Talk:Dark matter

Process Physics in 'alternative theories' section

I reverted the edit which removed the paragraph on process physics under the alternative theories section, as I did not believe there was adequate justification for removing it. The reason given by Aknochel was that the journal Progress in Physics, in which some of the papers were published was "not a properly peer-reviewed journal". I consider this reasoning to be inadequate for several reasons:

- the journal actually describes itself as peer-reviewed, so I'm not sure where this "not peer-reviewed" misconception has come from.

- the publications are not limited to this journal (see reference in article), and include edited books, articles in publications such as New Scientist (including cover features), and a range of journals.

129.96.220.98 (talk) 04:18, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Please see WP:RS for guidelines on what sources are generally acceptable (there's a section on sources for scientific works). WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE may also be useful reading.

While Process Physics is a concept that is known within the scientific community, right now it appears to be one researcher's pet project, so my own feeling is that it would violate WP:UNDUE to include it in this article. Given that you've had three unrelated editors tell you that it isn't appropriate to include it in this article, I'd suggest trying to convince people on this talk page before adding it again. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 06:58, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I had a read of the articles you mentioned and as far as I can tell Process Physics seems to come under the classification of an alternative theory held by a significant minority.

Although the link I used as a reference gives a list of papers that clearly indicate the scientist in question focuses predominantly on this field of research, he is quite definitely not alone. I believe he's written a review or two which should be listed among his papers. They should hold a good list of references of the various work around the world.

If you can present specific reasons why this field of research does not merit inclusion I can perhaps present a better argument, but at this stage I don't really know what further information I need to present to argue in its favour, beyond just telling people to read the references.

129.96.220.98 (talk) 05:12, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

So, is it suitable for inclusion or not? 121.45.40.156 (talk) 15:00, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

No, because sources are substandard (for a new gravitation theory). In particular, Progress in Physics is a minor journal (no impact factor and other problems mentioned in the linked article) and is not a reliable source. Materialscientist (talk) 05:40, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Finally! A justified argument, not just a contradiction! That's all I needed to hear. Based on this evidence I will concede that Progress In Physics does not appear to be sufficient to justify inclusion. However I am yet to hear anything against the other publications in which some of the listed articles appear. Could you address this point?

A list of all the other journals/books/etc I could find which publish these theories are summarised below. For completeness, I haven't excluded any from this list, although I will readily admit some would not meet Wikipedia's definition of a reliable source (e.g workshop proceedings).

• Relativity, Gravitation, Cosmology, - New Developments
• Ether Space-time and Cosmology: New Insights into a Key Physical Medium
• Apeiron
• Infinite Energy
• Einstein and Poincare: The Physical Vacuum
• Trends in Dark Matter Research
• Magister Botanicus
• Process Studies Supplement
• Workshop Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems
• General Relativity and Gravitation
• The Physicist
• Physics Letters
• P.M. Magazin
• Adelaide Advertiser
• Flinders Journal
• New Scientist

129.96.220.98 (talk) 08:30, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I am not an expert in this area and thus recognize above only two peer-reviewed journals with impact factor of around 2 or higher: Physics Letters (A or B?) and General Relativity and Gravitation (am I missing something?). Anyway, we need to see the full references. Materialscientist (talk) 08:49, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Understood. References are below:

My original reference used in text:
http://www.flinders.edu.au/science_engineering/caps/our-school/staff-postgrads/academic-staff/cahill-reg/process-physics/home.cfm
This linked to a brief description of Process Physics, which also included links to pages containing many papers/books/etc related to the field.

