Although Einstein created a basis for what we know today in physics, there is still much to learn. By expanding our knowledge of dark matter and dark energy, we will eventually have to revise many of the theories once thought concete and infallible. Neutrinos that can travel faster than the speed of light will be just the tip of the galactic iceberg, so to speak.

A scientific occult group believe Einstein had a secret. There are many oddities about Einstein to suggest he was an alien visitor. For his time in history, he knew too much.

@dirtydog200: not really, Lorentz and others had already introduced changes to length and time measurements to account for the observer-independent speed of light. He actually had to spend a lot of time learning from mathematicians the space-time curvature stuff that led to the general theory of relativity. If it wouldn't have been him, it probably would have been someone else. Maybe two separate people, maybe over longer periods of time, but we would have gotten there eventually.

"Scientific occult group" sounds fishy right from the start. Sounds a lot like 'scientific creationism' or 'intelligent design'. Someone puts scientific in front of their religious/philosophical beliefs, and tries to make it sound legit. Personally, I find it humorous - someone trying to justify their religion with science. They must not realize the two are diametrically opposed. Or maybe they realize it, but want to confuse others, if you take the more cynical view.

I will admit though, the guy looked like an alien, so maybe they weren't so far off after all, lol.

If dark matter is concentrated in areas of high density, such as these galaxy clusters, then is it effected by gravity?

dirtydog, the same idea has been put forth about Shakespeare. There have been studies done on authors throughout history, and the most prolific and wordy writers use at most around 25-30% of the active vocabulary at their time. Shakespeare, on the other hand, used over 80%, and in fact, invented a lot of words that we still use today. Even if Shakespeare was more then one person they would not have come near that level.

someone trying to justify their religion with science. They must not realize the two are diametrically opposed.

Not necessarily... Einstein believed in God, for example. There are a number of quantum physicists who believe in a higher power as well. In fact, just google "quantum physics and God" and you'll get a host of sites (not all of them reputable, but many are) that make the case of a higher power as defined by our ongoing examination of quantum mechanics.

Your own assertion that science and religion are "diametrically opposed" is as much a statement of faith as any other. Your personal bias is blinding you to the very real possibility of higher dimensional beings/powers that govern aspects of lower dimensions. (Remember that we can mathematically describe 11 dimensions, with theoretical evidence for additional dimensions and infinite parallel dimensions). As a man of science, one should never speak in absolutes, as doubt is the mainstay of scientific advancement.

Well put WMG. The thing is, people don't know what they don't know.

I'm puzzled by Dark Matter. If Dark Matter is mostly made of WIMPS that only interact with ordinary visible matter through gravity then I would assume that Dark Matter also interacts with itself through gravity? If that is the case, and the Universe is mostly made up of Dark Matter (like 75 or 85% by some estimates) then where are all the Dark Matter black holes? Where are all the Dark Matter stars? Wouldn't there be Dark Matter galaxies with very little visible matter and tons of Dark Matter and loads of gravity causing gravitational lensing for no apparent reason? Why does visible matter only make up stars? Shouldn't we see or be able to detect through gravitational interactions Dark Matter stars?

Maybe dark matter doesn't interact with itself through gravity?

Grid - Think of it this way, dark matter is the scaffolding for matter. That is it helps matter to clump together into stars and galaxies. There is direct correlation between the location of dark matter and the location of galaxies. With WIMPS, there is minimal interaction with anything, even themselves. There was an article that I saw that showed dark matter as halo around the galaxy, the gravity of dark matter is weak yet it is enough at a large scale that helps to hold the galaxies together. Another good example to read about is the Bullet Cluster. The thing to remember is that astronomers and astrophysicists are not for sure what dark matter is and its true effects, thtis is why it is such an interesting topic.

