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GPS satellites suggest Earth is heavy with dark matter - New Scientist article

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Proud Mary

Fri Jan 03 2014, 12:39PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
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Posts: 4992

GPS satellites suggest Earth is heavy with dark matter - New Scientist

Ash Small

Fri Jan 03 2014, 01:29PM

Registered Member #3414 Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
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I suggest that the evidence presented here is far from conclusive, PM. As stated, they haven't even factored in gravitational effects from the sun and moon, etc, and the velocities of sattelites seems to have returned to normal now.

EDIT: I am sceptical about 'dark matter', etc., as you are probably aware.

Proud Mary

Fri Jan 03 2014, 03:10PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
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Posts: 4992

I'm not really qualified to comment, Ash. But I felt the article was interesting enough to merit posting here. I suppose I'd always thought of dark matter - about which I know very little - as being something very far away out in deep space, rather than being something that could be almost on our own doorstep.

Uspring

Fri Jan 03 2014, 03:57PM

Registered Member #3988 Joined: Thu Jul 07 2011, 03:25PM
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There must be more info to this than in the article PM linked to. The study of Steve Adler mentioned is about possible drag effects of dark matter on space probes, much as air resistance. This is not a gravitational effect.
Later in the article it says that deviations from expected trajectories were to be around 0.005%. Gravitational contributions from moon and sun are many orders of magnitude larger. The whole article doesn't sound coherent to me. The author must have missed some points made by Adler and Harris.

Ash Small

Fri Jan 03 2014, 11:05PM

Registered Member #3414 Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245

PM, I didn't mean to imply the article has no merit, just that it, along with all the other articles I've read suggesting evidence of 'dark matter' all seem flawed to me.

I'd love to be proved wrong regarding dark matter, however, I remain sceptical.

Proud Mary

Fri Jan 03 2014, 11:41PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
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Posts: 4992

I don't know what to think about it, Ash. I have no idea whether dark matter exists or not. I put it into the same mental space where I keep parallel universes, quantum entanglement, and SchrÃ¶dinger's Cat. Things of which I have heard, things which I have even had explained to me, but which I do not really understand.

Ash Small

Sat Jan 04 2014, 02:20AM

Registered Member #3414 Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245

Well, I see the other three examples you mention as quite straightforward, at least as far as quantum mechanics goes. As quantum mechanics is all about probabilities, in as much as, if you do the same thing again and again, or if the same thing happens again and again, the probability of one outcome occuring, or another outcome occuring, can be predicted using quantum mechanics, however, in each intance you have to 'look inside the box' to see which outcome occured on each separate occasion, ie, whether or not Shroedinger's cat is still alive, however, the probability that the cat is still alive remains constant. This is also where parallel universes come in, until you 'open the box' the cat is 'either dead or alive'.....two possible outcomes, two possible scenarios...two 'parallel universes' both existing, or at least being possible, until the box is opened

Dark matter, on the other hand, in my opinion, is more like 'The Emperor's New Clothes', either you believe, or you don't. By definition, we can never detect the presence of 'dark matter', we can't 'see' it.

In my opinion, it's a bit like the old rivalry between 'God' and 'Science'. Those who have faith in God believe he is responsible for everything we see around us, whereas 'scientists' try to find evidence for how the universe functions, through 'good scientific practice'. Those who wish us to have faith in 'dark matter' are offering no more evidence for it's existence than those of a 'religeous persuasion' who tell us 'we must have faith in God'.

It seems to me that those who say we must believe in dark matter are offering the same argument that religion offers, with no evidence, or certainly no conclusive evidence, to back up their claims other than 'we should have faith in 'Dark Matter''. Surely not the answer that science has for so long sought to find.

Saying 'The universe couldn't exist without dark matter' is like saying 'The universe couldn't exist without God'.

It will take more than that to convince me of the existence of dark matter.

EDIT: On the other hand, those who say 'Dark matter must exist or Einstein was wrong' are asking us to 'have faith in Einstein, when there is no evidence'.....Now I'm getting confused myself.

EDIT: This isn't to say that 'dark matter' isn't a 'valid hypothesis', though, there just isn't any 'tangible' evidence for it.

Conundrum

Sat Jan 04 2014, 05:30AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Heh.
Unless of course the effects are due to that "invisible" antiparticle belt around the Earth exerting anti-gravity effects on the satellite(s)...

Its possible, CERN are still trying to build their experiment to test it but the problem is that the field from positrons is a fraction of the field from antiprotons so even if they trap enough antimatter in one place and turn off the power they may still not have enough useful data.

My experiment would use positron pairing within a rotating superconductor to amplify the effect to detectable levels, the problem is as an amateur I have no way to obtain the isotopes or chemicals needed to test it.

Proud Mary

Sat Jan 04 2014, 09:25AM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Perhaps dark matter simultaneously exists and does not exist in a superposition of states, one of those statements whose explanatory power is at best very limited.

Uspring

Sat Jan 04 2014, 12:10PM

Registered Member #3988 Joined: Thu Jul 07 2011, 03:25PM
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Posts: 711

Ash Small wrote:

This is also where parallel universes come in, until you 'open the box' the cat is 'either dead or alive'.....two possible outcomes, two possible scenarios...two 'parallel universes' both existing, or at least being possible, until the box is opened.

The parallel universe theory seems plausible to me. Hawking once remarked about it being "trivially true".
Consider the case, where you have a cat in a box and an observer outside. The assumption is, that you have a superposition of a wave function of a living cat and a wave function of a dead cat inside the closed box. For microscopical systems these kinds of superpositions are certainly true, predicted by QM and verified by experiment. And QM doesn't really make a distinction between small and large systems, even living ones.

Once the box is opened, the observer will see either a living or a dead cat. The wave function seems to have collapsed into a single version.

Now consider this experiment: A cat in a box, an observer outside. Put both of them in a bigger box and have a second observer outside the bigger box. Now have the inner observer open the cats box.

From the point of view of the outer observer, the outer box, as long as it remains closed, will contain a superposition of a wave function of an inner observer seeing a live cat and an inner observer seeing a dead one. So a collapse of wave functions didn't really take place, even though the inner observer thinks so.

Inside the outer box there are 2 "parallel universes". This is a consequence of treating observers as QM systems and not as being something separate as in the Kopenhagen interpretation of QM. What you consider a box is somewhat arbitrary. You might even think of the whole universe as being a box and the universes wave function to be a superposition of all the possible outcomes of all experiments.

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