The Nightmare Scenario for Dark Matter is Inching Closer

[@murraybartley4467]

We're closer than we ever have been before to not detecting it.

[@dustinswatsons9150]

I think it's the electromagnetic interactions of all those objects influencing the anomaly as far as the additional mass goes

[@JZsBFF]

Feel the Fusion vibes!

[@rockets4kids]

We're closer than we've ever been and now we're even closer. Now we're even closer. Now we're closer still.

[@rockets4kids]

@@JZsBFF Fusion is an engineering problem, not a physics problem.

[@tombolo4120]

Dark Matter Lives.

[@tualatindave3797]

I bought a pair of cotton socks once. The label said "100% cotton, 10% nylon", so I am sure anything is possible.

[@omatic_opulis9876]

The manufacturer of those socks always gives 110%.

[@markdavis7397]

Unroll the label completely, you will see another line "10% antimatter nylon".

[@IgorEngelen1974]

they're just socks sized at 110% 🙂

[@linuxificator]

Every product should have its percentage of empty space on the label.

[@manuvillada5697]

This is usually a marketing wordplay. They can say "Cotton 100% natural" on a shirt that's only 50% cotton. It's intentionally misleading, but technically not a lie

[@squidwardfromua]

Fact: 90% particle physicists stop looking for a new particle right before finding one

[@maacha286]

Spongebob wisdom

[@stuartdparnell]

Particles have been chasing you but you have always been faster.

[@anrede8495]

Are these particles currently in the room?

[@SJ23982398]

In macro economics you can be this wrong and still have credibility.

[@damnguen1726]

unfortinately, there is no haha button :v

[@davidbowles7281]

Because predictive economics is nonsense.

[@SriranjanSeshadri]

😂

[@andreasarnoalthofsobottka2928]

All you have to do to be and remain right in macro economics is to predict a crash. The very nature of macro economics (blowing up bubbles) will prove you right sooner or later. Just never be specific about time, trigger, place, and amount.

[@jmf5246]

Other than Austrian School macro is ideology cherry picking facts

[@colder5465]

The Russian physicist Rybakov very pessimistically suggested this a couple of years ago. "What if this dark matter is capable of interacting only gravitationally? Then we have absolutely no chances of detecting it. We come to the limit of our cognition". Seems to be he was right.

[@Dampfaeus]

What properties do these particles need to have to only be interacting gravitationally with our Universe? Do they need to be higher dimensional?

[@frankxu4795]

@@Dampfaeus Nature owes human no answer. There are questions we already know that would never have an answer, such as what happens before the Big Bang.It’s practically impossible to know because time did not exist yet.

[@SuperLedouze]

@@Dampfaeus there would need to have the exact same properties of the janus cosmological model, witch, to most "cosmo-scientist" would be a disgrace. let me be clear: they would rather slit their own throat than admit that "someone who isn't THEIR people was right all along"

[@pagheca]

if they interact only gravitationally, this doesn't mean we can't detect them: we can detect them only... gravitationally. This beyond the fact that we may instead be approaching another major crisis in physics. Many physicists now think so (and propose alternatives, like MOND).

[@SuperLedouze]

@@pagheca why are you so obsessed with detection? why not make a theory, and THEN simulate a galaxy, or a portion of the universe?

[@jamesstevens2362]

I sometimes see those particles in the corners of my eyes, and you’re right - as soon as I try to look at them, they’re gone!

[@TooSlowTube]

I think what you're describing is probably flecks of detached retina, floating in your eyes, often called "floaters". What you appear to see is actually the shadow cast by the floater, on your retina, so when you turn your eyes to look at it, the shadow moves away, faster than you turn your eyes. It's quite common, and AFAIK, not normally a serious condition.

[@jamesstevens2362]

@@TooSlowTube that’s a good answer, but in my case it’s actually neurological. They’re basically hallucinations - cognitive impairment producing weirdness in the edges of my vision.

[@EpicDeception]

Actually sir, its just plain as day that those are dark matter particles ​@@jamesstevens2362

[@steffenbendel6031]

But your eyeballs are reasonable useful to detect cosmic rays. If one passes through, there is a shower of light that you can see.

[@ruprecht9997]

@@steffenbendel6031 And if you suddenly crave spaghetti, you know there was one passing through the spaghetti section of the brain. Simple.

[@sstidman]

"They're now leaving magnets on lab fridges just in case the axions want to leave a note." You got to give credit to Sabine for her original, witty one-liners.

[@comfortingabsurdity.]

Compile them into a book. Give it a nice cover. Print it out, and send it to her 😂❤

[@dennissmithson]

A new magnet just appeared on our fridge. It says "Yes, it is us."

