Comments on: Explaining Dark Matter and Contradicting the Big Bang

By: CV

CV — Sat, 03 May 2008 04:51:44 +0000

The red shift can be explained by the clumping of energy in to matter a and the conversion of matter in to heavier and heavier atoms in stars. This would be much like starting with a flat uinverse that would be constantly building larger gravity wells out of smaller ones. The larger the gravity wells the more time it would take light to pass by them. As they are constantly growing any light to come from more distant sourced would have to travel through a larger and larger number of these growing gravity wells. This would cause the ever increasing red shift we see in light coming from more distant sources.

By: RL

RL — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 21:56:39 +0000

If their science is correct, the test results will be there. As for predicting how the universe started, I don't think its necessary for a theory to explain everything. No theory does that. If the predictions are tested and are found to be true, then everyone has more thinking to do!

By: Alphonso Richardson

Alphonso Richardson — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:15:40 +0000

Finally got to read this article – 'COSMOIDS'?
Please, that's got to be a bit dodgy, sorry – even if it's genuine (which i'm highly suspicious of), it seems a little , well, daft.
Don't get me wrong, great breakthrougha are often counter-intuitive, but still…..

By: steelmarket

steelmarket — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:19:06 +0000

The very terms "dark matter" and "dark energy" prejudice us in our thinking about these phenomena. If Soberman and Dubin had not coined the catchy word "cosmoids", would we even be discussing their work?

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:27:50 +0000

The CMB has been thoroughly disproven as being something local. There are holes in the CMB that exist right where the center of masses of galaxy clusters exist. There is where photons of the CMB are scattered by neutral hydrogen that exists in a greater amount of mass than the entire masses of the cluster's visible matter by triple the amount. Inependently, at X-ray wavelengths, we can observe the hot hydrogen gases colliding and emitting those X-rays in the exact same spots. The temperature varies with the intensity of the X-rays as one moves measurements across the field and the math crunches out the same amount of mass that was calculated by scattering of the CMB photons…the same 3 to 1 ratio of hydrogen to all of the visible matter in the galaxy clusters.

Even then the amount of mass is not enough to explain the rotation curves of the galaxy clusters..

What has occured recently in cosmology is that MOND has been falling apart since Jacob Beckenstein publish some math that did explain how one could replace the inverse square law of gravity at galactic distances with a 1/r law instead..He was a hero at first until some of the MOND members and followers read into his math and realized that he introduced dark matter and dark energy in order to make it work.

So now there are spinoffs to save the idea that DM and DE along with the Big Bang must be wrong.

The problem with most alternative theorists is that they view science as "invent and replace" instead of realizing that old measurements are valid to a limit where better measurements from more extensive theories fit condition where one theory breaks down. Kepler's math was not as complete as Newton's. Special relativity and general relativity extended upon Newton's math but did not caste it aside. Quantum physics makes measurements that GR cannot reside with. Once we learn the limits of them we will extend, but not replace General and Special relativity.

By: Varun

Varun — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:15:10 +0000

it does sound absurd…
as per the article published…..they are producing results AGAINST the big bang theory of CREATION of the universe….but they choose not to say anything about how THEIR universe was created……!!
but yes…the red shift point does seem to be quite valid because thier arent any blue shifts observed….i.e….if everything is moving away from a point…the matter closer to that point should be relatively faster than the ones away…..!

By: David Shander

David Shander — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:17:48 +0000

So why is it not possible that dark matter and energy are the non-baryonic medium in which the big bang (or whatever) occurred. And furthermore, is continuing to occur, and maybe more than once.

By: Michael McVey

Michael McVey — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:11:21 +0000

Yes, those ads for Expelled the Movie and The God Argument were a little off-putting. Must be the algorithm Google uses, I guess there aren't so many cosmologists selling their movies and books through Google.

By: Chuck Lam

Chuck Lam — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:54:36 +0000

Hmm . . . Soberman and Cubin could be onto something really big.

By: Ed2

Ed2 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:13:05 +0000

This story is just conjecture. My conjecture is that the dark matter are simply electron-neutrinos at 2.725 degrees kelvin.

By: Invader Xan

Invader Xan — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:35:51 +0000

I don't know about whether or not this concept will displace Big Bang theory, but it does seem like a plausible explanation for at least some of dark matter.

I mean, come on — "Dark Matter" was a term coined primarily because people didn't know what it was. Since then, people seem to take the term a bit too seriously. We know nothing about it, whether or not it's homogeneous, how it interracts… We also know that there's an awful lot we don't know about interstellar space (Diffuse Interstellar Bands, for instance).

If these so-called "cosmoids" could exist, they might help explain a few things. Let's face it people, it's a bit embarrassing not knowing where most of the Universe actually is!

