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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the einstein-dismisses-india-scientists dept.

BBC:

Some academics at the annual Indian Science Congress dismissed the findings of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

Hindu mythology and religion-based theories have increasingly become part of the Indian Science Congress agenda.

But experts said remarks at this year's summit were especially ludicrous.

[...] The head of a southern Indian university cited an old Hindu text as proof that stem cell research was discovered in India thousands of years ago.

G Nageshwar Rao, vice chancellor of Andhra University, also said a demon king from the Hindu religious epic, Ramayana, had 24 types of aircraft and a network of landing strips in modern day Sri Lanka.

Another scientist from a university in the southern state of Tamil Nadu told conference attendees that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were both wrong and that gravitational waves should be renamed "Narendra Modi Waves" [Narendra Modi is the current Prime Minister of India].


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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:19AM (27 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:19AM (#783946) Journal

    "Actually, dark matter has been found"

    Citation needed.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:56AM (26 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:56AM (#783955) Journal
    Why would that need citation? Existence of neutrinos, MACHOs (such as Earth, for a prominent example close to home), and photons from the Big Bang are all well known phenomena. The fact that they aren't sufficiently massive may be less well known, but you'd be hearing about it, if they though there was enough to count.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:11AM (20 children)

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:11AM (#783960) Journal

      photons from the Big Bang are ... well known phenomena

      photons [wikipedia.org] (1) aren't dark, and (2) aren't matter.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:44AM (19 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:44AM (#783995) Journal

        (1) aren't dark

        They are, if they aren't pointed at you.

        (2) aren't matter

        Hence the use of the phrase mass-energy.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:54AM (13 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:54AM (#783996)

          Mass isnt synonymous with matter, matter has volume too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter [wikipedia.org]

          Basically matter is ponderable, you can weigh it on a scale.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:11AM (12 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:11AM (#784001) Journal

            Mass isnt synonymous with matter, matter has volume too

            You won't find mass that doesn't have volume due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (there's a lower bound on the product of the uncertainties of momentum and position, the latter being a generator of a volume) and black hole limits (which can't have a surface area less than a factor times the mass of the black hole).

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:24AM (11 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:24AM (#784004)

              So if you shine some light into a bathtub you can displace the water since the photons have volume? Can we measure the mass of the photon this way?

              I dont think so since you can have as many photons as you want in the same place:

              Particles with an integer spin, or bosons, are not subject to the Pauli exclusion principle: any number of identical bosons can occupy the same quantum state, as with, for instance, photons

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle [wikipedia.org]

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:27AM (10 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:27AM (#784005) Journal

                So if you shine some light into a bathtub you can displace the water since the photons have volume?

                Well, the temperature of the water would increase and that would increase the volume of the water. But volume of photons is a red herring. It's not required in order for them to have energy and curve space-time.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:45AM (9 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:45AM (#784008)

                  Heating the water increases the volume the water takes up where the photon hits, this is the opposite of what would happen if you hit it with matter (the water would move away from that spot).

                  Im just saying photons arent matter and have no volume, not arguing about the mass. Its in the intro to that wikipedia matter page.

                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:10PM (8 children)

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:10PM (#784126) Journal

                    Heating the water increases the volume the water takes up where the photon hits, this is the opposite of what would happen if you hit it with matter (the water would move away from that spot).

                    You are inaccurate. The water does indeed move away from the spot as energy is imparted to it from the photon. What is different is that water can fully absorb the energy of the photon.

                    Im just saying photons arent matter and have no volume, not arguing about the mass. Its in the intro to that wikipedia matter page.

                    Wave/particle duality is as much a thing for photons too. The whole issue is a red herring. Dark matter is just a label like dark energy. What generates the observed effect described by the label need not be matter any more than the latter need be energy.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:59PM (7 children)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:59PM (#784150)

                      No, in the usual context dark matter means some sort of exotic matter at this point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda-CDM_model [wikipedia.org]

                      And you have chosen to have your own definition of "matter" different from everyone else, whatever, but stop pushing it like it is standard

                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:01PM

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:01PM (#784151) Journal
                        Only because they don't have enough of the rest of the dark matter to cover the perceived gap.
                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:37PM (5 children)

                        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:37PM (#784160)

                        khallow is using 'matter' where he should be using 'mass', but other than that minor difference in terminology, he is pretty much entirely correct.

                        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:13PM (4 children)

                          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:13PM (#784231)

                          Yes, I know. That is the topic of discussion. Here is what I said above:

                          Mass isnt synonymous with matter

                          Khallow dont agree.

                          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @06:53AM

                            by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @06:53AM (#786325)

                            Khallow dont agree.

                            That amounts to less than nothing, since khallow is not a scientist, or astrophysicist, or meretrician or opthamologist. Khallow is just, khallow, a teenager who has read Ayn Rand, and can't get her out of his pants. So sad, too bad. Poor khallow. Sometimes, suicide is the only honorable way out. That, or accepting that as an non-communalist, you still have to accept Medicare and Social Security, because the Commies prevented you from having a pony at your twelve birthday, so something like that.

                          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 21 2019, @06:17AM (2 children)

                            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 21 2019, @06:17AM (#789424) Journal

                            Mass isnt synonymous with matter

                            Khallow dont agree.

                            And I don't agree because the distinction is meaningless. Everything with mass has volume (and hence, checks off all the boxes for "matter")? Nor when we actually look at cosmological scales does the actual volume of would-be matter become relevant. For example, global clusters, large clumps of stars, which sometimes have billions of stars in them, can orbit for long periods of time without a collision occurring (for example, we have yet to observe such a collision in the globular clusters that we can see with the human eye, which is several centuries worth of observation over several dozen huge clusters). The volume of the matter in the global clusters from the stars is a minuscule portion of the volume of the globular cluster.

