
Growing evidence that the universe is connected by giant structures (2019) - joe_the_user
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmj7pw/theres-growing-evidence-that-the-universe-is-connected-by-giant-structures
======
hinkley
There's a theory out there that our universe is a pocket universe inside of a
supermassive black hole. My relativistic gravity is pretty rusty and was shaky
to begin with. If that theory isn't pure fantasy, and we were a pocket
universe, _and_ large masses were spinning above the event horizon, we'd
experience forces from those objects, right?

I'm still kinda fond of the Flatland theory myself. Us poor 4 dimensional
beings can't figure out how to build tools that can take 5 dimensional
measurements, so we see weird behavior we can't explain.

~~~
Already__Taken
What if our sense of scale is off and the universe isn't curved we're just
orbiting a black hole 10x the mass of the visible universe. It's not expanding
that's us travelling through the gravity well at 99% the speed of light
relative to it.

~~~
zamalek
My pet hypothesis is that the universe we experience is _on the surface_ of
the singularity of our black hole. This neatly explains some things:

\- The Great Attractor would simply be the volume deeper in singularity. The
cone of influence for the entire universe tends towards the center of our
singularity.

\- Dark energy, and the varying quantity of it, would simply be the amount of
matter falling into our black hole. It would naturally start as a large amount
(consisting of our parent star/mass) and later see variation as matter falls
into it.

\- Dimensionless physical constants may have been fields in the parent
universe. As an infinitely small point, our universe singularity would resolve
a continuous gradient to a single value. Our child universes would have a
single value of gravity, for example, which could change over time (but would
be constant across the universe as they changed).

I've got a huge list of interesting consequences, but as an armchair physicist
it's probably all quack science :)

~~~
hnuser123456
Maybe you already know all this, but to other curious readers:

The great attractor is about 200 Mly away. Directly behind it, 600 Mly away
from us, is the Shapley Supercluster, towards which the great attractor is
itself moving. In the opposite direction is a underdensity, called the "Dipole
repeller", and between the two, where we are, is a "dark flow".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapley_Supercluster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapley_Supercluster)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipole_repeller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipole_repeller)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_flow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_flow)

~~~
idclip
I welcome our dark lord, Cthulhu. May his comings bless us for generations to
come.

If i could write i would write a novel about the great flow. That was awesome
and terrifying to read.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Someone is probably going to vote your comment down on the premise that Cthulu
is unhelpful to the conversation. They shouldn't: it's not any more fantastic
than the various laymans' pet theories here which have, for some
indecipherable reason, been upvoted to the top of the discussion, despite
having no connection to real physics whatsoever.

~~~
idclip
In a more serious note; i actually think the imagination and fantasy they is
born in alot of people after reading about the mysteries of the universe is
responsible for a many physics grad.

Taking things /seriously/ is, imo, what keeps people out of stem. Stemmers
are, if anything, fantasy rich and colorful people, physicists in particular!

Im glad not many people chose to downvote me too :)

------
mirimir
I vaguely recall that the observable universe looks a lot like foam. And even
more vaguely, that maybe this reflects inflationary expansion of random
fluctuations in the early universe.

So maybe this apparent connectivity over implausible scales just reflects the
fact that stuff used to be much closer together.

Edit: There's a great sequence on inflation in Takashi Miike's "God's Puzzle".

~~~
K0SM0S
We used to think so, yes. But our telescopes have improved _a lot_ since then,
and we're now able to see with much more detail, our 3D positioning is better
too.

We've recently observed that the universe, at the largest scales of what's
observable to us, looks like this:
[https://i.stack.imgur.com/lFnDf.jpg](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lFnDf.jpg)

More picture and explanations on this short SE thread:
[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/198138/is-
most-o...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/198138/is-most-of-the-
matter-in-the-observable-universe-within-galaxies)

I'll let you ponder how much resemblance this bears to other kinds of
structures...

~~~
mirimir
That's what I meant by "foam". And remember that those are ~2D slices. In 3D,
there are voids, with thin intervening walls, and stringy stuff where walls
intersect.

It's dark matter that probably defines that structure. And so that dark matter
could be moving, in coherent patterns at extremely large scales. But there's
nothing necessarily supraluminal about it. It could just be moving in the same
patterns that it did when it was hugely smaller. But then, I have zero clue
about how conservation of angular momentum works during inflation.

If that were the explanation, we wouldn't expect to see perturbations in
cosmic scale motion propagating supraluminally.

~~~
K0SM0S
> That's what I meant by "foam".