By: Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:54:37 +0000

It's 1st April guys.

By: Frances

Frances — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:39:01 +0000

On the NASA archive site you can find three papers written by Soberman and Dubin dated 1989, 1990 and 1991. So why is this being rated as a new breaking story? And why didn't anyone take it seriously earlier?

By: JamesB

JamesB — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:26:42 +0000

BTW – likely not an April Fool's joke as article is dated 31 March, rather than April 1.

By: JamesB

JamesB — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:25:33 +0000

And this after a Prophet of the CMB school was prognosticating in the latest issue of Sky & Telescope (May'08) about how the Bing Bang and the CMB were "good science". Hope this Prophet didn't break his arm patting himself on the back because is "good science" isn't looking that good anymore. These "cosmoids" make better sense than a mythological "aether"… er sorry… "Dark Matter".

By: dilip

dilip — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:39:16 +0000

A friend and colleague Narayan Chandra Rana examined (in the 1980s) Chandra Wickramasinghe's (and perhaps also Jayant Vishnu Narlikar's) (possibly also Fred Hoyle's) hypothesis that graphite needles sprinkled thoughout space shape the spectrum of background light to give appearance of a low-temperature blackbody. This was a genuine break from explaining cosmic microwave background without applying Geroge Gamow's hot big bang theory. Later Patrick Das Gupta went on to examine Jayant's later hypothesis (which possibly had support from Halton Arp and Geoffrey Burbidge and Fred) of an oscillating universe, which is not really a genuine break from George's hot big bang.

[The above comments assume, of course, that cosmoids made of frozen H and He (perhaps to get the universal light element abundances right!) are a genuine hypothesis rather than just an April Fool's joke for 2008 - although I add that George would have approved of such an elaborate joke!]

By: Bob Castillo

Bob Castillo — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:51:04 +0000

If these "cosmoids" are just clumps of hydrogen at the CMB temperature wouldn't they tend to collapse to form galaxy clusters just like any other large clump of hydrogen in the universe? Now we've seen gravitational "maps" of dark matter. (Or at least maps of the gravitational microlensing that dark matter is supposed to cause.) Wouldn't these dark matter clumps like the one we see in the Bullet Cluster and in cluster CL0024+17 always collapsing into galaxy clusters? Yet we don't always see galaxies embedded in dark matter maps: http://startswithabang.com/?p=109. This theory sounds incomplete.

By: Qev

Qev — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:03:35 +0000

Wouldn't Compton scattering kind of nix their redshift argument? If there were enough of these 'cosmoids' out there to produce the observed redshift, wouldn't everything be rather blurry out there?

By: Phil Plait

Phil Plait — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:12:47 +0000

This theory is DOA unless it can also explain why high-redshift objects like supernovae exhibit a time dilation exactly in accordance with their redshift velocity away from us.

I have to bring this up every time someone comes up with an alternative to an expanding Universe. It's the one major test it MUST pass, or else i won't even look at it.

Ned Wright has something about this on his site too: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/tiredlit.htm

By: bigger bang

bigger bang — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:11:11 +0000

I have to agree with Spacer. "Universe Today" is full of nonsense with Astronomy Cast's Fraser Cain (Universe Today) and Dr. Pamela L. Gay (who believes in the myth of Christian doctrine).

By: Max Vondel

Max Vondel — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:38:55 +0000

Lets celebrate the principles of science, new theories and new ways to look at the universe round us. This new theory is interesting in that it makes a few testable predictions. I can see other readers getting a bit flustered by the possibility that the Big Bang Theory might need revision. Rejoice in the ability to discuss and dissagree because a few hundred years ago this could be a life threatening experience. In some parts of the world your life is still in danger if you disagree with the mainstream. Be careful that you don't become one of the accusers of Galileo 400 years ago.

By: Spacer

Spacer — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:14:38 +0000

Come on people
That's just an April fool's day article, quite imaginative I must say so you've all believed in it.
Nancy, you're a great sci-fi writer.
Hats off to Nancy Atkinson!!!

By: inflaton

inflaton — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:33:38 +0000

The theory cant be right because it contradicts the second thermodynamic law.
There is nothing to disproof, because this theory has nothing to do with science.

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:07:14 +0000

No experiment has directly observed evidence proving that dark matter and dark energy exist. They have been invoked to explain inconsistencies in the big bang theory. Right now this competing theory is just as valid as the other until experimental evidence proves or disproves it. The one thing I like about this is that is fairly easily testable so it will go away quickly if the necessary experiments disprove rather than prove it. I do think it is a little too convenient to be true.

By: inflaton

inflaton — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:03:38 +0000

This theory is simply bullshit. I cant believe that there are people who are going take this theory serious.