The real story of the universe isn’t the matter, he says, it’s the void: “And when it comes to understanding the universe, “nothing” is very powerful.”
Of course, the voids are not entirely empty. There are some dim, scattered dwarf galaxies floating around inside these mostly empty areas. And dark matter and some hydrogen managed to cling to life inside those empty, parched stretches. But by and large, the voids really are void. And because of this voidiness, ironically, the voids are filled with one thing: dark energy.Paul Sutter, “Why ‘Cosmic Nothingness’ May Hold Secrets of the Universe” at LiveScience
Rob Sheldon, our physics color commentator and author of Genesis: The Long Ascent, responds:
This article illustrates the reason why the scientific method is going extinct, not just in Darwin’s circular logic, but also in physics and cosmology.
Years ago, when models of the Big Bang and subsequent evolution of the Universe were being built, they noticed a problem, or actually, a series of problems. If enough matter was put into the model to get the galaxies to form, it all clumped up in the middle and made a single, monstrous black hole. But if they increased the power of the explosion to avoid this fate, the universe became a tenuous gas of hydrogen expanding everlastingly into the void.
The solution was to add noise, pockets of higher density matter in the Big Bang explosion like fragments of a grenade. These pockets became the galaxies. This sorta kinda worked, creating a universe of superclusters, big collections of galaxies. However, galaxy surveys that used robotic telescopes to look deep into the heavens, did not find these pockets, instead they found a web, as described in the article.
Simultaneously, measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (NASA/COBE) did not find the matter irregularities assumed, but instead found a butter-smooth Big Bang, with clumps no bigger than 1:100,000 more dense. Such a smooth explosion would never create galaxies, much less the web recently discovered.
Their solution was to add two invisible things to the models, two unobserved theoretical ideas, two dials. One was a “clumper” called “dark matter” that would get the galaxies started without contributing to the CMBR, and the other was an “expander” called “dark energy” that acted as anti-gravity yeast, to make the bubbles (or galactic voids). Now mind you, there is no theoretical necessity, no direct evidence for either one of these things (pax Perlmutter & Rubin), rather they are inferred through the application of a model. If the model is changed, so are these two items. They have only as much reality as the model itself, or perhaps even less, because variant models add or subtract these quantities. I have to stress this, because theorists think their models are “real”, and hence the strange article by Paul Sutter.
![The Long Ascent: Genesis 1â 11 in Science & Myth, Volume 1 by [Sheldon, Robert]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51G-veeEcdL.jpg)
Why do I find it strange?
Because after positing the existence of two dials to improve the model fit to reality, they then turn around and say that the existence of these dials proves the model is correct. Here is the quote:
And dark matter and some hydrogen managed to cling to life inside those empty, parched stretches. But by and large, the voids really are void. And because of this voidiness, ironically, the voids are filled with one thing: dark energy.
This is the name we give to the accelerated expansion of the universe, as well as for whatever’s causing it. We don’t really know what dark energy is, but our best current guess is that it has something to do with the vacuum of space-time itself; where there’s vacuum, there’s dark energy.”
Paul Sutter, “Why ‘Cosmic Nothingness’ May Hold Secrets of the Universe” at LiveScience
Notice how the model is treated as data when he says “the name we give to the accelerated expansion of the universe” as if the astronomy of the past 10 years can determine the changes in 100’s of megaparsecs of the universe over timescales of billions of years. (It can’t.) All they have done is to add more dials to the model until it looks like the astronomy picture–which is the well-known practice throughout science called “curve-fitting” or “ad hoc explanations”. Eleven more epicycles may keep Ptolemy’s model working for another 30 years, but in the end, Ptolemy was toast, and Copernicus knew it.
Biologists are waking up to the fact that despite all the epicycles, Darwin is toast. Isn’t it about time cosmologists did likewise?
See also, re dark matter and dark energy: Discover: Even the best dark matter theories are crumbling
Researcher: The search for dark matter has become a “quagmire of confirmation bias” So many research areas in science today are hitting hard barriers that it is reasonable to think that we are missing something.
Physicists devise test to find out if dark matter really exists
Largest particle detector draws a blank on dark matter
What if dark matter just doesn’t stick to the rules?
A proposed dark matter solution makes gravity an illusion
Proposed dark matter solution: “Gravity is not a fundamental governance of our universe, but a reaction to the makeup of a given environment.”
Researchers: Either dark energy or string theory is wrong. Or both are. But dark energy is so glitzy! Isn’t it a line of cosmetics already?
Researchers: The symmetrons needed to explain dark energy were not found
Rob Sheldon: Has dark energy finally been found? In pop science mags?
