Contrabang! #27 Dark Inflation, Dark Dust, and Dark Bigotry

Controversial ‘Dark Matter Free Galaxy’ Passes Its Most Difficult Test (link)

In theory, all galaxies should contain copious amounts of dark matter, with one exception.

In theory, there's no such thing as dark matter. It was never theoretically predicted. It has never been observed. The only "evidence" is that the laws of gravity developed for our solar system don't accurately describe the motions of galaxies. Thus, dark matter was concocted and applied in "copious amounts" wherever necessary to make the equations work. Ethan is correct that there is "one exception" to galaxies containing dark matter, which is the case where the gravitational models happen to work by sheer coincidence, in the way that -40° Celsius and -40° Fahrenheit happen to be the same temperature.

Detractors argued their absence proved dark matter’s non-existence.

I can't speak for all detractors, but we've certainly never made such an absurd, upside-down claim. "Dark matter is observed everywhere, therefore dark matter does not exist." Followed by: "A galaxy without dark matter has been found, therefore dark matter exists." Apparently, to definitively disprove the existence of dark matter, we'd have to create it in a lab or something.

What Came First: Inflation Or The Big Bang? (link)

Our entire cosmic history is theoretically well-understood, but only because we understand the theory of gravitation that underlies it, and because we know the Universe’s present expansion rate and energy composition.

Just because our cosmic history is theoretically well-understood doesn't mean that it is pragmatically well-understood. I could create a theory of the cosmos which explains every conceivable observation, but it would not bring much practical value. All of his claims here are false. We clearly don't understand the theory of gravitation, since we can't even predict the rotational dynamics of galaxies. Nor do we know the Universe's present expansion rate, because scientists who use different approaches get different numbers, which means the energy composition is also unknown. In just the first sentence of the article (actually it's an image caption), every single aspect is wrong. Note his insistence that our entire cosmic history is well-understand. Ethan frequently uses such universal qualifiers in his writing. From a scientific perspective, it is okay not to know everything. The whole point of science is that there are things we don't know, and if we did, there would be no need to hire researchers any more. A scientist needs great mysteries to solve, whereas a priestly caste must provide answers to all questions of the cosmic order.

13.8 billion years ago, all the matter and energy contained within our Universe was concentrated into a volume of space about the size of a soccer ball. Even with all that energy in such a small space, however, we didn’t collapse into a black hole.

Why? Why in this one special case did the matter not collapse into a black hole?

Instead, the Universe expanded at a rapid rate that balanced the energy density so precisely that, for all of our measured cosmic history, we’ve walked that fine line between expanding and recollapsing.

Astrophysicists are amazed that the expanding universe just so happens to maintain a perfect razor's edge balance. What are the odds?

The Big Bang wasn’t the beginning, after all. Instead, that honor goes to cosmic inflation, and everyone should understand why.When we look out at the Universe today, we see a number of observable facts that cry out for an explanation. They include:

• the fact that more distant galaxies appear to recede from us in direct proportion to their distance from us,
• the fact that galaxies, at greater distances, appear to be smaller, bluer, younger, and less evolved,
• the fact that the Universe, at greater distances, appears to be less clumpy and more uniform, with less clustering on large-scales,
• the fact that the percentage of heavy elements (atoms heavier than hydrogen and helium) asymptotes to 0% at the greatest distances,
• and the fact that we see a very cold but clearly identifiable background of blackbody radiation in all directions in space.

Remarkably, one framework is consistent with each and every one of these observations: the Big Bang.

We've shown before why the first item sits on shaky ground. The second is subject to some contradictory evidence. The third doesn't mean much either: they've contorted their models to try to accommodate the observations of the cosmic web, which weren't predicted by the Big Bang theory. Only the 4th and 5th items are compelling. I am not familiar enough with #4 to comment. #5 is compelling primarily because the prediction was made by a Big Bang theorist. In fact, it was that prediction/confirmation that compelled the scientific mainstream to go all-in on Big Bang.

He then provides a list of questions that were commonly asked about the Big Bang in the last century.

• Why was the Universe born perfectly spatially flat, with its total matter-and-energy density perfectly balancing the initial expansion rate?
• Why is the Universe the exact same temperature, to 99.997% accuracy, in all directions, even though the Universe hasn’t existed for enough time for different regions to thermalize and reach an equilibrium state?
• Why, if the Universe reached these ultra-high energies early on, are there no high-energy relics (like magnetic monopoles) predicted by generic extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics?
• And why, since the entropy of a system always increases, was the Universe born in such a low-entropy configuration relative to its configuration today?

Those sound like good questions, and only arise because of the Big Bang Theory. The answer given -as the title alludes - is that there was a period of cosmic inflation prior to the Big Bang. It all relies on the concept that spacetime is not an abstraction but a thing, and that it can conveniently expand as necessary to make annoying questions go away. Why did spacetime suddenly undergo such a dramatic Dark Inflation? It doesn't matter why; it makes the equations work and gives an excuse to brush off annoying contradictions.

Still, contradictions remain, one which ties in with last week's edition of Contrabang!, where we pointed out that Ethan's insistence on steady, universal law of physics was an unstated assumption. That may have seemed liked a nit being made by someone he would describe as a "contrarian." And yet, here he implies that the rules of physics are different today than during the Big Bang. For one, the entire mass of the cosmos did not collapse into a black hole when constricted to a tiny space, as we would expect today. Second, the inflation of spacetime said to have uniformly stretched out the contents of the universe, giving rise to the uniformities seen today. However, we are also told that the current expansion of the universe does not apply to "gravitationally bound" systems, like our solar system and galaxy. The early cosmos must have been gravitationally bound to itself, yet was still stretched by spacetime.