R.T. Cahill, C.M. Klinger, "Pregeometric modelling of the spacetime phenomenology", Physics Letters A, vol 223, issue 5, p313-319, 1996.
DOI:10.1016/S0375-9601(96)00775-X

Four citations in Web of Science since 1996. Materialscientist (talk) 00:21, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

R.T. Cahill, C.M. Klinger, "Self-Referential Noise and the Synthesis of Three-Dimensional Space", General Relativity and Gravitation, vol 32, issue 3, p529-540, 2000.
DOI: 10.1023/A:1001984518976

Four citations in Web of Science since 2000, seem like self-citations. Materialscientist (talk) 00:21, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

R.T. Cahill, "Process Physics: Inertia, Gravity and the Quantum", General Relativity and Gravitation, vol 34, issue 10, p1637-1656, 2002.
DOI: 10.1023/A:1020120223326

Zero citations in Web of Science since 2002. Sorry, this theory does not seem widely accepted. Materialscientist (talk) 00:21, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean when you ask if you're missing something. If you could clarify your question I may be able to help. Also, the above list is just for the references from the original list, which were published in the journals you mentioned. There may be other relevant papers that I haven't included here.

121.45.92.247 (talk) 14:01, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Before you make conclusions about the general acceptance of this theory, keep in mind that this is a very restricted search. If we extend the search to look at the most cited papers in the field we get much more numerous results. Listing them all here is impractical, so I've just selected a handful. Google Scholar will give you more extensive results for you to peruse at your leisure.

"Process Physics", 2003. (a review)
Cited by 62.

"Dynamical fractal 3-space and the generalised Schrodinger equation: Equivalence Principle and vorticity effects", 2005.
Cited by 25.

"Absolute motion and gravitational effects", 2003.
Cited by 39.

"'Dark Matter' as a Quantum Foam In-Flow Effect", 2004.
Cited by 26.

"Quantum foam, gravity and gravitational waves", 2003.
Cited by 24.

"Process physics: from quantum foam to general relativity", 2002.
Cited by 19.

Possibly also this:
TG Zlosnik et al, "Modifying gravity with the aether: An alternative to dark matter", 2007.
Cited by 72.

Your opinion?

129.96.220.98 (talk) 09:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Any other citation index would give higher cites than Web of Science, because it would add less reliable sources like conferences, journals without IF, etc., but it does not matter - counts are still very low. Materialscientist (talk) 09:18, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Low compared to what? Seems quite high for the field, and certainly a great deal more than any of the other papers referenced in the Alternatives to Dark Matter section of this article. If candidature for inclusion is this strict, perhaps a review of the entire Alternatives section is in order. Frankly I don't think you can reasonably expect any alternative theory to dark matter to be as highly cited as papers within the dark matter field, simply by definition of being an alternative to the most widely accepted theory, and hence everything should be viewed on a relative rather than absolute scale.

129.96.220.98 (talk) 05:23, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Process Physics is one person's pet project which has been speedily deleted before (User talk:Danwills). It's not mainstream enough for this article. Another reference to it has also been added to Theory of Everything. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:01, 22 February 2011 (UTC).

I wish you would state your references. If I have to list dozens of papers and write an extensive debate just to justify a few sentences I don't see why its adequate for you to counter my arguments with vague statements and no references to back them up. 121.45.45.109 (talk) 14:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

MOND and variants are the main competitor to dark matter as an explanation for observations, and MOND has a far, far larger literature impact than process physics does. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 06:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

It's becoming increasingly evident that I have no idea what constitutes 'sufficiently notable' by Wikipedia standards. If the intuitive definition is not correct, then I am lost. It seems the editing of Wikipedia should be left to Wikipedians, rather than scientists. My mistake.

121.45.45.109 (talk) 14:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

"Written about by several unrelated research groups and cited by _many_ unrelated research groups" would be a good start. This applies both to the concept of "process physics" itself, and to its viability as an explanation for dark matter, separately. Please see WP:UNDUE for additional information about weight, and WP:RS for a description of what sources are and aren't considered to have weight in a scientific context. Also please take a glance at WP:COI, as your first IP address suggests that you might have a vested interest in having PP prominently mentioned. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 19:36, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no conflict of interest. I am not a part of the research group, nor do I have anything to do with any research or study in the field of Process Physics. I gain nothing by having this information in the dark matter article. It is however, a subject which I regularly stumble across and when I couldn't find further information on Wikipedia I thought it could benefit from having some.

