SSM Plebiscite

[PaulP]

No PaulP, I can and have provide you with more evidence you are likely to need, but you chose ignorance over investigation because you have a lazy bent. You want answers not effort, that is something I cannot help you with.

So do the lazy thing PaulP, have faith PaulP and all will be revealed!

Of course I want answers. Doesn't everybody ? Answers which you are clearly unable to provide. All you do is send people on wild goose chases that lead nowhere. I have spent the last several days searching the internet and there is not a jot of direct evidence for the existence of these elements. I just wanted to hear it from you. But clearly inconvenient truths don't suit your agenda.

[LP]

Of course I want answers. Doesn't everybody ? Answers which you are clearly unable to provide. All you do is send people on wild goose chases that lead nowhere. I have spent the last several days searching the internet and there is not a jot of direct evidence for the existence of these elements. I just wanted to hear it from you. But clearly inconvenient truths don't suit your agenda.

I'm sorry PaulP, you will not get an easy answer because they are not easy questions, but to answer them does not need blind faith or a belief in some mystical system, you just have to ask the simplest of questions and then keep going.

You can't capture a neutrino yet they are indirectly detected, if they were not here you wouldn't be here either, like it or not our entire modern way of life is built of knowledge from indirect detections!

You might be one of them, an indirect detection, because fundamentally you cannot prove your existence outside your own frame of reference, while you live in your own universe you only appear in mine. In my universe you think because I am, in your universe I think because of you, it's your fault!

[PaulP]

More guff.

The principles behind these ideas are not that hard. The technical and mathematical documentation required to demonstrate them is advanced, and well outside the scope of ordinary mortals.

[LP]

More guff.

The principles behind these ideas are not that hard. The technical and mathematical documentation required to demonstrate them is advanced, and well outside the scope of ordinary mortals.

While it is useful you don't always need math anymore, a lot of the ESA data comes with free software utilities to make your own measurements. They set up many of the publicly funded projects so students can make their own investigations as part of the project outreach campaigns. All you need is a lot of disk space, a great Internet connection and lots of time. Of course perhaps the programmers are in on the conspiracy! :o

If you want you can even try batting for the other team, at SAO you do not need to be up to date in calculus and as a mature age entry a lot of the normal entry requirements are waivered. They are a world leader based right here in Melbourne, not cheap or free, but worthwhile things rarely are!

https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/sao/

To learn about stuff like this,

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-...-light.php

http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/D/Dark+Matter

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-...iverse.php

Hey, even if you are not genuinely interested it pays to know the enemy! ;D

[PaulP]

Well at the very least, I should thank you for finally giving me links I can actually read. So kudos for that.

But none of that changes my current position. Lots of whizz bang technological equipment, lots and lots of money, and lots and lots of hope, but still not much to show for it. I understand that may all change tomorrow, but for now the state of play is what it is.

Although the WIMPS, Machos and references to dodgy accountants gave me a chuckle. Plus lots of technical jargon to alternately impress / bore your friends. I guess the idea of trapping scientists 1 km underground also appeals.  :-*

[LP]

Well at the very least, I should thank you for finally giving me links I can actually read. So kudos for that.

But none of that changes my current position. Lots of whizz bang technological equipment, lots and lots of money, and lots and lots of hope, but still not much to show for it. I understand that may all change tomorrow, but for now the state of play is what it is.

Although the WIMPS, Machos and references to dodgy accountants gave me a chuckle. Plus lots of technical jargon to alternately impress / bore your friends. I guess the idea of trapping scientists 1 km underground also appeals.  :-*

Ahh well PaulP, there is no free lunch, if you are not prepared to do the work then I have assume you are not interested in the answer.

I suppose we do live(at least in our perception) in a instant society.

[PaulP]

Ahh well PaulP, there is no free lunch, if you are not prepared to do the work then I have assume you are not interested in the answer.

I suppose we do live(at least in our perception) in a instant society.