That's the problem with not tracking assumptions, is that at any time they adopt whatever assumptions are most convenient.

Can This Newfound Dark, Massive Galaxy Be Astronomy’s ‘Missing Link’ In The Universe? (link)

The problem is that astronomers see small elliptical galaxies which are highly red-shifted (thus assumed to be very distant and old) and then suddenly very massive, modern galaxies being abruptly about a billion years after Big Bang. It is assumed that the larger super galaxies are formed by the gravitational mergers of many small galaxies (but like the way mega corporations grow) but those intermediate galaxies are never detected.

For those elusive galaxies to not appear in the same surveys that find both of the other types of galaxies means there must be something that’s obscuring the light we’re expecting to arrive. [...] What might be a reasonable culprit is the gas and dust that belongs to the proto-galaxies which merge to form the late-type galaxies we eventually see.

You heard it here first...Dark Dust! Just like how dark matter occurs wherever necessary to make the equations work for galaxies, dark dust occurs wherever necessary to hide the observations that scientists should be making, but aren't.

In short, a large spiral galaxy, somewhat smaller than our Milky Way, with a large rate of star production has been found, and is largely obscured by dust. So Ethan is very excited that this is the "missing link" of galactic evolution. However, if the theory is correct than there must be a great many of these types hidden by shrouds of Dark Dust.

This Is Why The Speed Of Gravity Must Equal The Speed Of Light (link)

Here's an interesting one that takes on one of my big complaints with general relativity, which is that orbits should not be stable, even in two-body systems. Because of the time-delay of gravity, the Earth should be attracted to the position of the Sun 8 minutes previous. Because the solar system and galaxy are themselves moving through space at high velocity, the discrepancy would be very significant.

The answer given is that the length-dilation affects of motion in general relativity cancel out the problems caused by gravitational delay.

In order for this to work out, though, there has to be an additional effect to cancel out the problem of a non-zero tangential acceleration, which is induced by a finite speed of gravity. This phenomenon, known as gravitational aberration, is almost exactly cancelled by the fact that General Relativity also has velocity-dependent interactions.

I have trouble making conceptual sense of this, as most people do. For now, we'll have to trust that the math work as stated, but I plan to do a more technical deep-dive into the subject sometime during a slow fake news week.

While I'm somewhat skeptical of general relativity, I have no strong arguments against it either. There is supporting evidence, but scientists are over eager to confirm the theory and are not sufficiently skeptical themselves. Einstein himself believed that he generally on the right track but may not have gotten it right with relativity.

What’s remarkable, and by no means obvious, is that these two effects cancel almost exactly. The fact that the speed of gravity is finite is what induces this gravitational aberration, but the fact that General Relativity (unlike Newtonian gravity) has velocity-dependent interactions is what allowed Newtonian gravity to be such a good approximation. There’s only one speed that works to make this cancellation a good one: if the speed of gravity equals the speed of light.

This has become a familiar tune with Ethan's articles, with the endless coincidences of things just happening to work out nicely, with the universe walking a razor's edge between realms of chaos, in multiple domains. Here's another, that the speed of gravity and the speed of light just happen to equal. Why is that? There must be some aspect in which light and gravity are related, if they share the same speed. (That or general relativity is false.) They are theoretically quite different. Light is said to be a wave without a medium, while gravitational information is transmitted as waves propagating through the "fabric" of spacetime. There is no theoretical reason why the two should be the same, so clearly there is something big here. Either there's a light/gravity connection that hasn't been discovered (Einstein spent his later years in vain trying to find this "unified theory") or what is currently taken as proven science is not actually so.

Interestingly, the whole concept of general relativity comes out of one those physical coincidences that most people take for granted. Einstein noted that mass was responsible for both gravitational force and for inertia. He assumed that the two phenomena must be artifacts of the same underlying physics, and developed relativity as a way to make both forces the effect of movement through spacetime. However, general relativity is incomplete, because the resulting cosmological coincidence of the speeds of light equaling the speed of gravity has not been conceptually resolved.

However, Ethan has his own take on the matter.

The speed of gravity is exactly the speed of light, and physics wouldn’t have allowed it to be any other way.

That's actually a religious argument. "Physics" has no inherent plan, so it is equivalently stated that "God wouldn't have allowed it to be any other way." Which is fine philosophy, but not science. We should remember that the scientific revolution came out of a Christian society, where men believed that the universe was His creation, and they were teasing out the rationale of the design. They were not content with just the what and the why, but also the how.

6 Steps Everyone Can Take To Become An Ally In White, Male-Dominated Workplaces (link)

Every now and again Ethan makes sure that everyone knows he runs a political blog with a science theme. Now he mounts his podium to lecture us on the core tenet of Social Justice activism: that there is inherent but unspecific racism that keeps other from making the same great historical scientific achievements as white men. The Dark Bigotry can't be detected, but it must be because otherwise the equations of social equality don't work out. (See that pattern?)

The top comment indicates that people are really getting fed up with this constant finger-wagging at whites.

I almost stopped following you on this. Medium doesn’t have enough woke losers telling everyone else how to live their lives? I enjoyed your posts on science. I hope you stick with those.

What readers don't quite realize yet is that his posts on science are just as much a tool of social control as his his blatant shaming of white men for daring to be successful in technical fields.