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posted by martyb on Saturday November 04 2017, @09:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-doesn't-matter dept.

A pair of researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno, in an attempt to detect and better define dark matter, have pulled off a pretty amazing science experiment. The team used 16 years worth of GPS data to turn the whole planet into a massive detector that might detect clumps of dark matter that could extend beyond the solar system.

Dark matter makes up roughly 85% of all matter in the universe, which is a real bummer for us humans — as we simply have no idea what it is, what it looks like, nothing. Astrophysics has provided multiple evidence that it actually exists, but so far, it’s always been beyond our grasp. As generally tends to happen when faced with great unknowns, we do however have quite a lot of hypotheses pertaining to its nature.

"So, the two gathered data from the 32 satellites that make up the 31,000-mile-wide GPS constellation and ground-based GPS stations, retrieving figures recorded every 30 seconds for the last 16 years. Data was retrieved from sources around the world, and in particular from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They then used a model to sift through this data, looking for irregularities in atomic clock signals.

[...] Aaaaaaand they didn’t find anything. It’s a bit disappointing, sure, but it’s not really surprising given how elusive dark matter has proven itself to be up to now. It has to be said, however, that while the team didn’t find any definitive proof to support their theory, it could be that the effect is simply more subtle than anything we can pick up, or that the Earth crosses lumps of dark matter very rarely."

https://www.zmescience.com/science/earth-dark-matter-sensor-gps/


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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday November 05 2017, @01:39AM (6 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday November 05 2017, @01:39AM (#592336) Homepage
    Nonsense!

    It fits the data perfectly. They placed the dark matter *exactly* where it needs to be in order to make the data fit.
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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday November 05 2017, @01:52AM (5 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Sunday November 05 2017, @01:52AM (#592345) Journal

    Exactly: make the data fit the theory, rather than making the theory fit the data.

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    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday November 05 2017, @02:08AM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday November 05 2017, @02:08AM (#592351) Homepage
      Dude, join the IRC - it would be fun to have a chat
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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @05:14PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @05:14PM (#592567)

      Change what data? You're just butt-hurt about dark matter for some reason.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday November 05 2017, @05:59PM (2 children)

        by Gaaark (41) on Sunday November 05 2017, @05:59PM (#592588) Journal

        There is no 'theory of dark matter' where you can use the same formula to discover how much dark matter a galaxy contains:

        you find a galaxy, discover how much dark matter is needed to keep it from flying apart and that is how much dark matter the galaxy has.

        It's not like how E=mc2 gives a definite number every time: dark matter has to be added ad-hoc to each galaxy to make the numbers work for that galaxy alone, and each galaxy has to be calculated individually.

        Therefore, it is a kludge put together for the sole purpose of making General Relativity work for the case of galaxies: without this kludge, GR does not work for galaxies. Instead of trying to find out what is wrong with GR, they make GR correct with a kludge.

        E=mc + some imaginary thing added just to make the equation work, instead of really trying to find out what will REALLY make it work

        E=mcclowns wearing funny hats

        (I dunno... does someone have a car analogy?)

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        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @08:01PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @08:01PM (#592631)

          Sounds a lot like how neutrinos were invented in order to rescue various theories about conservation.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by arcz on Sunday November 05 2017, @08:10PM

          by arcz (4501) on Sunday November 05 2017, @08:10PM (#592634) Journal

          I'm not physicist, but I do have a genral theory that could explain both why galaxies don't fly apart and why the universe seems to expand without explanation. (dark matter and dark energy, respectively). Since I'm not a physicist I don't know if the math would work out or not, but it does at least conceptually solve the problem for me.

          Maybe you could see if you can figure out if it'd work or not My hypothesis is the "conservation of distance". Basically, the idea is that, for objects to get closer together, the total distance between particles in the universe must be preserved. So other particles must get further apart. This means that as gravity sucks objects together, there must also be a repulsive force that pushes them apart. The primary force is short range and the counter force is long range. Under this hypothesis, gravity causes the universe to expand (dark energy) because objects moving together (black holes, whatnot) push far away objects further apart. It also holds galaxies together because the long range counter force still prefers close objects, but at a much larger range. Thus the expanding force of spin which would cause the galaxy to rip apart is counteracted by the gravitational counter-force because the other objects that could get closer together are far away and thus recieve less pulling force. Thus the counter-force slows down the effect of galaxy expansion at large scales when there aren't nearby galaxies.