Oh sorry I didn't catch that (not a native speaker). When thinking of "foam" I
see a uniform, homogenous noisy structure and I was pretty sure this was the
name given to our former such view of the universe. My bad! (although I'd say,
if "foam" is used to described these pictures, it's a pretty bad choice of
adjective by scientists imho. "Galactic tissue" or "tissue-like walls" makes
more sense to the layman imho).

Indeed, it's not "probably" dark matter, it _is_ by the very definition of
what we call dark matter. It's important to keep that in mind, when we name
unknown phenomena it's just a 'placeholder' so to speak. Like X. So X explains
the motion of galaxies, and we intuitively called X dark matter. Assuming
there is an X, then there is dark matter (what it actually _is_ is another
question, could be "white energy" or fluffly creatures from the 6th dimension
for all we know, but we call it dark matter for now).

So based on this, I always wonder: is it our observation or maybe
interpretation thereof that's flawed? Are there 'effects' that make us see and
infer things that are slightly 'off' maybe? (like the discrepancy with dark
energy measurements for instance, it appears recently that _there might not be
accelerating expansion_ and the increasing redshift is due to errors in our
calculations, i.e. we created "dark energy" out of a mistake and now it's
possibly going to "disappear" as an idea because it's not needed anymore to
explain anything).

As for inflation etc. These are also mathematical concepts that fit the
observation, the clues; it however might not be the only possible model that
works, we also might not have a correct interpretation (layman words) for it.
Like we've got QED/QCD and we're still unable to describe in layman terms
because it's illogical, paradoxical. Sometimes our idea of "simplest
interpretation" is just that, an idea, and reality is a bit more complex, even
if the simple equations may work as terms simplify (see how we "add" zero-
value or unit-value arguments to some equations in physics to solve the math,
it really begs the question if the "thing" you add actually exists, speaks of
a real phenomena). I know Einstein was pretty unhappy about the picture
painted by Λ... ;-)

About supraluminal anything (I assume you mean speed > _c_ ), I personally
don't think it wise to postulate things that physics rule _out_ explicitely.
Inflation doesn't do that though, since it's spacetime expanding and that's
not constrained by c.

[1]: [https://youtu.be/blSTTFS8Uco](https://youtu.be/blSTTFS8Uco)

~~~
mirimir
I'm no physicist, and foam is just my analogy. I could have also said bread,
because it's basically foam. Or even soap bubble foam. And yes, biological
tissue, which is fundamentally an emulsion of oil in water.

That's a great point about dark matter, that it's just a placeholder. There
could be stuff that _only_ interacts through gravity. Or it could just be that
there's a constant gravitational force that dominates at large distances.

TFA describes evidence that such properties as galactic rotational axes are
correlated on extremely large scales. And if there are connections, they must
be something that we can't see. So "dark matter" is the obvious candidate.

The other issue is how stuff can be correlated over distances that are too
great for forces at the speed of light to correlate them quickly enough.
Although TFA doesn't explicitly say that, I can't think of what else about
those connections is so surprising. Given that the large-scale structure is so
well known.

That's what got me thinking that inflation could account for it. I was
thinking of stuff like shedding of vortices from rapidly moving objects in
fluids. As they expand, features that arose at small scales in the boundary
layer expand to far larger scales. Indeed, to scales that are large enough to
be puzzling, if we had observed them in isolation.

That's simple minded, I know. But then, I'm no physicist.

~~~
K0SM0S
I'm no physicist either. Maybe I wish I were, though. And no, your ideas here
are everything but simple-minded, imho. On the contrary, being a non-expert
lets you play with things with much more freedom than otherwise (like sci-fi
authors), and then actual physicists can take over, sort out the testable and
go with their own gut feeling.

(note: I assume TFA = Trend Filtering Algorithm, please correct if I'm wrong).

> galactic rotational axes are correlated on extremely large scales

I think "correlation does not imply causation". While this is a plague in
economics, psychology, sociology, biology (non-exact sciences), it also
applies in physics. We really don't know in this case, we just observe what
you said but "correlation" is bias that typically hinders actual research,
experiments — it's the idea that you'll see what you want to see and even
design the experiment to show it, which is a very slippery slope, basically a
form of "confirmation bias".

I want to stress that I in fact agree with you, in sentiment and analysis, but
I'm just voicing my internal "devil's advocate" voice here: mental models and
frameworks that are wrong, and not only make my intuition thus false, but
deeper than that prevent me from seeing other solutions, from 'forking' every
step of the way according to new data.

