Dark Energy/Zero-Point Energy/Tesla

[DanS]

I've never heard of a Telsa energy.

Well, not Tesla energy. But an ether that is permeated with energy.

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

Please note that Tesla was sometimes pretty far out and subsequently a lot of nutballs have glommed on to him for various conspiracy theories. But he was a genius of the highest order as well, so...

[Bill3000]

Originally posted by DanS


Well, not Tesla energy. But an ether that is permeated with energy.

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

Please note that Tesla was sometimes pretty far out and subsequently a lot of nutballs have glommed on to him for various conspiracy theories. But he was a genius of the highest order as well, so...

I beleive he never even published that.

[KrazyHorse]

The vacuum energy is actually very small (Believe it or not, 10^-120 smaller than originally predicted)

No, I don't believe it.

[Bill3000]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

The vacuum energy is actually very small (Believe it or not, 10^-120 smaller than originally predicted)

No, I don't believe it.

/shrug, that's what I heard. Sue me. (Actually I never really managed to learn non-classical physics yet, bleh. Only on Classical Physics 2, atm)

[KrazyHorse]

The difference between dark matter and dark energy is that dark energy increases when you increase the volume of the universe. Dark matter does not. This has serious consequences.

Dan, the reason that we don't think that dark energy is the vacuum energy is that the vacuum energy is something like (depending on who you believe) 10^40 to 10^120 times too large.

Supersymmetry "fixes" this to the extent that it kills off the vacuum energy entirely, leading to a zero cosmological constant (zero dark energy density). The idea that you'll somehow use supersymmetry (with some sort of enormously tiny supersymmetry-breaking term, I suppose) to erase all but a very tiny bit of the vacuum energy in order to properly explain the observed cosmological constant is called fine-tuning. Physicists don't like that. Even more troubling, the need to fine-tune crops up over and over again in particle physics. For instance, the hierarchy problem.

The reason this happens is that particle physicists are idiots.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Bill3000


/shrug, that's what I heard. Sue me. (Actually I never really managed to learn non-classical physics yet, bleh. Only on Classical Physics 2, atm)

See the post immediately above this one. That 10^120 number describes something else...

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Bill3000


/shrug, that's what I heard. Sue me. (Actually I never really managed to learn non-classical physics yet, bleh. Only on Classical Physics 2, atm)

With another 6 or 7 years of physics and mathematics education you might be able to not understand this at the level that I don't understand this.

[KrazyHorse]

As to the Tesla thing, if Tesla postulated anything like that without evidence then his ideas were just as useless as were the classical atomists'. Without solid experimental evidence for your flights of fancy you're simply practicing intellectual masturbation. Without some sort of mathematical framework it's not even all that intellectual.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
The idea that you'll somehow use supersymmetry (with some sort of enormously tiny supersymmetry-breaking term, I suppose) to erase all but a very tiny bit of the vacuum energy in order to properly explain the observed cosmological constant is called fine-tuning. Physicists don't like that.

It's also known as ad hoc hypothesis, possibly as a more general term.

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Even more troubling, the need to fine-tune crops up over and over again in particle physics. For instance, the hierarchy problem.

Generally speaking, the more ad hoc hypotheses are required for a theory to explain things, the deeper trouble it is in.

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
The reason this happens is that particle physicists are idiots.

Nice

[trev]

The need by physicists to contrive 'dark energy' and 'dark mass' to try and make the universe work, and with all their contriving they still cannot explain how galaxies could form apparently very quickly after the big bang (ie redshifted radiation from 12 billion plus years ago indicate galaxies existence earlier than they should have been able to form), an inability to satisfactorily explain the sharpness of the edges of Saturn's rings, are some of the very reasons why I have rejected physicists explanations and place my belief in the bible. The speculations of physicists have become so contrived in the last 15 years or so, that a rejection of their basic ideas and a search for a totally different paradigm is both reasonable and necessary to explain the current state of the universe and our solar system.

[Gatekeeper]

From one extreme to the other!

[KrazyHorse]

If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

Going to the Bible because we can't explain everything right now is like giving up your job hunt after the first interview and moving back in with your parents.

I can just imagine what your type would have said in the 1920s during the development of quantum theor...

[trev]

There is no physical evidence for dark matter, it is a contrived solution because 'big bang physics' does not satisfactorily explain the state of the universe. There is no physical and very little theoretical support for dark energy, but it is a contrived solution to an expanding universe problem. There is actually no physical evidence proving an expansion of space, which dark energy has been created to explain. The simple fact is that the theory of space expansion creates very severe theoretical problems because it requires a continual loss of energy from the universe, contradicting the laws of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. ( For those who wish to query this, each and every photon travelling in expanding space is losing energy and momentum as it is being redshifted with no corresponding energy of momentum gain elsewhere to balance it out) Because there seem to be flaws in logic of physicists, many are now searching wildly for another answer ie 'just maybe the mass of the electron was different in the past' or 'maybe the speed of light has not always been constant'. You do not need to read many issues of the New Scientist magazine or Scientific American magazine to see these sorts of conjectures these days. The thing is there will never be anything other than highly contived solutions to big bang problems because in high probability the big bang never happened. On too many levels, and as more evidence is gained from the skies, the contradictions inherent in the theory just multiply and multiply without any likely answers, so it is a theory that is basically past it use-by date, only with no apparent successor, they try to persist with it. It is time for physicists to get real, face facts, and abandon this illogical idea of a big bang.

[KrazyHorse]

The simple fact is that the theory of space expansion creates very severe theoretical problems because it requires a continual loss of energy from the universe, contradicting the laws of conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. ( For those who wish to query this, each and every photon travelling in expanding space is losing energy and momentum as it is being redshifted with no corresponding energy of momentum gain elsewhere to balance it out)

You don't understand GR, grasshopper. If a photon is redshifted simply by the earth's gravitational field, then where has its energy gone?

Conservation of energy is a local property. In curved space it is impossible to define the energy globally.

[Odin]

Oh, great, the fundies have come home to roost.

God-in-the-Gaps arguments are cop-outs. Just because we can't explain something now doesn't mean we will never will be able to explain it.