Michael Mozina wrote:Nereid wrote:It is obvious that you, personally, don't like the way modern science, as used in astronomy, works.
I'm fine with modern sciences Nereid. I'm not as fine with the way astronomers of today actually practice "science". Astronomers today seem to think it's just fine to invent metaphysically undefined forces that have never been empirically demonstrated and that cannot ever be falsified.
If that is, truly, how you feel - or what your personal belief system informs you - then:
a) I guess you won't be posting here much longer; and
b) any astronomical papers you, alone, write may well make for fascinating case studies by philosophers of science.
I guess one hope I had was that you would at least acquire an understanding of what constitutes science, in modern astronomy, even though it very much grates with your personal feelings.
You don't personally get to define "science" Nereid, and astronomers as a whole group don't get to define science. You seem to want to skip the whole "testing" process of science altogether, and you have your own concept of a "test" that has no control mechanism of any sort!
We've pretty much covered this, in the other Cafe thread; I'll not comment further here (as it relates to a much broader topic than just DM).
That's not a test of invisible potatoes or dark matter Nereid, that's an observation that you interpret to be invisible potatoes, er "dark matter".
First, "dark energy did it" is useless ...
We agree so far.
by itself,
It would have been equally useless with a bucketful of math too.
just as "electrical flow", by itself, would also be useless ...
That is a false statement. I have *identified a known force of nature as the possible culprit*.
Not. You've only so identified if you state the extent to which "electrical flow" is consistent with, for example, Maxwell's equations.
The postulate,
in and of itself, does not establish any connection with any other theory, "known force of nature", and so on.
It may seem that this is pedantic; however, as the example I wrote about - in the other thread ('GR vs Newtonian gravity') should make clear, it is a logical fallacy to impute to the postulates themselves quite separate physical theories.
I have created a theory that can be tested and falsified. I have a concept I can test in my lab.
You do?!?!?!?!?!?
In which lab, on Earth, have you reproduced the aurorae?
Specifically, which lab contains a plasma of {density exactly the same as that in aurorae} and {physical size exactly the same as that of aurorae}?
I may no know how the math works, but I may still be able to build experiments to simulate an aurora, or a coronal loop. Birkeland did exactly that based on the fact he identified the *known force of nature* that was involved in the aurora.
So you say.
When you tell me which labs, here on Earth, reproduce aurorae and coronal loops, in terms of
all physical parameters, then I might start to take your claims seriously (within the framework of science as you yourself have defined it).
The moment he understood the actual cause of the phenomenon, he could design equipment to test his theory, with or without any understanding of the math involved in these processes.
What (I imagine) Birkeland did was develop, logically, a hypothesis or three, and show that they lead to conclusions which match the observations. He would, I imagine, also have carefully checked his logic (for consistency) and checked his ideas against the well-established theories of his day (Maxwell's equations, for example), and showed consistency.
Yes, and he *checked* his logic by building controlled experiments and by changing the variables individually to see their effects on his experiments. He *controlled* the variables.
He did?
How big was the stage within which he performed these "
controlled experiments"?
[snip]
a) because no one (yet) has put together an internally consistent, consistent with relevant well-established theories
There you go insisting you have to be right, and my explanations must jive with yours to be right. That is purely an assumption on your part, and an arbitrary need on your part. It's also not scientific in that you cannot *assume* that the correct answer must jive with well established theory. In essence you're requirement *insists* that the well-established theories are true, and must be proven true, when in fact they may be proven false.
Indeed.
It may well be that this statement can serve as the most succinct summary of your misunderstanding of modern astronomy, as a science.
When you write a paper on accounting for the many sets of independent, good observational results re rich clusters (that are consistent with papers accounting for these observations in terms of DM), and have it up on the arXiv preprint server, please let us know.
where domains of applicability overlap, and (above all) consistent with the totality of good observational results case for "an EM effect"
Let's start with the million degree corona. There's a very obvious and noticeable effect of EM fields in our solar system. Care to explain how you get million degree temps on top of a 6K photosphere without EM fields?
I thought we were discussing, in this thread, dark matter?
AFAIK, there is no relationship, in any published astronomy (astrophysics, cosmology) papers, between the coronal temperatures of the Sun and DM.
b) if someone does actually do that, then a "dark energy is an EM effect" theory will be taken quite seriously.
There is no such thing as DE, so I can't take DE seriously until a real force of nature is identified.
Indeed.
So you have stated, a great many times.
However, even a casual reading of the published papers, in astronomy (etc) may lead one to the conclusion that your personal feelings are not shared by astronomers, cosmologists, ...
(and what does DE have to do with DM anyway?)
By your logic if I slap you(r) math related to dark matter to my invisible potato theory, my invisible potato theory is validated by the same observations as your dark matter. See the problem?
No ... your 'invisible potato theory' would, indeed, be validated ...
Of course, I suspect that you would encounter quite a few tricky problems betwixt postulate and conclusion ... don't forget there's more than one criterion.
Why would that matter? I can pull things out of my back pocket just as easily as you can, especially if I never have to empirically demonstrate any of it.
OK ... make my day ...
Please present even an order of magnitude case showing the consistency between an 'invisible potato' idea and the relevant sets (three of them) of independent observations. Be sure to include in your case a) demonstration of internal consistency, and b) demonstration of consistency with the relevant, well-establish theories whose domains of applicability overlap with your 'invisible potato' idea.