I guess I'm prefacing my conclusions here:

\- there is no "dark matter", there is X that explains _a bunch of
discrepancies_ between theory and observation. Each such discrepancy could be
explained by a different X (Y, Z...) or a sub-part of X (like mass relates to
gravity, but also density, thus heat profile, etc).

\- there is always a "fundamental correlation" between literally _everything_
(aren't each and every organ of our body, every inch of this Earth the literal
'children' of supernovae and neutron stars explosions and black hole
cataclysms?)

The hard part is to find first-degree (i.e. direct) relations, of the kind
described by physics equations. It's not always discrete and binary, but it
can be done — for instance I can tell you that "hunger" among the population
is as certain a path as it gets to revolution. Not sadness, not lack of
freedoms, not violence physical or mental, not even cataclysms have a firmer
grasp on rebellion than the empty stomach of our children. It's as direct a
path from A (hunger) to B (revolution) as you can get, statistically in all of
history (you have _days_ before people rebel, a very few weeks at most).

The alignment of galaxies are obviously related to something, which might yet
leave individuals otherwise independent — like metal rods align, each of their
own "volition", with a magnetic field; there is no correlation between the
rods but rather a macro phenomena. Functionally a vector space _wherein_ rods
exist, not a function from rod _i_ to rod _j_ for any (i,j). Galaxies might
work this way too — this is my intuition. No spooky supraluminal action at a
distance, just a "gravitational polarity X" that averages to orienting space
locally at large-enough scales. At a higher scale in 3D, it's probably more
about tangents lines (i.e. said "polarity" is of the flow, the streams of
galaxies, possibly "dark matter" which is a Y here, possibly distinct from the
X phenomena) than a macro-universal sense of rotation (although it's a
perfectly valid solution too, indeed many symmetries are broken for our cosmos
to exist, namely anti/matter, causality, or chirality.)

Rotation discrepancy could be related to X and/or Y or yet another Z phenomena
(my money is on the supermassive blackhole in the center, which I think we're
not fully understanding all effects yet, far from it, but meh it's bias and
subjectivity on my part).

[Btw, since you seem to like this kind of discussion, I'd strongly recommend
you follow Anton Petrov on YouTube[1]. He's a wonderful young scientist who
makes short 5-15 minutes videos on new astrophysics / astronomy papers every
day or so. For me, it's just the best way I've ever had to 'quickly' keep
track of the latest observations and theories, while hearing the explanation
and questions of an expert. Dr Becky[2] is another newcomer in the field of
intelligent vulgarization, and she's on a path to awesomeness as well.]

I've been into these things since my teenage years (late 1990s) and it's
incredible how much more observation we have now, how much more material there
is to think about. It's a truly great time for space amateurs.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCciQ8wFcVoIIMi-
lfu8-cjQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCciQ8wFcVoIIMi-lfu8-cjQ)

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYNbYGl89UUowy8oXkipC-Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYNbYGl89UUowy8oXkipC-Q)

~~~
mirimir
Sorry. TFA is "this f... article".

I agree about the "correlation does not imply causation" plague. It's
especially problematic for purely observational sciences, where experiments
are impossible or unethical. Prototypically for epidemiology, but also for
astronomy and cosmology. And yes, it's a slippery slope, even for experimental
sciences.

I get what you say about the alignment of metal rods in magnetic fields. So
yes, there could be some gravitational polarity over extremely large scales.

I see that I was getting stuck on the idea that changes can't propagate faster
than light, no matter what the mechanism. But now I get how arbitrarily
separated stuff can be similarly affected by a given source. For example,
there was a recent article about hot gas "sloshing" in a galaxy cluster.[0]

And thanks for the YouTube links :)

0) [https://phys.org/news/2020-01-sighting-hot-gas-sloshing-
gala...](https://phys.org/news/2020-01-sighting-hot-gas-sloshing-galaxy.html)

~~~
K0SM0S
Aha, TFA, right :p

Yeah, the faster-than-light topic is actually a very, very tricky one, even
for seasoned astro-peeps it seems.

I didn't mention PBS Spacetime[1] but it's probably the best place to start
for best-in-class high level mojo in astrophysics. Tons of back-catalog.
Really great quality production. Less 'newsy', more 'substance' than the other
two I mentioned (these are my trio on the topic).

Case in point: they do a fantastic job at explaining, notably time
shenanigans. They basically made it click for me, notably for FTL (Faster-
Than-Light) space expansion, cosmic inflation, etc. Fantastic-everything about
them, can't recommend enough.