TReed...Thanks for your attempt for better clarification. Yes WIMPS do not inter-act very well with visible matter, physical inter-action that is. But when it comes to gravity, scientists tell us that it is the dark matter in the Universe that is inter-acting gravitationally with the visible matter and that dark matter out numbers visible by like a factor of more than fives times that of visible matter. If it is the dark matter that is making up a majority of the "lost" mass of the Universe, and this dark matter has gravity, then this dark matter should clump into structures similar to that of visible matter, i.e. dark matter black holes, and dark matter stars. If galaxies are made up of mostly dark matter, 85% or more by some estimates, and this dark matter has gravity, then why is it only the visible matter that makes up structures such as stars & black holes inside of said galaxies?

My hunch is that there is no such thing as dark matter. My hunch is that we do not fully understand gravity and where it comes from. If there are additional dimensions, perhaps what we are seeing is the bleed through of gravity from these additional dimensions? Perhaps "ordinary" visible matter has additional dimensions that we have not yet discovered and therefore has more gravity than that which we can measure and it is only in large scale that this extra dimensional gravity becomes apparent? Perhaps gravity acts differently on large scale objects such as galaxies than it does on small scale things such as stars and planets? Perhaps the effects of gravity are cumulative & exponential as the mass increases to obects the size of galaxies?

That is precisely the beauty of science. It is eternally dynamic - the more we know, the more we know find out we don't know. Or something like that, lol. Einstein gave us some very good ideas and theories about how gravity works and the relativity of time-space. But they are only theories, and they too will eventually be looked at as quaint. But in the meantime, it works so much better than what we thought we 'knew' at that time.

People often don't understand that about science. Science isn't so much about what we know, but all about what we don't know, and then trying to figure it out. Science at least admits that and allows us to change our thoughts about the world based on what we do discover, as opposed to religion or philosophy.

Old theories, like the flat earth, weren't scientific, but philosophic. Simple observations that even the Greeks made showed the earth was round. Old science, like Newtonian physics, isn't wrong so much as only approximately true in certain cases. Newtonian physics is great for normal world scales and normal world speeds. But it's an approximate truth that is less true when we deal with very small scales or very fast speeds or very strong gravities.

Dark matter doesn't have exotic properties at all. You know neutrinos? The things that don't interact electromagnetically or via the strong force? Well those are the exact same properties we expect of dark matter. Except they don't have sufficient mass, so we expect to find a particle that behaves much like neutrinos, but with more mass. But it's the best explanation that fits all of our observations to date.

As for black holes, then you were taught improperly. There exists one black hole solution that is stationary and non-rotating, but there are other solutions that include rotation and charge. They're different kinds of black holes.

"Know" is a bit of a strong word. Scientists develop theories to explain observations or empirical data. If, later on, evidence is discovered that disproves a certain theory, good scientists are quick to abandon/alter that theory in an attempt to come up with a new/altered one that explains/accounts for said revelations (There are, of course, exceptions. Kelvin, until he died, maintained that the Earth was around 100 million years old, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary).

If that's the point you were intending to make by putting quotes around "know" then please excuse this post. But I gathered from your tone that you somehow feel that scientists assume their theories as fact and are preaching them dogmatically, which is almost the opposite of how they approach things. And if textbooks are presenting the theories as facts and not elucidating that theories are, in fact, theories (that's why it remains the "theory of relativity" or the "theory of evolution" despite compelling evidence), then the blame falls on the writers of the books and not the scientists themselves. It may be a best guess but, to its credit, it doesn't claim to be much more than that.

Not a scientist, are you Derek?

"Best guess"... not bad, considering we can land probes on Mars, cure once-incurable diseases, and do things that just a hundred years ago would be considered "magic."

What in the blazes would a particle that doesn't "interact electromagnetically or via the strong force" but yet has mass actually be? A W.I.M.P., that's what. If it had mass it would have the other properties as well. If this stuff really did exist we would be able to detect it within our own local region as well, and by that I mean as local as you care to get.

This fanciful notion of "dark matter" and "dark energy" will likely one day be revealed to be the sad result of miscalibrated measurements and will disappear quickly into the science garbage dump along with phlogiston and the luminiferous ether.

