Could information be—at long last—the missing “dark matter”?

10 Replies to “Could information be—at long last—the missing “dark matter”?”

1. 1
   Seversky says:

   January 25, 2020 at 12:27 am

   Could information be the missing dark matter? Why not? The answer to everything now seems to be information. And wouldn’t that include us? Are we all just information, nothing more than shimmering columns of green characters as in The Matrix. Perhaps we are more like illusions than we realize.
2. 2
   Truthfreedom says:

   January 25, 2020 at 4:05 am

   Seversky

   Perhaps we are more like illusions than we realize.

   What does being more like an illusion mean?
3. 3
   pw says:

   January 25, 2020 at 4:23 am

   What do they mean by “dark matter”?
   What does that 2-word term refer to?
4. 4
   Truthfreedom says:

   January 25, 2020 at 5:04 am

   Materialism and reality: the couple that was never meant to be.
   Materialism:
   – “People, we have concluded, using the all- powerful science, that you are illusions!”
5. 5
   Truthfreedom says:

   January 25, 2020 at 5:18 am

   PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM SHOULD BE ON ITS DEATH BED

   In space, we can detect “background radiation” left over from the “big bang”. It’s sources have been mapped, (It’s called a “W map”.) Those sources radiate in the microwave region at a temperature only 3 degrees above absolute zero. Knowing the rate of cooling of these cosmic sources, it has been calculated that the big bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago. But, using the best telescopes on earth (and now in space), astronomers have been able to observe galaxies only a little more than 13 billion light-years away. The conclusion is that we know almost nothing about more than 95% of our universe.

   This means that philosophical materialists know almost nothing about a rather large percentage of our universe, except that “it exists”. At the present time, all they can do is speculate. To assume that no reality exists beyond that which scientists can describe, when scientists have described less than 5% of what’s there, is very difficult to swallow.

   http://web.csulb.edu/~mbiedeba/ch1.html
6. 6
   Seversky says:

   January 25, 2020 at 2:14 pm

   Pw @ 3

   What do they mean by “dark matter”?

   What does that 2-word term refer to?

   According to Wikipedia:

   Dark matter is a form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe and about a quarter of its total energy density. Its presence is implied in a variety of astrophysical observations, including gravitational effects that cannot be explained by accepted theories of gravity unless more matter is present than can be seen. For this reason, most experts think that dark matter is abundant in the universe and that it has had a strong influence on its structure and evolution. Dark matter is called dark because it does not appear to interact with observable electromagnetic radiation, such as light, and so it is undetectable by existing astronomical instruments.

   Primary evidence for dark matter comes from calculations showing that many galaxies would fly apart, or that they would not have formed or would not move as they do, if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter.
7. 7
   pw says:

   January 26, 2020 at 12:48 am

   Seversky @6:

   Thanks for quoting Wikipedia.

   Note that “dark matter” seems like a heavy speculative idea that attempts to explain within a naturalistic framework observable facts. There could be other possible explanations, including non-naturalistic ones too. Perhaps the best explanation was given by a founder of modern science, who wrote “ could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being” in his famous paper known as “Principia Matemática”. http://inters.org/Newton-Schol.....athematica
8. 8
   pw says:

   January 26, 2020 at 1:24 am

   @7 PS

   Also let’s remember Johann Kepler, the founder of Physical Astronomy, whose famous work “Harmonies of the World” (in Latin, Harmonices Mundi) begins:

   I commence a sacred discourse, a most true hymn to God the Founder, and I judge it to be piety, not to sacrifice many hecatombs of bulls to Him and to burn incense of innumerable perfumes and cassia, but first to learn myself, and afterwards to teach others too, how great He is in wisdom, how great in power, and of what sort in goodness.
   At the end, Kepler concludes:

   Purposely I break off the dream and the very vast speculation, merely crying out with the royal Psalmist: Great is our Lord and great His virtue and of His wisdom there is no number: praise Him, ye heavens, praise Him, ye sun, moon, and planets, use every sense for perceiving, every tongue for declaring your Creator…to Him be praise, honour, and glory, world without end. Amen.

   References

   An extensive chapter in Kepler’s Mysterium Cosmographicum (The Cosmographic Mystery, the first published defense of the Copernican system) is devoted to reconciling heliocentrism with biblical passages that seem to support geocentrism.

   Kepler, J. 1619. “Proem.” Harmonies of the World.
   “Epilogue Concerning the Sun, By Way of Conjecture,” ibid.
9. 9
   pw says:

   January 26, 2020 at 1:32 am

   @7 & @8:

   PS.
   Could the best alternative explanation to “dark matter” perhaps require that we look back several centuries to the two classic documents cited @7 & @8?

   🙂
10. 10
    PaoloV says:

    January 26, 2020 at 1:38 am

    pw @9:

    The best explanation is found in Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1-3. Everything else derives from it.