

Dark matter may be an illusion caused by the quantum vacuum - cwan
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-dark-illusion-quantum-vacuum.html

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VladRussian
>Hajdukovic’s paper on a dark matter alternative is also an attempt to
understand cosmological phenomena without assuming the existence of unknown
forms of matter and energy, or of unknown mechanisms for inflation and matter-
antimatter asymmetry.

so he brings in unknown negative gravitational charge. Basically giving
another name to unknown machinery behind the observed phenomena.

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tzs
It's not comparable. Dark matter involves hypothesizing something that is
being hypothesized solely to explain certain cosmological problems. If we
didn't have those cosmological problems that need explaining, no one would be
suggesting dark matter.

The possibility of gravity being repulsive between matter and antimatter was
hypothesizes long before we ran into those cosmological problems, and has been
subject of sporadic ongoing debate at least as far back as the early to mid
20th century.

~~~
michaelcampbell
> Dark matter involves hypothesizing something that is being hypothesized
> solely to explain certain cosmological problems.

Waiiiiit.... isn't this the way with ALL unknowns? We see some thing we can't
explain (a "problem"), and we come up with a hypothesis solely to explain it?
Sometimes we're wrong, and we start over with a new hypothesis?

We hypothesized the existence of some hitherto unknown and "dark" agent we
called a "germ" to explain infection. We hypothesized the existence of an
unknown and invisibile "X-ray" to explain how film got ghostly images on it.
Etc.

I'm sure I'm missing your meaning here; can you clarify?

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tzs
The distinction I'm making is being hypotheses that involve new objects and
hypotheses that involve new properties for old objects.

For instance, consider planetary motion before Newton. You could have
hypothesized a "dark" force that moved the planets. Or you could hypothesize
that a force you already know exists (gravity near the Earth's surface) also
exists for each body of the solar system, has unlimited range, and follows an
inverse square law.

~~~
michaelcampbell
Ok, I get your distinction, but (and I'm a complete neophyte non-professional
here, so bear with me), the layman's explanation for dark matter has been, "We
don't know what's causing it, but it acts like gravity, and the only thing we
know of now that has gravity is matter, and it appears (hah) to be invisible
to all of our known electro-magnetic radiation, so we call it "dark"".

So I apologize if I've misunderstood, but based on that I don't think
hypothosizing this unknown phenomenon as some sort of "dark matter" is
entirely out of line.

Thanks for your explanation.

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glimcat
Not hugely likely, but interesting to explore.

There are also things like neutrinos which wouldn't fit.

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Zaak
Why wouldn't neutrinos fit?

~~~
glimcat
They're observable particles. They probably wouldn't fit unless it somehow
turns out to explain the entire Standard Model. What I'm getting at is that it
might explain some dark matter, but it is unlikely to explain all dark matter
even if it turns out to be a correct model.

That whole thing about neutrinos oscillating between flavors still freaks me
out though. One of the weirder things in quantum mechanics.

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justincormack
I can't take this website seriously. Full of ads in the middle of the page.

This _appears_ to be the real paper which the page apparently does not bother
to cite. <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1009.3333>

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wazoox
I like the elegance of this theory, if nothing else. Dark matter always seemed
painfully _ad hoc_ , and MOND kludgy. Now, we need to know more about
antimatter and gravitation...

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derrida
If anyone wants an introduction to the dark matter problem, I think this one
is excellent: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77yXhAibQp4>

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asdkl234890
Non-physorg link?