Are recent dark energy findings a blow for multiverse theory?
and
Science at sunset: Dark energy might make a multiverse hospitable to life… if it exists
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“as if the astronomy of the past 10 years can determine the changes in 100’s of megaparsecs of the universe over timescales of billions of years”
This has always been the problem with all the “deep time” dating methods: the statistical validity of the conclusion is always nil. We simply don’t have a statistically valid sample by which to extrapolate (linearly, or by whatever curve you prefer; the problem remains the same) back over 15 billion years.
But when your argument is made in support of materialism the rules don’t apply.
We see this same double standard in many other fields, in social networks, in politics, in the war on terror, and etc. I call it the “It’s OK when WE do it!” clause.
Officially right-thinking people don’t have to follow the rules, which is kind of ironic given the liberal challenge to the historical order was based on (A) the claim that the regnant order was based purely on power, and (B) the claim that a liberal order would be based on reason.
In Christian Austria after the first world war the political class erected a monstrous idol to themselves at taxpayers expense, a statue of the goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athene, at the doors of the parliament of the new republic. The people of Vienna have their revenge in the oft-heard saying:
“Wisdom is outside the parliament.“
Can’t we just gape in awe and mumble, “Oh, WOW…”? And then stare and gape some more?
There were individuals who believed (knew) that the Earth was round in 1000 BC or some such. They knew this in part because there was a well in Upper Egypt (up the Nile, SOUTH) that on certain days (once in the Spring, once in the Fall) the Sun shown DIRECTLY down the well without any shadow. But then the Sun moved IN RELATION TO THE EARTH and cast shadows down the well again. Most of the camel drivers who also knew of this weren’t impressed.
So did it make a DIFFERENCE if the Earth WAS round? Well, no. It has no effect at all on 99% of what humans do every day (Martha, can you pass me a clean diaper? Johnny filled this one up REAL good.). And in fact, navigation over short distances (less than 50-100 miles per segment) works better if you assume the earth (that is, the dirt under your feet) is FLAT.
The existence of God and the Intelligent Design of Humans does NOT depend on how God created the universe. Although I suppose evidence that The Universe was built and kick-started by a WHIM has gotta scare the pants off hard-core Atheists.
“Their solution was to add two invisible things to the models, two unobserved theoretical ideas, two dials. One was a “clumper” called “dark matter” that would get the galaxies started without contributing to the CMBR,…”
I thought that, rather than Big Bang theorizing, the primary driver for the supposition of “dark matter” was the observation of anomalous rotation rates at various distances from the center in very many galaxies. Anomalous, that is, assuming the galaxy masses corresponded to the matter visible as stars, dust and gases. This seems to me to be direct evidence for something like “dark matter”, or perhaps under certain conditions some factors affecting the gravitational constant.
Of semi-related interest:
What is curious about these ‘anomalies’ in the CMBR (that cannot be explained by the ‘simple’ inflation model of materialists), is that these ‘anomalies’ in the Cosmic Background Radiation also strangely line up with the earth and solar system.
At the 13:55 minute mark of this following video, Max Tegmark, an atheist who specializes in this area of study, finally admits, post Planck 2013, that the CMBR anomalies do indeed line up with the earth and solar system
Moreover besides the earth and solar system lining up with the anomalies in the Cosmic Background Radiation, Radio Astronomy now reveals a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe:
What is interesting about these large scale structures of the universe, i.e. quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe, (i.e. distributions that reveal a “surprising rotational coincidence for Earth”), is that the tiny temperature variations (in the CMBR) correspond to the largest scale structures of the observable universe.
Thus, contrary to the presumption of atheists, far from the temperature variations in the CMBR being a product of randomness as they presuppose, the temperature variations in the CMBR correspond to the ‘largest scale structures of the observable universe’ and these ‘largest scale structures of the observable universe’ reveal “a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth”. Moreover, we were only able to discover this correlation between the tiny temperature variation in the CMB and the largest scale structures in the universe via the ‘insane coincidence’ of the universe being fine-tuned to at least 1 in 10^57 flatness.
Moreover, the way in which they were able to detect the anomalies in the CMBR, which ‘strangely’ line up with the earth and solar system, is that they ‘smeared’ and/or ‘averaged out’ the tiny temperature variations in the CMBR.
Here is an excellent clip from the documentary “The Principle” that explains, in an easy to understand manner, how these ‘anomalies’ were found, via ‘averaging out’, in the tiny temperature variations in the CMBR data.
In other words, the “tiny temperature variations” in the CMBR, (from the large scale structures in the universe, to the earth and solar system themselves), reveal teleology, (i.e. a goal directed purpose, a plan), that specifically included the earth from the start. ,,, The earth, from what our best science can now tell us, is not some random cosmic fluke as atheists had presupposed.
Verse: