Dark matter found?

<did I say this was not what you had said?>

? not sure of your point.

Perhaps from now on if I mention anything that is theory, I should always follow it with 'if it exists'. But that's too cumbersome for me and I assumed that it was a given.

This is getting silly.

Okay, for any of you who don't know what I meant by the link:

Has dark matter -should it exist or assumed to- been found? 😉

Originally posted by woodypusher
if you had read the link, you'd see that the headline is:

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Found? Big News Coming Soon

Does that headline, by your logic, presume dark matter exists also?

<how do you know that dark matter is “on the brink of being proven”? surely that assumes that dark matter exists before it is proven>

'...assumes dark matter exi ...[text shortened]... ' does too. This is getting silly.

I mean, seriously. Can we really prove anything exists?

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Found? Big News Coming Soon

Does that headline, by your logic, presume dark matter exists also?

No. It posses the question of it being found -not the answer nor the probable answer.

I mean, seriously. Can we really prove anything exists?

are you talking here about scientific 'proof' or pure deductive proof?
-because I thought we were just talking about the former and not the latter.
Nothing specific can be proven to physically exist using pure deductive logic but, nevertheless, it is correct to say science can 'prove' something exists by finding evidence that would make most rational people find it very difficult to deny it exists but science generally does not get into the business of tying to 'prove' that things exist generally and that the world isn't just an illusion or a dream because that's more to do with epistemology and philosophy (and not even those two things try and 'prove' this).
Example: science has 'proven' the existence of moons around Saturn -that 'proof' is not via pure deductive logic but rather via very convincing observations and that's what is usually meant by scientific 'proof' (unless you are talking about mathematics).

Originally posted by humy

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Found? Big News Coming Soon

Does that headline, by your logic, presume dark matter exists also?

No. It posses the question of it being found -not the answer nor the probable answer.

I mean, seriously. Can we really prove anything exists?

are you talking here about scientific[/ ...[text shortened]... lly meant by scientific 'proof' (unless you are talking about mathematics).

Is there something wrong with you? Do you feel yourself lacking somewhere, and you need to make up for it by showing - in your mind at least - how smart you are to make up for your perceived inadequacy? Do you feel threatened someway by other people's posts?

I'm just another regular person, someone who loves astronomy, physics, and science. I'm not a scientist, nor do I feel the need to be one or pretend to be one.

I post a simple scientific story, in a forum where the subject is science. I add no comments other than a headline which is similar enough to the actual headline. All of a sudden, you try to make it about philosophy, semantics, sentence structure - whatever. It's just a science story. If you're trying to impress me by reading too much into it, it won't work. I feel sad for you. I hope you get over your feelings of inadequacy.

You could do what you did here on ANY post in ANY of the forums. Why you chose this one is a psychological question you may need to ask yourself. I really don't care.

I was going to post about the Higgs Boson but I didn't have time for all the disclaimers and over-explanations about what I meant I would have no doubt have had to add.

You have a nice day. And get some help.

Originally posted by woodypusher
Is there something wrong with you? Do you feel yourself lacking somewhere, and you need to make up for it by showing - in your mind at least - how smart you are to make up for your perceived inadequacy? Do you feel threatened someway by other people's posts?

I'm just another regular person, someone who loves astronomy, physics, and science. I'm not a meant I would have no doubt have had to add.

You have a nice day. And get some help.

hey! I merely thought you had a miner misconception -nothing unfriendly or personal 🙂
how about a game of chess?

Originally posted by woodypusher
I haven't heard of any alternate theories. 'Too early to tell'? It was first proposed in 1932.

The dark matter proposed in 1932 is not quite the same as the stuff modern physicists get all excited over. Technically, dark matter is already known to exist, it's anything you can't see by one means or another. That would include faint stars, gas and dust clouds that are not warm enough to radiate significantly, wandering starless planets, dead stars, black holes and so on. The stuff that gets physicists all of a lather is so called cold dark matter, CDM for short, composed of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Here, massive means "having mass" rather than huge. Neutrinos are the only known particles with the necessary characteristics now they are known to have mass but there aren't enough of them to explain certain observations so physicists are hunting for even more elusive WIMPs. Sock drawer, behind the tartan golfing socks, I'm sure I saw some lurking there last week.

Originally posted by Kepler
The dark matter proposed in 1932 is not quite the same as the stuff modern physicists get all excited over. Technically, dark matter is already known to exist, it's anything you can't see by one means or another. That would include faint stars, gas and dust clouds that are not warm enough to radiate significantly, wandering starless planets, dead stars, black Sock drawer, behind the tartan golfing socks, I'm sure I saw some lurking there last week.

dark matter is already known to exist, it's anything you can't see by one means or another.

arr yes, but the question that always comes to my mind is is there really enough of this hidden stuff to explain all the observed gravitational effects or would the only full explanation involve something like Modified Newtonian Dynamics or Nonsymmetric Gravitational Theory etc. For all I know, there is no strange invisible exotics cold dark-matter particles of a type yet to be discovered. I wish I knew.