On Sun, Oct 05, 2008 at 01:52:21PM -0400, Shane Mage wrote: > >good scientists know that such things as "dark matter" are > >speculations or hypotheses and then try to test them. > > And just how does one "test" for the existence of an inherently > unobservable entity?
There is more than you would probably care to read on the subject of "dark matter" available via the Internet (wikipedia is a great place to start). But your statement above seems to miss the point; "dark matter" is the name for the currently unknown but observed thing having a gravitational effect but not emitting any radiation. Large astronomical objects are not looking like they are behaving, basically, so the hypothesis is that there is something we can't yet see influencing the behavior. While these things may seem extremely esoteric and non-sensical the fact is that the two primary theoretical models used in physics - Relativity and the Standard Model - are incredibly successful when it comes to predictive power. So these theories have a lot of traction and yes, scientists will invent seemingly silly things (photons, quarks, dark matter) and try to incorporate them into current theoretical models. A *lot* of them are later discovered. Physics geeks are on the edge of their chairs waiting to see if the LHC at CERN turns up a Higgs Boson. Of course, the Aether is one of those invented things too, so sometimes they need to be tossed. ;-) Matt -- GnuPG Key ID: 0xC33BD882 aim: beyondzero123 http://blogdayafternoon.com yahoo msg: beyondzero123 My top-level question about Sept. 11 is, do we really want to live in a world in which U.S. intelligence can detect every half-million-dollar, 20-person, two-year activity? -Whitfield Diffie _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
