
Gamma rays from the Milky Way's core look ever more like signs of dark matter - universe520
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21678126-powerful-gamma-rays-centre-milky-way-look-ever-more-signs?
======
emu
Treat this article with skepticism. I think the journalist has badly misjudged
the current consensus in the field when they say:

"There are still a few die-hards who do not believe in hooperons. They suggest
that if an ensemble of millisecond pulsars (dead stars that rotate hundreds of
times a second) were buried in the Milky Way’s middle, that might do the
trick."

The way I hear it, a population of new point sources is a better match for the
Fermi data than dark matter --- the excess is "clumpy", indicating point
sources, when you would expect a dark matter signal to be diffuse.

------
cgriswald
My high school physics professor had a motto: "Good enough is not good
enough." This was generally in response to the imprecision of lazy students
who would say to themselves or their lab partners, "Good enough." It's
something I've carried with me in life in a lot of contexts.

So it was fun seeing Dr. Goodenough's name in the article.

~~~
ISL
Alas, her name is pronounced ~Good-en-know, not Good-en-nuff.

------
hoodoof
I know this betrays my ignorance but it just seems that dark matter is a
rather implausible explanation for the apparent evidence of additional
gravitational force being exerted.

"must outweigh familiar, atomic, matter by about six to one" but despite our
best efforts it cannot be detected but there's vast amounts of it.

It seems to me there must be a better explanation because so far this one
(i.e. it's there but we just can't detect it at all) just doesn't make sense.

~~~
teraflop
We have good reason to believe that when we talk about dark matter, we really
are referring to some kind of "stuff" that has mass and momentum, but doesn't
interact electromagnetically with normal matter.

The most visually striking evidence comes from the Bullet Cluster. We can
_see_ two galaxy clusters that have recently collided at ~1% of the speed of
light, causing the gas to be slowed and heated. And we can map the mass
distribution via gravitational lensing, and see that a large amount of the
clusters' mass has passed right through each other without being slowed. This
is more or less what you would predict if "dark matter" is made of weakly-
interacting massive particles (WIMPs), and is pretty hard to explain by
appealing to a modified law of gravity.

[http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/index.html](http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/index.html)

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

~~~
adrianbg
Could it be that dark matter is stretched out along an axis that's invisible
to us and gravity? Maybe the particles don't interact with each other or
anything else because they're not actually that close to each other except
when projected onto the dimensions familiar to us, and on which gravity acts.

------
mirimir
Also see [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-matter-
explos...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-matter-explosions-
at-milky-way-core/)

Edit: I find this 2011 paper, but nothing newer:
[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1010.2752v3.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1010.2752v3.pdf)

Maybe someone can point to their latest stuff.

------
pc2g4d
"and particle physicists will have six times more stuff to study than they had
before."

Can anyone out there explain this statement for us non-physicists?

~~~
jaskerr
They're echoing a statement made in the third paragraph: "Everything from the
motions of galaxies to calculations about what sort of universe came out of
the Big Bang says it [dark matter] must exist—and must outweigh familiar,
atomic, matter by about six to one."

------
poelzi
Dark Matter is apparently 84.54% of our Universe. If this is so abandoned, why
did the millions we spend looking for it did not yield anything ?

Lets see:

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0612201.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0612201.pdf)
[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.0716v3.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.0716v3.pdf)

If you go through the list of papers on the Michelson-Morley experiment, you
will see that it is not that clear. In fact, they did a lot of things wrong
then. Averaged values that should have not been, missing information about the
movement of the solar system around the galaxy core (~360 km/s), gas mode
instead of vacuum,...