One thing, though: my best way of framing the FTL limit is in terms of a speed
limit ( _c_ ) to transfer "information". This is why entanglement is a valid
principle, it does _not_ violate _c_ because entanglement cannot be _used_ to
transfer _information_ faster than light[2].

So "structure" can change arbitrarily fast, from the perception of its
objects, its contents; but "information", the contents, the objects, they are
bound by _c_ and all the rules actually _defined_ by said structure.

I really don't know if that's the correct view, but it seems to work to
explain (actually rule out) most light-speed paradoxes, so...

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g)

[2]: I think this vid does a good job at explaining why:
[https://youtu.be/2_4l5_G3dnM](https://youtu.be/2_4l5_G3dnM)

------
dvirsky
The title (not the text, though) sounds a bit like the premise of The Flow
from John Scalzi's The Collapsing Empire
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collapsing_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collapsing_Empire)

~~~
ThomPete
Any good?

~~~
dvirsky
Yep, not bad, but not in an epic sci-fi way like, say, Hyperion Cantos. It's
funny and witty, kinda like a dramedy-political-thriller that just happens to
be based in space.

------
corporate_shi11
Is this really that surprising? I thought that the CMB distribution of matter
displays a proto-structure that matches with what we observe today, meaning
the large scale structure and congruent behavior we observe is just the result
of the initial distribution and motion of matter in the early universe, rather
than some mysterious force or effect we have yet to explain.

~~~
colordrops
Or, it doesn't require mysterious force or effect - it could just be an
emergent property of how matter interacts. For instance, basic rules of atomic
forces lead to complex behavior in the aggregate, such as life, foam, planets,
etc. Not sure why this wouldn't apply to universal size structure as well.

~~~
simonh
Right, but those forces and effects drop off with distance. The alignments
we're observing are many, many, many orders of magnitude too far dispersed to
be explainable by known forces.

It would be like finding a few dozen planets floating in interstellar space
hundreds of lightyears away, much further away than the nearest stars, but on
analysis finding that they all happen to be rotating around our sun even
though our sun's gravity is utterly overwhelmed by the gravity of other
objects much closer to them.

~~~
colordrops
The same is true of a skin cell in your foot vs in your ear. You'd find
remarkable similarity even though there is no apparent reason they would be
similar until you comprehend the superstructure.

The idea is that the similarities across vast amounts of space would not be
due to first order effects from forces, but rather much more complex and
subtle interactions over time that happen to have structure rather than being
purely random, just as life emerged from seemingly random interactions in
primordial pools.

~~~
simonh
Well of course it seems likely some form of interaction at some point in the
past or present is behind these effects, we just don’t know what it was or is.
If that’s all your saying, sure.

------
_bxg1
Is there no chance these are coincidences? It gives me "Bible Code" vibes:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code#Criticism)

"information theory does not prohibit "noise" from appearing to be sometimes
meaningful"

~~~
thaumaturgy
Indeed, or the result of some specific starting conditions in the early
universe.

But I must assume that these cosmologists have already considered and
discarded that. I'd just like to be able to read more about why that guess
doesn't fit what they're observing.

~~~
simonh
'Starting conditions in the early universe' is too vague to actually consider
properly. To rise to the level of even thinking about accepting or discarding
it, we'd need to know what sort of conditions we're talking about, how they
might lead to what we're observing, and preferably also how they might have
come about. It's a class of possible explanations, not an explanation itself.

------
hateful
All hail his noodly appendage.

~~~
dkersten
String theorists got it wrong: the universe isn’t made up of small vibrating
strings, it’s made up of small vibrating noodles.

------
joe_the_user
One thought that occurs to me is that large-scale structures like sheets and
black holes with parallel axes of rotation could be the result large
directional explosions soon after the big bang rather than the result of a
large force acting now.

~~~
Ididntdothis
Where would these directional explosions come from?

~~~
joe_the_user
While I'd note one doesn't necessarily need an set explanation for such
directional explosions to formulate decent theory (look at dark matter, etc),
I think electromagnetic forces often produce highly directional effects.

~~~
soulofmischief
There are large-scale anistropies in the universe, and the origin of symmetry-
breaking at cosmological scales is an unsolved problem. Either a force or type
of matter is unaccounted for / incorrectly modeled, or the big bang was not
symmetrical.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil_(cosmology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil_\(cosmology\))

------
tiku
Evidence? Observations from our point of view (including readings from space,
still fairly close, on scale) are limited to our current position etc. So how
can we really tell if it's just not curvature of space and blackholes that
distort our point of view and readings? Interesting anyhow, but perhaps a bit
soon.