129.96.220.98 (talk) 04:01, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that Wikipedia would benefit from having an article about Process Physics. Unfortunately, the last time someone tried to write one, it was deleted due to not adequately establishing notability (per the archived discussion regarding deletion). It's possible that that might have changed in the interim, but you'd need sources from multiple unrelated research groups that talk about it to establish that it's known and at least a little bit relevant within the scientific community.

Including mention of PP anywhere other than a Process Physics article, though, would almost certainly violate WP:UNDUE, for the reasons mentioned above for this article. You'd have to show that people other than the model's creator and his group wrote papers in reputable journals mentioning this as a serious alternative. That's happened with MOND, but not with PP. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 04:48, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Now we're getting somewhere. I was under the impression it was actually the other way around - a less notable subject could only justify a mention on merged articles incorporating multiple subjects within a related field, but not an entire article to itself. Thanks for the clarification.

The field which PP sits in is not a large one, so there's not a great deal of groups studying this sort of thing, be it PP or otherwise, but I have heard that there's experiments going on in Russia and a European country I can't remember (might be Belgium), which are definitely looking into components of PP but are not related to this other scientist's research group. I think the resources to establish notoriety are definitely out there, it's just a matter of tracking them down.

I think I've seen the former PP article and agree that its deletion was justified. It appears to be predominantly based on old information, and didn't give a particularly accurate summary to begin with. A significant update is definitely in order.

I'm afraid I'm quite new to Wikipedia and don't think I could manage a new article on my own. Would you be interested in collaborating on a PP article?

129.96.220.98 (talk) 07:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm not in a position to do so (due to mostly being on sabbatical from Wikipedia). WT:PHYS would be one possible place to ask, but you'd have to take care in your approach. You have no idea how many people all of us see who say "X is important!"; this tends to get discounted as noise. You'll have a warmer reception with an approach along the lines of, "Process Physics was deleted a few years ago due to not adequately establishing notability; I think that this is changed, and can provide references, but I need mentoring on how to best write a properly-sourced article and how to go through the correct process to make sure it's not seen as duplicating deleted content". Another step that will help will be registering as a Wikipedia user. That gives you your own scratch-space to work on draft material, gives you a consistent identity no matter which machine you log in from, and will also get you a warmer reception (rightly or wrongly, quite a few people will assume that IP editors are troublemakers until proven otherwise). It'll also hide your "whois" information, which would otherwise be visible to anyone who clicks on the appropriate link, or manually invokes "whois" on their own machine.

I hope this advice is useful to you. Further discussion should probably either be at WT:PHYS or on your user account talk page (if you choose to register an account), as this is straying pretty far away from the topic of dark matter. Good luck! --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:59, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

If all the light energy photons in transit from the 100,000,000,000 stars added together would equal to what?

Essay archived.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Light cannot go round corners it is straight, a star looks like a dot in the sky but the light is emitted all around but cannot be seem from the side of the star only when looking direct we see the light. if we could see light from the side the night sky would be lit up as the light travels out from every star an crosses the universal plains. The universe is connected through mass ropes of light that can't be seen. What is the universal mass equation of all the light in transit? If all the masses plus the light that is in constant transit since the dawn of time from 100,000,000,000 plus stars. Would it equal the missing matter e.g.: if a star was spaced atom by atom in a straight line how far would it go before it was invisible to the eye meaning mass can appear missing when it is right under your nose. And as the visible universe is 92billion light years across and some say its bigger to the point that 92 billion light years is an atom size to its real size. That is a lot of light rays in transit, a lot, and this may add to filling in those numbers, and if it does. I will write some extra notes, Law of force every action is a reaction, The impact of light upon all other celestial bodies push everything away so creating and adding to a forever expanding universe. So who has worked out does light have a force when hitting matter, even if infinity small would it move an object with zero resistance? photons light described as rope in the shape that appears to be a series of very small multiple magnetic fields each one the size of the frequency that pulse another ant link maybe like coil induction effect to connect from A to B then even an X particle runs, pushed or pulled to its destination. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.99.29.196 (talk) 06:42, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

This is not the place to present your own views on how photons and dark matter work.