There are many critical papers published over the years:

[http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+michelson+morley/0/1/0/...](http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+michelson+morley/0/1/0/all/0/1?skip=0&query_id=d6e27eb164d5921a)

This is a very nice list of better experiments, looking into those is very
interesting:

[http://www.helical-structures.org/new_evidences/modern-
ether...](http://www.helical-structures.org/new_evidences/modern-ether-drift-
exp/ether-drift-exp.pdf)

Einstein only later understood, that general Relativity without aether is
unthinkable (Sidelights on Relativity): """ Recapitulating, we may say that
according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical
qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the
general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such
space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility
of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor
therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may
not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable
media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of
motion may not be applied to it. """

He did not need aether for SR, but GR without aether, simply does not make
sense. Also radial waves as predicted by Lord Kelvin and discovered by Tesla
are not really understandable without. You can explain many virtual particles
by creating a zoo like the standard model did, but radial waves you can't.

Dark Matter is the aether, without it's mass, spiral galaxies and many other
cosmological phenomena are not explainable - or at least not classical.

The problem with most aether theories is, that they assume it as some sort of
superfluid, or some special substance, which both do not make so much sense,
as the complexity of the vacuum is simply to great. It must at least implement
all virtual particles (β+/β-/photons/...), electric and magnet fields (Hertz &
Tesla waves, as both exist),...

The BSM-SG model has a completely different aether model, instead of some
special substance, it is made of the same building materials as
protons/electrons, just in a much smaller and different geometric structure.

It has only one fundamental force and 2 very simple fundamental particles
(balls). It becomes clear, that already quite large crystals, that look like
prisms, under this one law of attraction, build a grid that looks like a 3d
honey web.

In this grid, you can find all the physical properties we can measure.
Electric and Magnet Fields, Speed of Light, Photons, Vacuum Fluctuations,
Gravity, Coulomb Barrier, Quantum Entanglement, Virtual Particles (without
rest-mass)....

Of course, many of those are iterations between the extremely complex
geometrical structure of electrons/protons/neutrons and the Cosmic Lattice as
its called in BSM-SG.

Best physics book I read and most sensible unified theory I have encountered
so far:

[http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Structures-Matter-
Supergravitati...](http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Structures-Matter-
Supergravitation-Unified/dp/1412083877)

Needs an open mind tho and some months of heavy thinking for really getting
into this theory, but once you grasp the basic interactions, geometric
structures etc the universe starts to make so much sense. So far, every
phenomena I encountered was explainable after some minutes-days of thinking
and I always came to the same conclusion as Stoyan Sarg.

The universe is classic logical :)

~~~
stargazer-3
To put it in perspective for those who actually read through it: the aether
that Einstein was talking about has nothing to do with a classical definition
of aether from Michelson-Morley times and, of course, connection to dark
matter is solely grammatical.

Since when did HN become an "alternative science" magnet?

~~~
poelzi
I'm absolutely sure, that Einstein would have gone with the BSM-SG model.
Unfortunately traveling back in time is impossible (from the BSM perspective).

Because the BSM model is the hacker approach to physics. If you can't unify a
theory in 100 years, you most likely made some mistakes and a rewrite makes
much more sense. Start from scratch with newest measurements and the simplest
assumptions build it from ground up. Of course you must describe the different
constants/forces of the standard model, but as long as you derive them
logically, its absolutely valid.

Sorry, but we run out of time to wait 100 years for general physics to catch
up. Paradima changes are slow, and we run out of time. Most people do not
understand the great danger we are in:

arctic methane is just one of it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6pFDu7lLV4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6pFDu7lLV4)

If somebody gives me a classical theory of physics with the absolute minimal
set of basic assumptions possible; that fits measurements very well, uses a
more strict form of logic and provides one with a physical understanding of
something that could save humanity:

I fucking taking it. I learn the crap out of it and I give my best to save
this wonderful planet that we trashed. I studied physics long enough that I
know how most, not all of course, tick. I understand the close mindedness of
many scientists.

That's why I'm promoting it, that's why I think it deserves a chance to be
investigated. Quite often, when I talk with people about this model, hackers
have a much more open attitude to new ideas and very often, after answering
many of their questions, I often here: ohh, this actually makes sense.
Especially chemists are very fast interested, because it explains, of course,
chemical bindings and the interaction between particles very well and
understandable.