                            I don't believe in paying lip service to pedantic semantics when it's irrelevant to the topic.

                            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:42AM (1 child)

                              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:42AM (#789953)

                              Everything with mass has volume. Photons have volume. Therefore, photons have mass.

                              Corollary: interstellar space has volume. Therefore, interstellar space has mass. No need for dark matter.

                              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:48AM

                                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:48AM (#789954) Journal
                                A implies B, doesn't mean B implies A, much less some non sequitur C.
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:05AM (4 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:05AM (#783998) Journal
          On the "darkness" of photons, baryonic matter and associated electrons (in other words, normal matter) interacts with and scatters photons readily. You can see baryonic matter via EM sensors just from the thermal photons it emits. Photons that aren't traveling right into your detectors can primarily scatter photons in your direction if they interact either with charged particle matter (which is thought to be scarce outside of galaxies) or if they interact with another photon via virtual charged particles (which is rare unless the photons have a very high energy, typically in the gamma ray range). The end result is that photons are very dark relative to baryonic matter.
          • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 09 2019, @11:19AM (3 children)

            by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday January 09 2019, @11:19AM (#784060) Journal

            "The end result is that photons are very dark relative to baryonic matter."

            Doesn't make them 'dark matter'.

            "The end result is black people are very dark compared to white people."
            Doesn't make them hockey pucks.

            Citation still needed.

            --
            --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:12PM (2 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:12PM (#784128) Journal

              Doesn't make them 'dark matter'.

              Actually it does. Dark matter is a label for an effect. Things like those photons contribute to the effect.

              Citation still needed.

              For what?

              • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:07PM (1 child)

                by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:07PM (#784179) Journal

                Dark matter has NOT been found: dark matter is a kludge 'discovered' JUST JUST JUST to make GR still work.

                Some matter has been found. Is it 'dark matter'? No. Dark matter is a magic kludge. GR does not work without it and we can't allow that so we wave our hands and we come up with 'dark matter'.

                There is no dark matter. The scientific method has pushed it aside. Dark matter is not real.

                *Citation is STILL needed for
                "Actually, dark matter has been found"
                because no where can i find that it has.

                --
                --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:51AM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:51AM (#784373) Journal

                  Some matter has been found. Is it 'dark matter'?

                  I already gave three examples to the contrary. It is "dark matter", but it's not enough dark matter.

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:56PM (4 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:56PM (#784221)

      Because you're claiming Dark Matter has been discovered, while simultaneously admitting that there's not nearly enough of it to explain anything. AKA it hasn't been discovered.

      The problem is "Dark Matter" isn't just code for "matter we haven't yet discovered", it's code for "matter that must exist to make the theory work". We know pretty exactly how much must exist for the theory to work, and while we have been looking hard, and have found some matter we hadn't previously accounted for, everything we've actually found combined is orders of magnitude too small to fill the "Dark Matter" hole - therefore it is NOT Dark Matter, it's just a slight increase in our estimates of the amount of normal matter in the universe. ~85% of the necessary mass of the universe is still unaccounted for.

      There is still some potential for undiscovered MACHOs, but the range of sizes they could exist at without having been detected yet has become extremely narrow, and they're looking increasingly implausible as a DM candidate. Most of the other candidates have similarly shrunk their potential detection space to a tiny fraction of what it was once believed to be. And that's a big problem for plausability - for example, countless MACHOs across a wide range of sizes was plausible - but that they'd all end up being within the narrow range of sizes that we wouldn't have detected yet? How do you explain that the overwhelming majority of matter of the universe ended up clumping into undiscovered objects of roughly the same size, while all the mass we *can* see is distributed in size across many orders of magnitude?

      And that's before we even start considering the necessity of Dark Energy as well.

      Now, by all means we should keep looking, but after a half-century of fruitless searching we should also start seriously considering the possibility that while Relativity was a huge improvement in accuracy over Newtonian gravitation, it's still a fundamentally flawed and incomplete theory.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:21AM (3 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:21AM (#784358) Journal

        Because you're claiming Dark Matter has been discovered, while simultaneously admitting that there's not nearly enough of it to explain anything. AKA it hasn't been discovered.

        Except of course, it has been discovered contrary to your second assertion. Not nearly enough != doesn't exist.

        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:59AM (2 children)

          by Immerman (3985) on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:59AM (#784379)

          That's not how it works. There's a huge amount of missing matter - that's Dark Matter. Increasing the estimates of the amount of normal matter so that the amount of Dark Matter needed is slightly reduced isn't "finding Dark Matter" - that would mean that the imbalance has been solved. All you've done is revise the estimates of its size.

          If you handed me a million dollars for a moment, and I lost it, and then said "Hey, look, I've found your missing millions, there's $1.35 in change in the couch!", you would reasonably assume that I'm either an idiot, or a thief that thinks that you're an idiot. The million is still missing, the $1.35 is basically unrelated, and no reasonable person would think that the mystery had been even slightly solved.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:00AM (1 child)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:00AM (#784407) Journal

            That's not how it works.

            It's reality. The only uncertainty is whether the gap can be made up.

            Increasing the estimates of the amount of normal matter so that the amount of Dark Matter needed is slightly reduced isn't "finding Dark Matter"

            Neutrinos and photons never will be normal matter. And MACHOs are a consequence of high mass and low surface area, which gives its usually baryonic matter (though black holes are a more exotic possibility) an unusually low visibility.

            • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:21AM

              by Immerman (3985) on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:21AM (#784439)

              > The only uncertainty is whether the gap can be made up.

              Exactly. And until we have concrete evidence of the presence of something in sufficient quantities that it *can* fill the gap (or at least a large part of it) all we're doing is speculating and dithering with rounding errors, and Dark Matter remains undiscovered.