Dark Matter Needed To Save Bankrupt Gravitational Theories

Biever, C., Dark Matter No-Show at Sensitive Underground Lab, New Scientist, Apr 14th 2011 (Hat tip: Fungus)

It's just like a wimp to be a no-show when summoned for interrogation. That seems to be the result of an experiment to detect the weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, thought to make up elusive dark matter that is thought to make up much of the mass of the universe.

After 100 days of monitoring, a tub of cryogenically chilled liquid xenon deep in an Italian mountain has shown no trace of the particles it is designed to catch. The result doesn't rule out the existence of WIMPs, but it does seem these particles are slipperier than previously hoped.

The Xenon100 experiment, at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory near L'Aquila, Italy, is one of the most sensitive dark matter detectors in the world. The results of the 100-day trial were hotly anticipated.

"It's like being at a wedding waiting for the bride," one nervous team member said before they were announced, according to Science News.

Dark matter is needed to explain where the gravity comes from that stops spinning galaxies from flying apart. It is thought to make up about 83 per cent of the universe but what it is actually made of is one of the biggest mysteries in physics.

Most cosmologists now think it is made of WIMPS. Such particles are thought to form an enormous cloud surrounding the Milky Way, through which the Earth is moving.

As their name suggests, WIMPs are expected only rarely to interact with normal matter. Occasionally however, particles should hit xenon atoms in the tub at Gran Sasso, producing telltale light signals. Because the tub is down a mine, it is shielded from interference from cosmic radiation by 1400 metres of rock.

But yesterday the Xenon100 team posted a paper online in which they report that, over a period of 100 days last year, they saw signals corresponding to only three particles. That is consistent with what they expected to see from background radiation. So no dark matter signal was seen.

Scientism Says Gravitation Cannot Be Questioned

"...to establish it [gravitation] as original or primitive in certain parts of matter is to resort either to miracle or an imaginary occult quality." -- Gottfreid W. Leibniz, polymath, July 1710

"Since Newton announced his universal law of gravitation, scientists have accepted and educators taught it, and rarely has it been questioned. Occasionally one has the temerity to say that gravitation is a myth, an invented word to cover scientific ignorance." -- C.H. Kilmer, historian, October 1915

Here is a recent example of someone who still has faith in Newton's pre-Space Age 17th century creationist hypothesis:

Ford, M., Is Gravity Not Actually a Force? Forcing Theory to Meet Experiments, Ars Technica, Apr 2011

How are controversial ideas handled by modern science? A common charge leveled against science (generally by those who are unhappy with its conclusions) is that the only way to get funding or continue your research is by going along with the current theories and not rocking the boat. For those who spend their careers in science, this is laughable—it is those who successfully rock the boat who are the most successful. In this article, we are going to look at a manuscript that purports to overturn hundreds of years of accepted ideas about gravity, and use it as an illustration of how controversial ideas are dealt with in modern physics.

It was Isaac Newton who first proposed a universal law of gravitation, where every massive body in the universe was attracted to every other one. This simple law proved extremely powerful, able to explain the orbits of planets and the reason the apocryphal apple fell on his head. However, Newton was never able to explain why gravity worked or what exactly it was. Two hundred plus years later, Albert Einstein was able to offer a more complete description of gravity—one where Newton's laws are a limited case. According to Einstein, gravity was due to the warpage of spacetime by mass and energy; all objects followed straight paths, just on curved spaces.

With the advent of quantum theory over the past 100 years, scientists have been able to develop an elegant mathematical framework capable of uniting three of the four fundamental forces that are thought to exist in the universe. The fourth, gravity, still remains the fly in the ointment, and has resisted unification to this point. Early last year, Dutch theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde published a manuscript to the arXiv that purports to explain why science cannot reconcile all four fundamental forces. According to him, it is simple: "gravity doesn’t exist."

"But what do you know about gravitation? Nothing, except that it is a very recent development, not too well established, and that the math is so hard that only twelve men in Lagash are supposed to understand it." -- Isaac Asimov, writer, 1941

"The mathematical proofs of Newton are completely erroneous." -- Immanuel Velikovsky, polymath, 1942

"It was only the downfall of Newtonian theory in this century which made scientists realize that their standards of honesty had been utopian." -- Imre Lakatos, philosopher, 1973

"Well, you know, if you flip a coin it doesn't come back down again if you're in space." -- Buzz Aldrin, astronaut, 2007

"The only solution would be to reject Newton's classical theory of gravitation. We probably live in a non-Newton universe." -- Pavel Kroupa, astronomer, May 2009

"Dark matter is an excuse for the failure of gravitational theories." -- Stephen Smith, author, June 17th 2010