Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Shumina-Ghost t1_iwh2e7r wrote

Reply to comment by Giggalo_Joe in Most cosmologists say dark matter must exist. So far, it’s nowhere to be found. Examining the philosophy of science behind two rival theories can explain why. by ADefiniteDescription

I suppose healthy skepticism is prudent, but hasn’t Einstein been largely proven correct? Like every time?

3

Ok_Meat_8322 t1_iwhfpsq wrote

>hasn’t Einstein been largely proven correct? Like every time?

Like, every single mother effin' time, even after almost a century.

5

Giggalo_Joe t1_iwhs43e wrote

It is called the Theory of Relativity for a reason. It's unproven and unprovable. The downvoting only serves to prove my point. Blind devotion to anything is bad. What sound more logical, that physics is a vast and complex thing, many pieces of which we don't know and can't know yet, or that one guy figured out most of it's inner workings only a few hundred years after we decided that the Earth was not the center of the universe? Challenging our theories is one of the most important things we can do. If you want to devote all your time and energy to attempting to make the facts fit Einstein's theories, go right ahead. There are lots of things in physics that don't add up and we have created special rules to deal with them. Until you have one theory that can unify all physics, on all levels, from subatomic, to celestial, you will have a flawed theory that is at least a little bit incorrect, no matter what name you give or how much it helps us understand the universe around us.

−7

vrkas t1_iwhwk0i wrote

> It is called the Theory of Relativity for a reason. It's unproven and unprovable.

General relativity has made predictions which have held up under a century of scrutiny. It breaks down as you get to very small distances but people are working on it.

>Until you have one theory that can unify all physics, on all levels, from subatomic, to celestial, you will have a flawed theory that is at least a little bit incorrect, no matter what name you give or how much it helps us understand the universe around us.

You've set a high bar, probably impossible. I think every physicist knows that we can't explain all phenomena at all energy scales and distances in a unified way, and I hope that no one is claiming that Lambda CDM is the theory of cosmology. But there is a lot of value in effective theories which are useful in some range. Like Newtonian gravity is sufficient to do space exploration, the Standard Model of particle physics is sufficient for running large scale experiments.

6

Giggalo_Joe t1_iwi9mob wrote

That's the point. Even a thousand years from now or ten thousand, we likely won't have all the answers. And an answer is not right if it is even 1% wrong. That's why it's important to never try to prove the theory, but create a proper theory to fit the facts. We should never be saying 'time does this near the speed of light', we should be saying 'we believe time does this near the speed of light based upon the current available theory and information'. Going back to the original post topic, dark matter may not exist...eventually you have to start looking at the theory as the problem.

0

vrkas t1_iwiasis wrote

OK great. I'm not sure what your actual point was then? Do we just abandon physics because we can't develop GUTs which explain everything?

2

Giggalo_Joe t1_iwihe3e wrote

No. We stop trying to make the data fit the theory and instead start asking why the data doesn't fit the theory. And what always has to be an option is, change the theory.

0

Nickesponja t1_iwj087t wrote

> We stop trying to make the data fit the theory

> change the theory

These two are the same thing. When scientists try to "make the data fit the theory", they are changing the theory, not the data. Obviously. Because the data is what it is.

0

Merfstick t1_iwjahd9 wrote

FWIW, you're probably not being downvoted because you're challenging Einstein and there are blind devotees in this sub. You're probably being downvoted because of the pretension and lack of self-awareness. The inclusion of "logic" in your reasoning is a dead giveaway, and you've constructed quite the strawman narrative about how Einstein is being perceived. I don't think even he, nor most serious cosmologists, would say he had it all figured out. He died refusing to accept that "hidden variables" weren't at work with QM, which is largely accepted, and few still hold on with them, so he's quite clearly NOT perfect, and NOT understood as such... by anybody but your hypotheticals (and perhaps people largely ignorant). That right there shows you're reasoning with some constructed Einstein that isn't quite true to how the rest of us understand him, so from there the "logic" is flawed.

Beyond that, what is the rule saying he couldn't, within a few hundred years, get it right? I'm sorry, I didn't realize there was a speed limit to these things. No, the proof is in the pudding, and the reality is he was pretty damn good at figuring it out, regardless of how far in time he was from heliocentrism. Those theories just so happen to have predicted objects and processes that have since been observed all on their own, so they're good enough for that, and that is what makes these so hard to discard, particularly when those other theories cannot do the same.

I honestly don't know what point you're trying to make. It's not as if something else has come along and done it better, and this is just some political or egotistical resistance. Literally anybody can wax poetic about dogmas, but the more work you actually put into proving said dogma is wrong (and/or seeing all the reasons why that dogma is powerful in the first place), the more humbled you'll be.

I know enough to know when someone actually has a grasp on physics greater than mine... and I can tell you're firmly in my league when it comes to this stuff - and I know next to fuckall about it. This is why you're being downvoted. It's not a pro-Einstein conspiracy or knowledge industrial complex which somehow implicates us all... It's you out of your element. Logically, which is more likely???

1