Are dark matter and dark energy just buzzwords for we don't know?
Are dark matter and dark energy just buzzwords for we don't know?
Leo James
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Mason Williams
yeah, so is entropy.
Anthony Gomez
Not quite. It's more "We don't know, but our best guess is it's something like X".
So dark matter is "We don't know what, but something is causing galaxies to act weird, and we think it's some kind of non-luminous matter with [fairly specific properties], although we're not sure what exactly that would be"
And dark energy is "We're not sure why, but the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate; our current working hypothesis is a constant background energy density with [specific magnitude and parameters], although we're not sure what would cause that."
Luke Taylor
(Remember: there's a difference between "we don't know" and "we don't know anything." )
Zachary Brooks
Zero point is dark energy.
Mason White
Only if we're really, really wrong about zero point energy.
The calculated estimate value of the ZPE density is about 10^100 times larger than the measured density of dark energy. This has been called "The worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics."
Lincoln Lopez
Good post
Jose James
Whats the "best" prediction in the history of physics? Ive heard the cosmic background radiation was almost perfectly predicted by theory
Henry Hernandez
Yes and no. There's pretty solid evidence that Dark Matter is a thing. For an explanation for the layperson, I suggest a particular youtube video that is a lecture by Sean Carroll, probably for Skepticon or something, but I'm too lazy right now to find it for you. Just watch all of them - they're great.
Gabriel Phillips
Also, Bullet Cluster.