It's also very easy to place an upper bound on the mass of the photons stars emit over their lifetimes: Less than about 1% of the rest mass of the stars, as it's derived from fusion of the stars' fuel. The mass of dark matter is vastly greater than this, per the article. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:02, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Role of Dark Matter/Energy in the Kuhnian development of physics

My strong sense is that dark matter/energy are a reification of fundamental problems in modern physics, i.e. gravity + the Standard Model. As I've put on Higgs Boson and it's never been challenged, dark matter/energy is not (except as a metonym for the observed discrepancy between that theory and observation) a part of any accepted (or FTM, SFAIK proposed) theory of physics, although there are various conjectures and speculations which fall short of same. This aspect doesn't seem to be fully enough developed in the article as it stands now nor do I see commentary in the talk archives about same but may have missed something. Lycurgus (talk) 16:08, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Look up lightest supersymmetric particle. We have strong reasons for believing supersymmetry happens, and it predicts that there will be at least one new stable massive particle. That's a prediction of dark matter.

Also look up big bang nucleosynthesis. The fact that the element ratios come out right if and only if there's a lot of non-baryonic matter around also predicts the existence of dark matter.

You can make a stronger argument for dark energy being a label for an unknown rather than a specific thing, but dark matter - the subject of this article - is much better-understood. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 17:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for illustrating the issue, pieces parts that don't add up to anything. My point is that the article should show, more than it currently does, the thing for what it is and not commit the fallacy of assuming that it describes a physical reality rather than an artifact leading to a more complete understanding of nature in which it might or might not continue to be so regarded as for example in the classic cases such as phlogiston, the subliminiferous ether, etc.. Lycurgus (talk) 20:39, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Most scientists consider the evidence for dark matter persuasive (and specific enough to greatly narrow down what it is). Alternatives are already noted in the article. Giving them more prominence would violate WP:UNDUE, as the vast majority of textbooks and scientific literature assumes a) that it exists and b) that it has certain properties (usually that it's massive particles that interact via the Weak force, sometimes that it's massive non-interacting particles). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 03:56, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

You're not getting my point which I've explained above. Wait for someone else to comment and respond to them (or not as you please). Lycurgus (talk) 08:06, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem here is that your Kuhnian philosophy is considered crackpot stuff by others. Regardless of whether you are right or wrong, you need to find some published source that expresses the view, and the propose text that describe your view in terms of whoever is on the record with that view. Roger (talk) 17:38, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

One might think that you were Phyllis' son :) In any case the sociology of science established by Kuhn and others is the current received and mainstream, and more or less sole academically accepted approach to the subject. Lycurgus (talk) 23:57, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Alteranative theory on the composition of dark matter

Since I worked out this theory myself I could not add it to the main page

Another theory states that dark matter could be normal matter stripped of all its electrons due to interaction with positrons. This would mean that dark matter would not be able to interact with photons. This theory states that dark matter could be 'cold plasma', similar to normal plasma in that it has lost its electrons but dissimilar in the way it has lost its electrons and that normal plasma is energised with radiation and constant re-interaction with electrons. This theory further states that because dark matter has no electrons it cannot form bonds and exists as individual atoms.

Date 16/5/11 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kishanparekh (talk • contribs) 13:27, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

This violates OR as noted in the talkheader. The place for this is in your userspace. There's no dearth of conjectures about the subject. That the observed universe is inside something and that the "dark matter" could be gravitation or other forces from that containing universe, although sourcable, isn't in either. Also it's false that matter stripped of electrons wouldn't interact with photons. Threads like this one are just exceptions to not touching talk space edits of others. Lycurgus (talk) 20:00, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about that but I am just a 'slightly' over-average inteligence Fourteen year old, and I did watch a documentary about the origins of the universe wich said that the early universe had such high temperatures that atoms and electrons hadn't joined so the universe was a dark place because of that, I also read about plasma and about electrons forming bonds in atoms, so I used my common sense to put two and two together and got this theory. but I have put a copy on my userspace Kishanparekh (talk) 18:49, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Lack of evidence for WIMPs