------
ieatmyownpoop
All i know is: I want stargate to be a thing

~~~
outworlder
Stargate Universe in this case, as Destiny was launched to collect data all
across the universe, because the Ancients had identified a pattern in the
structure of the universe...

~~~
Izkata
Not just "the structure of the universe", the Ancients identified structure in
the cosmic background radiation.

The episode that revealed this aired within a month of a real-world discovery
of a pattern in the cosmic background radiation [0]. Unfortunately, it wasn't
nearly as enticing as what was in the show.

[0] [https://www.seeker.com/cosmic-rebirth-encoded-in-
background-...](https://www.seeker.com/cosmic-rebirth-encoded-in-background-
radiation-1765141336.html)

------
michaelsbradley
Plasma filaments and other plasma structures can manifest long-range
attractive and repulsive electromagnetic forces proportional to d^-1 instead
of d^-2. So if those forces are operative at galactic and intergalactic scales
(between plasma structures) and we’re not fully taking them into account, then
we may be overlooking the most powerful organizing mechanism in the universe.

------
Edward9
It seems that periodically there is evidence showing that the universe is this
or that and yet nothing is and it will never be concrete because it's
impossible to find the root of the universe. I see it as a more philosophical
question. I think we should be more focused on exploring the universe, not
understanding it.

~~~
colordrops
We are able to explore the universe because of out attempts to understand it.

------
novaRom
A long-term motion of large structures of dark matter may be one explanation.
We still don't know too much about dark matter except it plays central role in
building the cosmic web.

I hope James Webb Space Telescope will not fail to operate and its launch will
not be delayed again (the project is 25 years old).

------
RenRav
What kind of movement is it?

Calling it a web of filaments doesn't paint a clear picture as to the movement
itself.

Assuming it's synchronized, I think of child objects moving in sync with some
kind of parent structure. That sounds ridiculous though.

~~~
simonh
I don't understand why you think it's ridiculous for child objects, which
formed within a structure, to reflect characteristics of that structure.

The movements described in the article are mainly alignment and direction of
axial rotation.

------
jgalvez
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4pWZGBpWP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4pWZGBpWP0)

It would be pretty amazing if all this turned out to be true ^

------
brutt
Another research about large scale structures:
[http://irfu.cea.fr/dipolerepeller](http://irfu.cea.fr/dipolerepeller)

------
ericdykstra
This sounds a bit like Bill Gaede's Rope Hypothesis, but I'm not very well-
versed in the topic to say for sure. Can anyone confirm/deny?

------
cheez
This makes sense. Our roads look like arteries. The universe is fractal. So it
makes sense that there are arterial-like structures connecting galaxies.

------
hyfgfh
The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief is near!

------
cmarschner
> which is very slowly rotating in a counter-clockwise direction

What does this even mean? Would they rotate clockwise when looking from
Australia?

------
radenska
if quantum theory can make predictions about the patterns in the CMB, can it
also anticipate these structures?

------
funnygrass
Just a thought: maybe space is not sparsely populated with bits of stars and
rocks. Space is filled with a form of matter we cannot yet detect.

~~~
ztjio
Not matter but something is everywhere. Space isn't empty, nothing is empty,
it just isn't always interactive.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#Higgs_field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#Higgs_field)

------
askvictor
might fit with the simulation hypothesis?

------
dang
Url changed from [https://bigthink.com/large-scale-
structures](https://bigthink.com/large-scale-structures), which points to
this.

------
OrgNet
Can we teleport to those giant structures?

------
gonational
Magnetic Universe

------
starpilot
No!

------
todaysAI
I know another construct that has this structure: the brain.

------
tabtab
What happens when "God" pulls the plug on his/her experiment? I hope he backs
us up.

~~~
LgWoodenBadger
Why? You wouldn’t exist to be able to perceive that it happened at all even if
he did

~~~
tclancy
I just don’t want to be left on some mislabeled Zip Disk is all.

------
shakil
We know many things in nature are fractals: coastlines, tree branches, blood
vessels...

What if the Universe is one big fractal, repeating itself at different scales:
electrons go around a nucleus, planets around a star, stars/galaxies around
blackholes, and so on and so on, building larger and larger structures.