It is possible that dark matter does not actually exist within our understanding of the universe, but perhaps "next door" in an other dimension, and what we witness are the "shadow" effects in our reality. It would be analogous to a being in a two dimensional world suddenly prevented from moving, or pushed involuntarily, by a three dimensional being. He would have no way to ascertain what was happening to him or why because he can't see the third dimension. He would only be able to feel the effects on his body. In much the same way we describe these strange effects on matter in our reality, but it doesn't make sense and we seem to have no way to detect or analyze what is causing it. Gravity may also fit into this scenario.

As to the concept of faster then light neutrinos, we have long had a name for such a particle: tachyon. it is an imaginary particle that is not ruled out by our physics. Its main property is a form of matter that, at what we call rest, is moving at what would consider an infinite speed. It would require an infinite amount of energy to make it slow down to the speed of light. Perhaps these very energetic neutrinos are slowed down to super-light speed.

Crazier stuff has happened.

Most of these postulated constructs, tachyons, multi-dimensional realities (beyond 3 plus time), parallel universes, and I'll go ahead and include dark matter, are nothing more than mathematical fantasies cooked up by physics graduate students just for the sake of seeing what could "work" in the equations. The fact that they may happen to fit some sort of esoteric solution such as an imaginary number, makes them no more real than the cheshire cat and the mad hatter.

In other words, I could say, "and monkeys might fly out of my butt at the supraliminal speed of hypothetical tachyons" but it doesn't make it any more likely that they will.

Mikey - "and monkeys might fly out of my butt at the supraliminal speed of hypothetical tachyons" and yet, in quantum mechanics, that is a possibility.

When you say imaginary number, are you meaning a made up number or the square root of -1. The latter is an important concept in mathematics and is very real in describing certain events.

in quantum mechanics, that is a possibility.

As I keep trying to convey, just because something may happen to work as a solution to the equations, and therefore might be considered to be "a possibility", doesn't mean that it will, in fact, happen in reality.

Quantum mechanics may indeed be very wierd, with hypothetical live/dead cats and particles which disappear and reappear like the cheshire cat in my other post, but none of that yields the aforementioned monkeys, you'll have to get in touch with the wicked witch of the west for that. Ah, but now I'm conflating my classical Victorian fantasy literature, I think it's time to stop.

The universe only exists because we exist to observe it. Read the book "Biocentrism". We are not the lucky result of a dizzying array physical rules laid out in the microseconds following the "Big Bang". I think the universe exists because life and consciousness are inevitable for whatever reason. If it the result of some god, I guess the big question is why?

and consider this... prior to the Big Bang, where was the "primordial atom"? What is our universe expanding into? If we could get to the edge, what lies beyond? We are so used to thinking in terms of something being within something larger, but what is our universe in?

Just sayin'...

John Mack---> I was always curious about things like that. I mean everything as we know it, starting from the very small to the very large is a part of something bigger. An atom has a center with electrons orbiting, many atoms gather and react to one another to create the building blocks of all things, a cell has a nuclei with parts floating around it, many cells react and connect to form all living things things as we know them, all things connenct and react to one another on a planet with the planets core being the center, the planet itself has moons that orbit it much the same as electrons orbit in an atom, this planetary system along with many others obrit a star which is the center of a solar system, that solar system along with many others rotate around a black hole which lies at the center of every galaxy, galaxies themselves have been perceived to rotate or move in an arc depending on which one you are looking at. Perhaps the universe isn't expanding but is a part of a, larger yet, system rotating around another center which is beyond what we could ever hope to see given the distance away from our viewing bubble.

Another interesting concept with this notion could be, what if solar systems and galaxies, given the above theory that shows that everything starting small reacts and interacts to create the next level or larger piece (ie a system of atoms creating a cell for example), are part of the building blocks to a much larger system of life. What does a cell know of the world and life as we do? Likewise, what could we ever hope to know of life outside our realm of reality? Also, what is time to an atom? would it be perceived differently or slower as you continue smaller and faster as you continue larger up the chain? What is a second to us very well could be perceived as millenia to an atom were there intellectual life existing in that level. The same could be true for us. If we percieve something as millenia, for example the entire age of humans, how does the universe percieve this same slice of time when its already gone through milenia? Is it natural to theorize in this scenario that a nanosecond to the universe would be percieved as thousands if not millions of years to us?

