very mysterious.
Oh ok, thanks. Didn't realise that, will need to read up on it.
I've read interesting conspiracy, that Tunguska incident overlaps exactly with Nicola Tesla's attempts to wireless transfer of energy. Was an interesting idea and read, even though very unlikely to be based on real event.
what the hell are these for?
My theory is that they were just decorative tchotchkes that were popular at one point in history. We have crap like this today and it would all probably baffle archeologists of the future as to what their purpose was. Like... Imagine in 1000 years someone digs up a near perfectly preserved Furby or an oddly shaped paper weight.
Or fidget spinners.
The coin-verifying hypothesis seems compelling
I collect ancient coins and this explanation doesn't fly for me. There's a certain amount of "artisanal-ness" in the production of ancient coins - which were all handmade. Like, I'm looking at a tray of coins right now and there's no way a simple go/no-go tool would be helpful. Also, for this purpose a simple handheld counterweight balance would be more accurate and portable. The existence of these simple balances, along with reference weights for various denominations, is well documented.
Moreover - if you're an ancient merchant, what is more important? The weight of the silver or the ability for it to pass for a denarius issued by Rome? Particularly for international trade, it seems to have been the former. Bankers' cuts and countermarks are commonly seen on coins, and seem to have been an early form of foreign exchange. (eg - I'm travelling from Athens to Ephesus with a stock of my local currency. If I pass it to a local banker in Ephesus, they can evaluate it, determine the local exchange in terms of silver, and give it a locally recognized countermark to assure their own merchants that they're getting the equivalent local value).
That being now off my chest, I've got no great answers for the dodecahedrons. I strongly suspect that it was a nifty thing that metal workers made as a master's thesis.
load more comments
(3 replies)
They are just from the Roman equivalent of Hobby Lobby or the like. Just βquirkyβ home decor that was popular at the time. If they had the internet you would find these on ebay, etsy, facebook, pinterestβ¦ nothing to see here
load more comments
(4 replies)
where do socks go in the dryer?
Caught up one of the rotating convex thingies or someone takes it with the rest of theirs when you leave them behind in mentioned
If you take the dryer apart you would likely find all the socks inside it.
The voynich manuscript. It's so wild and interesting, a complete mystery too
load more comments
(3 replies)
Not exactly the prompt but I used to be hung up on The Boy in the Box mystery but I'm happy to report his identity has been found. His name was Joseph Augustus Zarelli.
What are things? What is energy? What is my soul? Where did it come from? Is it even in this spacetime, or is the body an avatar and I'm connecting into to it via some process? How was my soul created? Why do I experience rather than my body function solely as a biochemical robot? Where does my soul go when my body dies? Is there an end to eternity? If so, what happens or doesn't happen? If not, how does change continue? What does my soul do until then? I understand life. I don't understand experience.
One time I heard an assumption that every single electron is the same electron in different places and times. I asked a physicist what they thought of that idea. He thought for a moment and responded, "Would it even matter?" Sometimes I imagine that we are all the same person in different bodies living different lives. Every normal person, every genius, philanthropist, every monster, every slave, every billionaire, every dead fetus, every person I've dated, my parents,...we're all the same person living in a different body going through every single experience of life. When I do that, everything seems so simple.
So would it even matter? Yes, because what if individuality is false? What if we're all one thing, but the current structure of life doesn't allow us to experience it as such so we incorrectly think that each individual medium of perception is completely independent? Giving everything to others would be selfish. Working as a team for the benefit of everyone would be the ultimate selfish move. We could stop all competition, treat each other with utmost compassion, and maximize our limited time in each body. But alas, the selfish versions of us are too underdeveloped in that dimension to let that happen just yet. I wonder what it would take for each of us to reach the understanding that we're all the same soul.
I have a friend like you whom I love to send into the chasm that is his own mind. The physicist has the attitude needed to deal with these thoughts - does it even matter? Ultimately, until we know our existence is false, we might as well keep on appreciating what we experience, right?
load more comments
(7 replies)
I'm kinda partial to the fine-structure constant
Fine-Structure Constant (1/137): This dimensionless constant, approximately equal to 1/137, is crucial in quantum mechanics and electromagnetism. It characterizes the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between elementary charged particles.
It's weird because the number ends up in places that should be thoroughly unrelated yet that's one hell of it coincidence.
Hiccups
view more: next βΊ