Study: Dark matter does not exist and the universe is 27B years old

https://www.earth.com/news/dark-matter-does-not-exist-universe-27-billion-years-old-study/

by makaimc • 2 years ago

54 37 2 years ago

Full paper here[1], and here's[2] the earlier paper about the model itself.

They overloaded the CCC acronym, which has also been used for Penrose's Conformal cyclic cosmology[3], though can't say which is more speculative.

I'm also reminded of Von Neumann's elephant[4], given that they vary the constants it doesn't seem that surprising I suppose that they can get a fit. Freeman Dyson learned this the hard way[5].

This is just one test, the article mentions a few others that they'll need to pass to be a serious contender. Will be interesting to see how it goes.

[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad1bc6

[2] https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/524/3/3385/7221343?lo...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal_cyclic_cosmology

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%27s_elephant

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV41QEKiMlM

exe343• 2 years ago

I'd say cyclic universe is way more kooky - it's wishful thinking that doesn't match the observations.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/no-universe-before-b...

This one is trying to replace one of the invisible mass with a modified physics.

magicalhippo2• 2 years ago

That was my intuition, but I'm just a layman so... that said, both seem to be geared towards making testable predictions, which makes them both a lot better than some other proposed alternatives.

Covzire• 2 years ago

"The Universe is the fastest aging thing in the Universe"

webwielder2• 2 years ago

“Dark matter” always seemed like a cop out to this layperson. You can’t just give up and attribute problems with your theory to a mysterious substance that can’t be seen or measured!

airstrike3• 2 years ago

As another layperson with a background in finance, it always felt like the cosmological equivalent of making a Balance Sheet balance by plugging the difference in a model

ixaxaar• 2 years ago

"Goodwill"?

Sharlin5• 2 years ago

Well not at all. If anything, that's the MOND theories. The proper almost exact analogue to dark matter is an accountant noticing something's wrong with the figures, trying to find an honest mistake somewhere, and failing to do so, starting to reasonably suspect that there's embezzlement going on and the missing money has not simply disappeared into the ether.

Sharlin5• 2 years ago

Well, but it has been. Just indirectly. But we have only measured tons of things indirectly, so that's nothing special. Like what Earth's core is made of, or the fact that exoplanets exist, or that atomic nuclei are made of things called protons and neutrons, which in turns are made of things called quarks. Us humans are really biased towards giving a special importance to EM radiation, due to how important vision is to us, but that's just us. Nature does not care.

"Laypersons" just never seem to know anything about dark matter, including the shitload of evidence from several different types of observations that there's something there that can't be explained by just tweaking some equations. Of course that never stops them from having an opinion based on a total strawman.

nullindividual• 2 years ago

FYI we've directly observed exoplanets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exopla...

Jevon23• 2 years ago

There’s about as much evidence for the existence of dark matter as we can possibly get, short of actually observing it.

In particular we’ve observed some galaxies that seem to have little to no dark matter. Gravitationally, they behave the way that you would “naively” predict without the need to plug in a correction term that represents dark matter. This indicates that there is something physically different about these galaxies (like an unobserved substance), and it points away from MOND-style theories.

lottin2• 2 years ago

You're saying that the evidence for the existence of dark matter is that your theory doesn't agree with the observation. This is like saying that you have no evidence at all.

cloudwalk9• 2 years ago

As another layperson, I understand it as the physics equivalent of solving for x, but far less trivial. We figure it must exist because it's a missing puzzle piece in the mathematics that accurately predicts everything else. This is reinforced by observations of indirect effects that aren't accounted for in the current math.

tekla2• 2 years ago

Oh man, let me tell you how we learned about the existence of some of the planets and things like neutron stars.

lonjil2• 2 years ago

Just the opposite. Sure, DM was proposed when some observations didn't match predictions, but do you think scientists liked that? Do you think they just accepted it? They did not. No one liked DM, and many people tried to disprove it. How does one disprove DM? You simply assume that it exists, and then make a prediction using that assumption. If the prediction is wrong, that's evidence against DM. What happened is that every time someone made a DM prediction, it turned out to be correct.

