The morning after CERN announces the discovery of the Higgs particle, three young physicists sit down with Nobel prizewinners George Smoot and Martinus Veltman to digest the news. The students see it as another success for the standard model of particle physics. But Veltman, who helped to shape this model, is cynical. Moreover, Veltman contends that there is no such thing as dark matter. See how the shocked students and Smoot respond to Veltman’s scepticism.

8 Comments

1. 1. outsidethebox 07:42 PM 10/9/12

   Why it's just as real as sting theory!

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2. 2. jtdwyer 08:36 AM 10/11/12

   Thank you Martinus Veltman, voice of reason!
   
   Dark matter is not just a compensatory device to allow astronomers and physicists to continue using classical equations to evaluate the gravitation of very large scale, compound objects of mass, it's a 'dark' 'fudge factor' that allows them to continue using classical mechanics IMPROPERLY.
   
   Please see
   http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1419
   click on "Download Essay PDF File" or
   http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/1419/__details/Dwyer_FQXi_2012__Questionin_1.pdf

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3. 3. Donzzz 04:24 PM 10/11/12

   vulvox is right - dark matter is just ordinary matter at a different energy level relative to absolute space.
   Inertial mass can vary just as weight can vary but for different reasons.
   
   http://novan.com/absolute-space.htm

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4. 4. R.Blakely 11:22 PM 10/13/12

   I think that dark matter must be photons, because an incredibly large number of photons exist in space between stars. We know photons are affected by gravity, and therefore photons have gravity. Photons travel thru space for decades, and since they diverge, and since they attract each other, they must lose energy, which causes a redshift in the color of very old photons.
   Since a redshift is not really caused by an expanding universe, we do not need to imagine dark energy as an explanation for an expanding universe. We can prove that photons have gravity, and therefore we can prove that the universe is not expanding, and so we should be able to solve an important physics problem: is the universe is shrinking or expanding or stable?
   

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5. 5. jtdwyer in reply to vulvox 05:11 PM 10/22/12

   I've heard that before, but how can that explain observed galaxy rotation in the context of Keplerian relations? How can up to 10 times the mass density of 'ordinary' galactic matter be imparted by undetected proximal gas & plasma in the intracluster medium? I suggest you read my essay (see comment #2 above) - galactic dark matter is the error produced by gross misconception (galaxies are simply not planetary systems).

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6. 6. jtdwyer in reply to vulvox 08:15 AM 10/23/12

   To affect the rotation of galaxies, any undetected mass would have to be gravitationally bound with the visible galactic matter: peripheral dark matter galactic halos would be rotating in conjunction with with the visible galaxy - otherwise it would not affect observed galaxy rotation. There are also constraints limiting the distance at which galactic dark matter could be located while producing the observed non-Keplerian flat rotation. For an artist's rendering of a dark matter configuration thought to produce the observed galactic rotation while complying with Kepler's laws of planetary motion, please see:
   http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1217/
   
   There is some possibility that gases comprising the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters contributes to observed lensing effects in ways not considered, such as dispersion, that is attributed only to weak gravitational lensing, thus seeming to require undetected mass. In that sense I agree that probabilistic weak 'gravitational' lensing evidence for dark matter may actually be evidence of optical distortions produced by gas and plasma.

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7. 7. Volodymyr 01:39 AM 11/5/12

   Dark matter indeed does not exist. However, mass, which creates this phenomenon, is real. For more detail: "Dark matter as seen from the physical point of view" http://inerton.kiev.ua/37_dark_matter.pdf

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8. 8. jtdwyer in reply to vulvox 03:51 AM 11/7/12

   Yes, the construction now almost seems to resemble an inverted pyramid!

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