It's interesting when you think about it this way. Perhaps we are an electron to an atom of a larger structure. All things, as we have percieved, tend to gravitate naturally around one another for a larger purpose. This can and has been seen from the very small to the very large. Also there is a tendancy for all things to work in sytems such that no matter or energy is ever lost but merely transfered to a different state. Even life has purpose because each lifeform feeds another and performs a certain necessary task, homiostasis is formed planetarily, and still no energy or mass is lost but only converted. Life itself has the duty (I won't be so thick as to call it a purpose) of helping to continue this process by constantly converting energy and mass to different forms and energies. Maybe it could be we are a positively charged electron because we have life on this planet and those without life are negitively charged ones. Perhaps the search for what there was before the big bang could be answered by what is an atom before it was an atom. The current theory links the two at the hip, that the atom was formed moments after the big bang. The only difference is we can see an atom and study it and try to theorize what formed it, but we have no hope of seeing the big bang.

To clarify further, in relativity, mass and energy are equivalent, and this is why dark energy has the greatest gravitational effect.

unless there is no dark energy.

Bingo, Ben Birdsey!!

There is a fairly solid case for dark energy. To say otherwise requires a serious explanation for the acceleration of the universe, and not a nutty one.

The only reason to suspect "dark energy" is the apparent acceleration of the universe. This just means that there is a positive Cosmological constant, which could derive from many sources including the quantum vacuum. The concept of dark energy is just a way to counter all unexplainable observations.

Nine out of ten times it's on the first comment

It happens every time, 80% of the time.

Ummmm... how is it at all "arrogant" to state that one does not know something? Science has always done that. You apparently have a hardon against science and knowledge. Tell me, Master Buffoon, where do you go when you die? And I mean WHERE do you go. If it is "heaven", where IS it? Please, point it out to the rest of us. And, if you know it is heaven, HOW do you know? Prove it. Because some mythology book told you so? Hahahahahaha

I'm not familiar with any theory of gravity that works that way, but one thing's for sure, we don't understand gravity, including why and how it works the way that it does, and until we do understand it, I see no need to postulate the existence of strange invisible kinds of undetectable "stuff" just to explain certain observations.

You do know that almost everything we know, have, or do was "postulated" before its existence, or evidence of existence, dontcha know? The Greeks postulated the concept of the atom millennia before we could prove its existence. Lasers, which drive much of our current technology, were theorized years before the first one was developed. And, when they created it, they had no idea what to do with it. Very smart people knew for a fact that men could never fly faster than the speed of sound. it would instantly kill them or break them apart. The Earth was flat. The universe rotated around the Earth. Bloodletting was a common cure for everything.

So, just because YOU yourself is not familiar with something, or doesn't sound right to you, has no bearing on its validity.

Are you familiar with blackbody radiation and its relation to classical physics? No? Try reading up on it.

I believe what Mike 9 is referencing is negative energy. It is suppose to push away from gravity, but there is no proof of it.

@ John Mack, from wikipedia:

Blackbody emission provides insight into the thermodynamic equilibrium state of cavity radiation. If each Fourier mode of the absolutely stable equilibrium radiation in a cavity with perfectly reflective walls were considered as a degree of freedom, and if all those degrees of freedom could freely exchange energy, then, according to the equipartition theorem in classical physics, each degree of freedom would have one and the same quantity of energy. This approach led to the paradox known as the ultraviolet catastrophe, that there would be an infinite amount of energy in any continuous field. The study of the laws of black bodies helped to establish the foundations of quantum mechanics.

and further on

Real objects never behave as full-ideal black bodies, and instead the emitted radiation at a given frequency is a fraction of what the ideal emission would be.