Two early cases of this were that if invisible matter exists, there should be gravitational lensing around seemingly empty space, which was then found, and that if if something like dark matter existed before recombination, then a certain pattern should be found in the cosmic microwave background, and a few years after the prediction, sensitive enough equipment was deployed that could see enough detail in the CMB, and the prediction turned out correct.

Today there's something like a dozen such predictions that have come true, ranging in scale from kiloparsecs to gigaparsecs, from things happening today to things that happened in the early universe. When a theory makes accurate predictions across many problems and areas, that is good evidence for the theory.

gmuslera• 2 years ago

It worked with planets pretty well.

croes• 2 years ago

You mean like Planet Nine?

If Dark Matter exists it can be measured by it's effects on its surroundings

linehedonist• 2 years ago

It’s too bad the piece doesn’t have any reactions from other physicists. Is this a pretty speculative idea in the field or closer to the mainstream?

exe343• 2 years ago

It's completely on the fringe side - doesn't mean it's wrong, just that it will need to explain a whole lot of known observations and then predict something that we can't currently explain before it catches on.

JoeAltmaier• 2 years ago

Just another way of writing the equations. Not any kind of discovery.

Write the other headline, equally as 'provable': Tired light does not exist, it's really dark matter.

dave333• 2 years ago

Scientists are grasping at straws to explain the JWST observations but I still prefer Randall Mills' classical theory now thirty years old, that has stood up well with all its predictions coming true despite the howls of laughter from the skeptics. The model of atomic structure is superior and it shows dark matter is just hydrogen in a lower-energy non-radiative state.

https://brilliantlightpower.com/theory/

DontSignAnytng• 2 years ago

Many physicists have dismissed BLP’s theories as incompatible with established principles of physics. The concept of hydrinos, for example, contradicts the known laws of quantum mechanics, which are well-supported by experimental evidence. Critics argue that BLP’s approach contains mathematical errors and unjustified assumptions. There have also been allegations of portions of Mills’ work being copied from other texts without proper attribution. Despite BLP’s claims of breakthroughs and imminent commercialization, the company has faced significant challenges in gaining acceptance from the scientific community and in securing patents. The theory has not been independently verified, and there is widespread doubt about the viability of the technology proposed by BLP

rendang• 2 years ago

Please don't post unattributed copied and pasted LLM outputs here. That's not what I come to HN to read

65102• 2 years ago

Sounds like pseudoskepticism to me.

incompatible with established principles of physics.

Appeal to tradition

contradicts the known laws of quantum mechanics, which are well-supported by experimental evidence.

Saying it doesn't make it so.

mathematical errors

This one I approve of if demonstrated. It does seem odd for people to keep saying that for 2 decades while the research progresses. It requires demonstration.

unjustified assumptions

You can have as wild an hypothesis as you like.

copied from other texts

grasping at straws

claims of breakthroughs...

poor claims of refutation!

....and imminent commercialization

haha, yes! he has been claiming this for decades and continues to do so. There are even contracts with utility companies from what I understand.

the company has faced significant challenges in gaining acceptance from the scientific community

How did we end up here? I thought it was simply in violation of well-established experimental evidence, rife with mathematical errors, assumptions, plagiarism, false claims, etc etc? How do we get from all that to gaining acceptance?

not independently verified

Wait, does that mean that all of the hit pieces, all of the moaning and all of the HOAX screaming littered all over the web is not actually based on anything?

Let me get this straight, so we are burning our world to a crisp, trying to ban food production and energy usage to save our precious environment. People cant pay their energy bills. Everything we consume and do seems to be made from energy primarily.

Then there is a privately funded research project, 20 years ongoing, burned 140 m euro. But we are sure non of it is real based on nonsense clap trap rather than verification? ~Woah!~

It works like this: There are things you know to be true, things you know to be false and then there are things you just don't know. If Undefined evaluates as false there is something wrong with your code. I don't believe a word Mills says but that isn't the same as knowing he is wrong.

amriksohata• 2 years ago

Explain like I'm five here, was JWST supposed to be able to see further back than Hubble to the origins of the universe? Has this happened? What are the findings?

Study: Dark matter does not exist and the universe is 27B years old

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