Author Topic: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops  (Read 5675 times)

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Offline Hoplite

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Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« on: August 06, 2013, 08:02:51 pm »
But I balled up the papers with my calcs and tossed it in the woodstove Sun afternoon. Big mistake. Now I am going to have to redo it all next weekend and email it to a cosmologist and ask him where I went wrong with the calcs. For a minute there I was damned sure I disproved the dark matter/dark energy theory. Hell of a way to spend a Friday night, all day and all night Sat and most of Sunday. If this doesn't scream "geek," I don't know what does.
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Offline Shano

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2013, 09:13:09 pm »
How can you disprove experimental facts? And... neither has a theory about it - there are however many hypotheses :) Maybe you disproved one of them?
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Offline Hoplite

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #2 on: August 06, 2013, 09:57:26 pm »
I am pretty sure when I send my calculations and questions out, I will hear back soon enough with the email starting out "You effing idiot..." :) Still, these thoughts are nagging at me nonstop, so I'll get myself straightened out as soon as possible. Cosmology is so fun.
Good luck is nothing but being in shape to act with the universe when the universe says, "Now!" - John Gardner, The Sunlight Dialogues

Offline Undecided

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #3 on: August 06, 2013, 11:38:44 pm »
Ditto what Shano said: dark matter and dark energy are really just "fudge factors" that we put into our models to account for various differences between our observations of, respectively, the weight of galaxies and the expansion of the Universe, and what general relativity predicts that known forms of matter and radiation do. Because the discrepancies—and therefore dark matter and dark energy—are experimental facts, it's not really clear what you mean. What sort of calculation did you do?  ??? [closest thing to inquisitive emoticon that the board has]
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Offline Hoplite

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2013, 04:16:13 pm »
Nothing earthshaking. Just proceeded on the assumption that matter without electrons/protons and clues indicating these have not been discovered/proven thus far, so what could possibly account for the coalescing of galaxies without dark matter. Since so many things have been under our noses all along, considered matter that has long since gone into black holes, and what if these are what really produce the effect that we attribute to dark matter and energy in coalescing galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Sort of pulling together instead of the pushing together that we attribute to these theoretical objects. We often factor in weight of the universe's mass without taking in consideration what mass has since been lost to black holes, subtracting what energy gets ejected. As information is not lost, this lost matter still must have a role to play?

No wonder I balled up the drawings etc and tossed it into the stove. I am just a novice cosmologist.
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Offline Old Viking

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #5 on: August 07, 2013, 05:31:16 pm »
Hoplite!  Pull yourself together.  Cosmology is the science of manufacturing and applying makeup.
I am an old man, and I've seen many problems, most of which never happened.

Offline Shano

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #6 on: August 07, 2013, 05:32:16 pm »
Black holes do not lose mass (nor are they a lost mass). In addition black holes have been part of the MACHO (MAssive Compact Halo Object) hypothesis for Dark Matter for decades. Attempts at discovering those experimentally via say very weak lensing have up to now failed. In addition the current estimates of the rate of black hole production (especially in young galaxy halos) suggest it is completely insufficient to account for the strength of the Dark Matter effect.

P.S. It is great to see people get engaged in science. But a word of caution: the ideas tractable by novice cosmologists have been long exhausted.
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Offline Hoplite

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #7 on: August 07, 2013, 06:00:53 pm »
Thanks. I had wondered if the mass that has long since been lost into black holes in the last 13+ billion years have already been computed/estimated. I will look around for information on this. I usually take some cosmological works to a camp without electricity or internet access so usually have to rely on my imagination. :D At the time, I was re-reading Krauss' A Universe From Nothing. Re-reading is where everything really starts clicking.
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Offline m52nickerson

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #8 on: August 07, 2013, 10:01:12 pm »
Black holes do not lose mass (nor are they a lost mass).

Don't black holes lose mass through Hawking Radiation?

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Offline Askold

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2013, 01:50:18 am »
P.S. It is great to see people get engaged in science. But a word of caution: the ideas tractable by novice cosmologists have been long exhausted.

I am going to have to disgree with this.

I could accept that the majority of ideas that novices can think of have been either proven or disproven already but not all of them. Every now and then some rookie does have a new idea. Sure, it's likely to be wrong but sometimes, just sometimes those new ideas might prove to be a real discovery.

And even if it isn't, so what? The rookie might still learn something new to him/her.
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Offline Lithp

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #10 on: August 08, 2013, 03:52:21 am »
I'm going to say that every or nearly every rookie idea has been tried, but it's very doubtful that all of them have been "disproven." That implies that we already know the solution which, of course, we don't.

Offline Sigmaleph

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #11 on: August 08, 2013, 10:51:44 am »
I'm going to say that every or nearly every rookie idea has been tried, but it's very doubtful that all of them have been "disproven." That implies that we already know the solution which, of course, we don't.

Not really. You don't need to know what the solution is to know that something isn't a solution.
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Offline Shano

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #12 on: August 08, 2013, 11:36:28 am »
Black holes do not lose mass (nor are they a lost mass).

Don't black holes lose mass through Hawking Radiation?



They are theoretically predicted to do so. It is, however, irrelevant for the conversation.
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Offline Shano

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #13 on: August 08, 2013, 11:49:39 am »
P.S. It is great to see people get engaged in science. But a word of caution: the ideas tractable by novice cosmologists have been long exhausted.

I am going to have to disgree with this.

I could accept that the majority of ideas that novices can think of have been either proven or disproven already but not all of them. Every now and then some rookie does have a new idea. Sure, it's likely to be wrong but sometimes, just sometimes those new ideas might prove to be a real discovery.

And even if it isn't, so what? The rookie might still learn something new to him/her.

I will repeat that I find it great that more people are engaged in science.
But I will have to ask for understanding on behalf of the astrophysical community in that we don't have the time to weed out the thousands of rookie ideas that come to us to find the one in maybe 20 years idea that is novel and can work. The streamlined process of modern science might find the same thing in a much slower manner, but it will also find many other things in a much faster way.
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Offline Askold

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Re: Email me the Nobel Prize in cosmology oops
« Reply #14 on: August 08, 2013, 01:46:35 pm »
P.S. It is great to see people get engaged in science. But a word of caution: the ideas tractable by novice cosmologists have been long exhausted.

I am going to have to disgree with this.

I could accept that the majority of ideas that novices can think of have been either proven or disproven already but not all of them. Every now and then some rookie does have a new idea. Sure, it's likely to be wrong but sometimes, just sometimes those new ideas might prove to be a real discovery.

And even if it isn't, so what? The rookie might still learn something new to him/her.

I will repeat that I find it great that more people are engaged in science.
But I will have to ask for understanding on behalf of the astrophysical community in that we don't have the time to weed out the thousands of rookie ideas that come to us to find the one in maybe 20 years idea that is novel and can work. The streamlined process of modern science might find the same thing in a much slower manner, but it will also find many other things in a much faster way.

"We?"

If you do not wish to waste your time on checking the validity of ideas from newbs then that is totally ok and it is your choice. If someone else is willing to humour a rookie then kudos to them. I'm not saying that scientists must spend all their days explaining why the theory that moon is made of cheese is wrong (In fact ideas like that can be checked by the rookie himself/herself from information freely available to everyone.) but there really have been scientific discoveries made by rookies (or even teenagers) and disregarding everyone who isn't an established scientist will also harm the advancement of knowledge.
No matter what happens, no matter what my last words may end up being, I want everyone to claim that they were:
"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
Aww, you guys rock. :)  I feel the love... and the pitchforks and torches.  Tingly!