~~~
flukus
Electrons don't rotate around the nucleus in the same way that planets go
around stars, that's a simplification for high school text books. Supermassive
black holes don't keep galaxies together either, galaxies rotate around
themselves and even that isn't enough, hence dark matter.

~~~
stkdump
Fractals are not necessarily the same at different scales. They can be self-
similar at different scales.

------
ptah
> “Such studies are statistical and a step forward would require a large
> amount of polarization data, not easy to gather with current
> instrumentation.”

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blinker%20Sy...](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blinker%20Sync)

------
ur-whale
Goes to show we just don't have the Math to understand large scale solutions
to differential equations for the N-body problem.

------
tus88
> as if they are connected by a vast unseen force.

LOL. Popsci is hilarious. And physics is in a desperate crisis. We need less
science and more philosophy.

------
ryanthedev
We know very little about our universe. We can't even define the Hubble
constant. Dark matter theory is a joke imo.

These nerds don't even understand refraction. Space isn't empty.

If space isn't empty you will never be able to account for the path photons
actually travel.

Gas causes refraction, how could you be sure the photos that hit the lens in
your telescope actually traveled in a straight line.

I know this will get down voted to hell. IDC.

~~~
mehrdadn
As I understand it dark matter is predicted by one set of observations and
confirmed by many others within calculated error bounds. It's not some kind of
overfit model trying to explain a single observation. So to discount it you'd
need to explain why it just so happens that many observations converge to the
same results as that which you would expect from the predicted dark matter
distribution. I don't think mere refraction can explain lots of different
observations.

Dark energy on the other hand is a whole other story.

~~~
ryanthedev
First thing to understand is the only evidence we have for the universe
expanding is redshift.

Do I believe refraction is at all related to Dark mass/energy? Not all all.
Refraction has nothing to do with that. Refraction has to do with redshift
being miscalculated.

Compression waves are the culprit and the field that propagates those waves
for dark garbage. baryonic acoustic waves give direct evidence as the perp.

~~~
mehrdadn
I think you missed the actual point of my comment? Refraction was kind of
irrelevant to it, I was trying to say something about the consistency of
different observations and the strength of the evidence behind them. You could
replace "refraction" with "squirrels" and it wouldn't really change what I was
trying to explain.

~~~
ryanthedev
Well you misunderstood that I was referring to refraction as being the reason
for dark matter predictions. I was trying to imply that it can explain why the
universe is expanding. Instead of the theory of dark matter.

I already gave you my reasoning for dark matter calculation, baryonic waves.
Which you so happened to ignore?

------
grizzles
I have an unusual idea related to this. You might call it the
interconnectedness of all things. (h/t DG) The more you look into quantum
systems the more things seem to look like you are looking at the observable
universe that we see in the sky. What if they were the same thing and space
has somehow folded back upon itself? Of course it's not really a falsifiable
conjecture. For example, we have absolutely no idea what's going on inside a
proton and we'll probably never know.

~~~
lgl
> For example, we have absolutely no idea what's going on inside a proton and
> we'll probably never know.

We actually have a pretty good idea of what's going on inside a proton.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton)

~~~
grizzles
Sure, can you explain it to me and cite your evidence? Because that's the
wikipedia article about protons, not an answer. The truth is this is a
controversial area of physics heavy on theories and light on experimental
data. The simple fact of the matter is we lack the measurement technology to
understand the inner workings of a proton. Theories are just that.

~~~
computerex
There is an entire theory that describes the strong interactions inside the
proton. Please take a look at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics)
and experimental evidence for QCD:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics#Experim...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics#Experimental_tests)

Furthermore particle accelerators have been smashing protons for a long time
to probe what's happening inside. The standard model of particle physics is
validated by evidence and experiments. I don't think it is fair to say that we
don't know what is happening inside a proton. There are many questions in
physics still left unanswered but I don't think anyone would classify this as
such.

~~~
grizzles
If we had such a "very good" understanding they wouldn't be spending billions
to build the Electron-Ion collider at Brookhaven. Here's a good article about
it, that's much more balanced than the QCD slanted wikipedia article:
[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/scientists-
endorse-b...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/scientists-endorse-
billion-dollar-collider-look-inside-protons-and-neutrons)

I especially like this bit about qcd:

> The mess is so complex that even basic properties of the proton remain
> unexplained. For example, its three quarks account for less than 5% of its
> mass, the rest arising somehow from energy of the virtual quarks and gluons.

~~~
vecter
This video explains where the mass of a proton comes from:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztc6QPNUqls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztc6QPNUqls)

Based on your comments above, though, I don't think watching this would change
your opinion about anything. People have been more than polite in trying to
help you fix your misunderstandings, but you refuse to absorb any new
information or change your views when presented with new data.

