Something beyond visible universe detected?

[enorbet2]

I have to say that it disturbs me some when people speak of "fudge factors" in Science as if Science allows for pulling answers out of thin air. It smacks of the way the fundamental religion crowd throws around "just a theory" often revealing an underlying distrust and even ignorance of the basic tenets of the Scientific Method.

 

This is even further complicated by our times where Quantum Mechanics is both so new and also about areas where common sense has no validity. There is no earthbound frame of reference for common sense at the sub atomic level or environments such as exist around black holes or the very early Universe. Some scientists say that "singularities" are just conditions where everything seems to become asymptotic and/or current understanding of the Laws of Physics breaks down. This just means we don't understand it fully yet, that we've just begun to understand that there is a problem, yet even defined, and are a ways from any hard answers

 

This is not an uncommon condition. In fact the concept of "light cone" can be applied to human understanding as it has evolved over the centuries, one where, little by little, light is shed in dark corners.

 

Since so much of early scientific endeavor or at least it's engineering adjunct was financed and motivated by military applications please allow me to use a military example.

 

It is observable that of one drops a feather that it's fall is easily affected by the slightest of breezes. So it is likely that it felt easy to understand why an arrow in flight was deflected by windage. OTOH when dropping a cannonball it seemed obvious that no wind, or at least no wind one could also stand in to drop such a ball, would affect it's fall. So it was difficult to understand why a cannonball in flight was indeed affected by windage.

 

However once sufficient mathematical data was collected about the flights of many cannonballs under a variety of wind conditions, patterns emerged and it could be concluded that, however difficult or impossible at the time it was to understand how these forces worked, that on the battle field under a given wind condition the aim of the cannon should be adjusted by what could easily be seen as a "fudge factor" and the ball would land where desired more or less consistently. The soldiers on the ground didn't give a whit about why the math worked, only that it did. It was up to Science to eventually explain the nature of Aerodynamics.

 

There is little doubt that any mature body of knowledge resists change since it always by definition withstood seemingly contradictory observed phenomena to even become "mature". For example "Dark Matter" today is much like the windage on early cannonade. Many non scientific people think this is some very recent "fudge factor" when in fact it was first postulated in 1934 by Fritz Zwicky as an X Factor, when an entirely consistent pattern of error was observed in galactic rotation. This was less than 10 years after Edwin Hubble blew everyone's minds that the Milky Way galaxy was/is only one of many billions of galaxies.

 

While if anything we are not even measurably closer to understanding what Dark Matter is, even after 76 years of the most prolific increase in scientific data in all of human history, still nothing has been observed to destroy the consistent pattern of what it, whatever it is, describes and how it behaves, that it exists. It is undeniably a consistent something, not merely random nor offhandedly contrived.

 

I apologize for taking so long to get exactly on topic regarding what has come to be called "Dark Flow", since I, too, find it exceedingly interesting and have great hopes that in the next 2 or 3 years it will be confirmed or denied by the findings of ESA's Planck telescope, when in all likelihood we won't be that lucky and the mystery will only be expanded. Our "flashlights" are yet dim in very dark corners. The exciting thing is that "halogen bulbs" and "lithium batteries" are just arriving. At least 3 major new technologies are focused on BBT and Inflation and such anomalies as Dark Flow. Exciting things are on the horizon.

 

It's just that I sometimes grow tired of the impatience and impulsiveness that seems to characterize those that for whatever reason or agenda seem to delight in the prospect of BBT and The Standard Model falling like a house of cards, as if it were that fragile and so easily dislodged. It's so easy to see shapes in shadows and forget how unreliable that is, sometimes in our enthusiasm to grasp the Truth, but also for some, simply to shore up what they wish to be true.

 

I love the quote "The Universe is not only stranger than we imagine... it is stranger than we can imagine". Certainly it is entertaining to imagine that you, the young upstart, might actually give Oscar De La Hoya a run for his money (especially now that he seems to be past his prime) but in reality actually believing that only shows a lack of understanding of the actual skill, training, and experience required to even be a contender for a match, let alone last longer than a few seconds in the ring.

 

It certainly would be refreshing if those that comment in Science forums actually acted as if they understood what Science is and how slowly it advances.