In other words, these are fancy games that physics grad students play, which sometimes, very rarely, yield a useful construct such as quantum mechanics, or the Hertzprung-Russell Main Sequence diagram, but most of the time it's pure mathematical hooey.

Mikey - The same mathematics used in quantum mechanics is used in Einstein's General and Special theories of Relativity, and is what predicted the phenomena in the picture for this article. The math, which you like to put down, is just a language of explaining and predicting the effects in our universe. Nothing more, nothing less.

TReed, for clarity, I teach math, albeit at a lower level than tensor calculus, so it's not math as a whole that I am putting down. Because I am familiar with math I know what it can do and what it can sometimes be "made to do". As I said, sometimes the math yields a useful result, such as Q.M. or relativity, and sometimes it's just numbers on a piece of paper.

As an analogous situation, the complex mathematical epicycle system which Ptolemy's ancient astronomers developed was fairly good at predicting the movement and location of the visible planets. The fact that it was based upon completely absurd and bass-ackwards assumptions about the solar system, i.e. that the earth is the center, didn't prevent it from working as a "solution" to the math problem.

The point I'm trying to make is that perhaps our assumptions about gravity are as wrong, in some as yet unrecognized way, as theirs were about the planets. Perhaps one day, when we really understand gravity, we won't need "dark matter" to explain the motions of far off galaxies, just as once Copernicus correctly deduced the heliocentric structure of the solar system, and Tycho Brahe and Jo Kepler confirmed it, then there was no longer any need for the epicycle system, and it was discarded in favor of heliocentrism(by everyone except the pope as Galileo unfortunately later discovered).

Or on the other hand, maybe you're right. Maybe one day we will isolate the Higgs boson, detect gravitation waves, and everything will be confirmed just as predicted and I'll simply have to shut up, swallow my skepticism and accept that there are indeed "more things in heaven and in earth... than are dreamed of in [my] philosophy." - Hamlet

We'll see.

Mikey - First skepticism is good. And I agree that the work of Copernicus, Kepler and such were able to create mathematical models to describe the motion in the heavens. The math was correct, their observations were not suffice to make the right conclusions. Einstein's leap was spectacular in his definition of gravity, but even today there are aspects of his gravitiational that I have problems with. The visualizations in 2-D are inadequate, so when I visualize the curvature of the space in 3-D I see the density of the space increasing with the curvature. I might be confirming what Einstein visualized, I just don't hear it described that way. I think the problem that I have is dealing with the quantum level of space when it is curved.

I'm trying to learn the mathematics to understand this, specifically the tensor calculus and group theory. I want to get into Lie Algebras, because I really like Lisi's thoughts on the E8XE8 Lie algebra as a basis of a different view of the sub-atomic world. Lisi's work and recent paper on the big bang starting a 1-dimensional string has lead me to a thought of space made up of interconnected loops like chainmail. With this, as a loop vibrates, it will occasionally loop over the middle thus creating two loops from one. This could be a model of dark energy and why the universe is expanding. I'm not saying this is correct and I haven't worked through everything to see if I am even going in the right direction. The thought process is fun, in very sick, sadistic way, but it is why enjoy math. I know, I'm a math geek. We all have problems.

Have fun with it TReed, maybe you'll discover the key to the Grand Unified Theory!

Nice chatting with you.

Sorry, but isn't Boson Hicks a football player, a wide receiver with the New York Giants? 8-)

Higgs boson, not hicks. Look it up on wikipedia, there's tons of fairly basic info and tons that'll blow your mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson

Viewer - A boson is a force carrier. By the standard model, as particle passes through space, these bosons "touch" the particle and gives the particle characteristics they we can measure. The Higg's Boson is a theoretical boson that the standard model needs and it gives mass to a particle. There are particles that the Higg's would not effect, such as photons. The gluon that you mentioned is a boson particle for the strong force and it binds quarks to create protons and neutrons. And when I say particles, I use it in the context of a zero point particle and a 1-dimensional string. To start, I would look up the Standard Model and then quantum mechanics if you want more details. There is a lot of complicated mathematics, just to let you know.