It has nothing to do with being lazy. My work ethic is fine, and my comprehension skills are fine. Read those articles yourself. All the PhD's and all the equations in the world won't alter the fact that after decades and decades, neither dark matter nor dark energy have been directly detected. The calculations are not theories. They are simply mathematical documentation of observed phenomena. Science takes that data and explains it in terms of current theories of gravitation, which has fallen short. Why not try something else ?

I have spent days looking at this, and the thing that I find especially galling is the arrogance and inevitability of it all. It doesn't matter whether it's a forum know-it-all, an undergrad student, Dawkins, Brian Cox or anyone else, any uncertainty or lack of information is almost always qualified with a "yet." "We don't have the answers yet." "We don't understand dark matter or energy yet", etc. There is rarely any doubt or humility expressed, never any concession to the very reasonable possibility that we have reached the limits of what we can measure. Never any attempt to state things simply and honestly. It's always science as the great white hope, the great solver of the universe's secrets. It's always presented as simply a matter of more time, more money etc.

[LP]

It has nothing to do with being lazy. My work ethic is fine, and my comprehension skills are fine. Read those articles yourself. All the PhD's and all the equations in the world won't alter the fact that after decades and decades, neither dark matter nor dark energy have been directly detected. The calculations are not theories. They are simply mathematical documentation of observed phenomena. Science takes that data and explains it in terms of current theories of gravitation, which has fallen short. Why not try something else ?

I have spent days looking at this, and the thing that I find especially galling is the arrogance and inevitability of it all. It doesn't matter whether it's a forum know-it-all, an undergrad student, Dawkins, Brian Cox or anyone else, any uncertainty or lack of information is almost always qualified with a "yet." "We don't have the answers yet." "We don't understand dark matter or energy yet", etc. There is rarely any doubt or humility expressed, never any concession to the very reasonable possibility that we have reached the limits of what we can measure. Never any attempt to state things simply and honestly. It's always science as the great white hope, the great solver of the universe's secrets. It's always presented as simply a matter of more time, more money etc.

If you had read the articles you should understand they are not trying for direct detections, all the experiments are indirect detection, but with careful design they continually narrow the range of whatever they detect might be.

In the world as we know it, at our human scale and perception within our current band of knowledge, direct detection is not possible but that doesn't mean you won't notice the influence or effects.

Like the wind blowing trillions of atmospheric particles through whatever is left of your hair, it gives you no information of what they are but you can indirectly detect their presence.

[PaulP]

If you had read the articles you should understand they are not trying for direct detections, all the experiments are indirect detection, but with careful design they continually narrow the range of whatever they detect might be.

In the world as we know it, at our human scale and perception within our current band of knowledge, direct detection is not possible but that doesn't mean you won't notice the influence or effects.

Like the wind blowing trillions of atmospheric particles through whatever is left of your hair, it gives you no information of what they are but you can indirectly detect their presence.

Even if I cannot detect what gets blown into my hair, there would no doubt be something that could, maybe even something as simple as a magnifying glass. So direct detection is certainly possible, but what is required to do that may not be ready to hand.

[LP]

Even if I cannot detect what gets blown into my hair, there would no doubt be something that could, maybe even something as simple as a magnifying glass. So direct detection is certainly possible, but what is required to do that may not be ready to hand.

It's not a direct detection PaulP, you are seeing or detecting the effects of something, but it gives you no information of what that something is. It parallels dark matter experiments perfectly.

Even with the world's best electron or atomic force microscopes showing atoms, the images are mathematical reconstructions of scattered beam data, magnetic or electric fields. They are not like photographs.

Even many of the grand cosmological deep space images of quasars and distance galaxies, they are often not optical photographs but reconstructions that are the result of radio interferometry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry

To a human eye the data as imaged would look more like the Filth's football jumper.

The next space telescope, JWST, will send back data as images of things that are invisible to humans but detectable by infrared sensor. Detecting and displaying galaxies that we cannot always see! The warmth of the fire without the light, A La William Herschel and his thermometer.