The weakly interacting massive particles article is replete with various failures to detect any evidence of the WIMPs, which involve a certain amount of wishful thinking about supersymmetry that might not be all that compatible with Occam's Razor. But Frampton says primordial intermediate mass black holes are consistent with halo rotation, isotope ratios, microlensing, and wide binary observations, and at least two of them have been detected so far. Would anyone object to listing the black holes before the WIMPs for the top two theories in the introduction? 99.39.5.103 (talk) 11:38, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I would object, because despite the lack of evidence, WIMPS are still the favorite candidate. That's not something we can overrule here, no matter how good the argument against WIMPS is. Also, I remember reading some criticisms of Frampton's idea, so it's not that you have a DM candidate without problems here. Count Iblis (talk) 14:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd be very interested in reading those criticisms. The idea that dark matter is black holes is not unique to Frampton (e.g. the NASA source about them doesn't mention him at all) he's just been taking the lead in pointing out that all observations are consistent with them. WIMPs, on the other hand, currently have exactly zero observational evidence. Just because a lot of people are looking for them doesn't necessarily mean they are anyone's favorites. 99.39.5.103 (talk) 16:28, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that black holes were ruled out as dark matter candidates by gravitational microlensing searches (along with most forms of massive compact halo object). Furthermore, Big Bang nucleosynthesis only produces the observed distribution of elements if you have quite a lot of dark matter that doesn't interact strongly with normal matter. Black holes, on the other hand, would interact with normal matter, so they don't address the BBNS problem. The fact that the amount of matter needed for nucleosynthesis to match observations is also very close to the amount needed to make galactic rotation curves and struture formation work is strong circumstantial evidence in favour of WIMPs or completely sterile particles as dark matter. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 00:29, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Paul Frampton says microlensing observations are consistent with IMBHs, and if they are primordial then that addresses the BBNS deuterium-lithium ratio issue. Why would post-big bang interactions affect the nucleosynthesis ratios? I'm not sure that black holes aren't sterile, since they are equal opportunity gravitational attractors. I think we should start with the microlensing data. Where are the various scenario predictions compared with observations in the literature? 12.238.13.194 (talk) 01:51, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

I am referring to primordial black holes. Non-primordial holes would be composed of baryonic matter (not the non-interacting dark matter BBNS needs in order to work), and so don't address that part of the dark matter problem. During the BBNS, primordial black holes would act as strongly-interacting particles (large scattering cross-section if nothing else, and probably a substantial absorption cross-section), and the whole point of dark matter in BBNS is that some of the universe's energy density goes into matter that does not participate in BBNS interactions (not even by scattering).

With regards to microlensing, feel free to do your own literature search, as it's not a field I follow (I'd just seen the results of a couple of searches many years ago with statements about what they ruled out). The acid test of whether Frampton's view is considered plausible is the number of unrelated researchers citing his work (as with most other research). It's probably worth looking at those papers as well during your search, as some of them will be written by people who disagree with his assumptions or calculations. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 02:09, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

A worthwhile addition to the article?

Claims from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

It has been referenced in the new article Amelia Fraser-McKelvie, the name of the discoverer. HiLo48 (talk) 23:55, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

This press release is talking about baryonic matter that isn't in stars. It might be worth adding to baryonic dark matter or to galaxy filament, but the term "dark matter" usually refers to the non-baryonic type. Still a nifty observation report, of course. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 00:26, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Filaments?

Apparently the missing mass has been found in the form of superhot filaments. How does that impact this article? The word "filament" doesn't even appear in it!

http://www.allvoices.com/s/event-9239517/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zbWguY29tLmF1L3RlY2hub2xvZ3kvc2NpLXRlY2gvbW9uYXNoLXN0dWRlbnQtaGVscHMtc29sdmUtY29zbWljLW15c3Rlcnktb2YtbWFzc2l2ZS1kaW1lbnNpb25zLTIwMTEwNTI2LTFmNmZnLmh0bWwlMjNpeHp6MU5oYng1NWRM

--202.81.69.153 (talk) 02:22, 30 May 2011 (UTC)