[@theyruinedyoutubeagain]

And that's why, you always leave a note

[@matheussanthiago9685]

​@@comfortingabsurdity. I'd by it in a heartbeat

[@ingobojak5666]

Nobody made a factor 100 million error in their predictions here. The original prediction assumed the "WIMP miracle", which was not confirmed. Subsequent experiments answered the question how weak an interaction was still possible, given that the original assumption was invalidated. As it happens, showing that it must be at least 100 million times weaker is exactly how you "prove" that it quite likely is zero. If it turns out to be (essentially) zero for all non-gravitational interactions, then the "only gravitationally coupled" particle is the remaining possibility by elimination. In other words, rather than doing "consipracy science", particle physicists are simply doing their job - excluding their alternatives to the "boring" solution to the limit of human patience and budget. We can discuss what those external limits should be, sure, but by definition particle physicists cannot directly detect an "only gravitationally coupled" particle by anything but its gravitational effects. They are hence doing what can be done in this case. Maybe this truth is not worth its price, but that's a social not a scientific decision, and one cannot really blame scientists for favouring investments into their science...

[@MrMichaelBCurtis]

that was close to a word salad, reiterating the obvious, but you are correct, so I give you an "A" anyway.

[@Toningly]

"Maybe this truth is not worth its price, but that's a social not a scientific decision, and one cannot really blame scientists for favouring investments into their science..." Actually I think we can blame them.

[@MrMichaelBCurtis]

@@Toningly especially if they abuse the science for the money

[@Beanskiiii]

Type shi

[@Harvey_Pekar]

You need more commas in your life, dude.

[@jackpayne4658]

'Being an expert doesn't always mean that you know something. You might still know nothing - but at a higher level'.

[@Kevinrothwell1959]

Or ...An expert knows what he doesn't yet know! The known unknowns.

[@xgalarion8659]

'i may be wrong but my wrong is based on way more information than you'

[@RlsIII-uz1kl]

Facts!

[@thorntontarr2894]

Dunning Kruger Effect in action.

[@chrisbusby3086]

Start again. Most of the stars don't exist. They are false images. Due to de sitter effects.

[@malavoy1]

I'm even more interested in the recent measurements that show the excessive rotation curves keep going far outside the range where even dark matter's influence should have ended.

[@Thomas-gk42]

Yep, Sabine reported that recently.

[@morscoronam3779]

Let me introduce my theory of Darker Matter...

[@richardchapman1592]

@@morscoronam3779 a continuum of increasing darkness?

[@Big_Sloppa]

Dark matter is an emergent phenomenon. I noticed that if I say "X is an emergent phenomenon" it increase my perceived intelligence by at least 5 points.

[@fcuk_x]

About to have my dark matter emerged out of my asshole.

[@Chair991]

Indubitably

[@40over86]

Actually, it appears that dark matter is comprised mainly of Grants and Academic Tenure.

[@Mentaculus42]

Kinda like string theory.

[@EndingSimple]

On the money. Literally.

[@brionfranks478]

Yes, publish or perish.

[@SiqueScarface]

If it was that, then it would be easy to deal with it. But actually, there are measurement results, which don't add up with the laws of Physics as we know them now. We know there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we describe Cosmology. Starting with galaxy sizes, the way we calculate Gravity demands that there be more mass than we observe non-gravitationally. But we can't find out how to fix it. Modifying Gravity? It only works on limited scales. TeVeS? It predicts all stars to be unstable, only fixable by introducing 2 eV neutrinos we should have measured already. WIMPS? Can't find them either. Axions? Apparently sold out in the Universe. Being snarky is easy. Maybe snarkiness has five times the observable mass of the Universe. Then being snarky would the solution. Shall we write to Stockholm?

[@shawns0762]

General Relativity predicts dilation wherever there is an astronomical quantity of mass, not singularities. Dilation explains dark matter. In the 1939 journal "Annals of Mathematics" Einstein wrote - "The essential result of this investigation is a clear understanding as to why the Schwarzchild singularities (Schwarzchild was the first to raise the issue of General Relativity predicting singularities) do not exist in physical reality. Although the theory given here treats only clusters (star clusters) whose particles move along circular paths it does seem to be subject to reasonable doubt that more general cases will have analogous results. The Schwarzchild singularities do not appear for the reason that matter cannot be concentrated arbitrarily. And this is due to the fact that otherwise the constituting particles would reach the velocity of light." He was referring to the phenomenon of dilation. Mass that is dilated is smeared through spacetime relative to an outside observer. It's the phenomenon our high school teachers were talking about when they said "mass becomes infinite at the speed of light". A graph illustrates its squared nature, dilation increases at an exponential rate the closer you get to the speed of light. A time dilation graph illustrates the same phenomenon, it's not just time that gets dilated. Dilation occurs wherever there is an astronomical quantity of mass because high mass means high momentum. This includes the centers of very high mass stars and the overwhelming majority of galaxy centers. The mass at the center of our own galaxy is dilated. This means that there is no valid XYZ coordinate we can attribute to it, you can't point your finger at something that is smeared through spacetime. In other words that mass is all around us. This is the explanation for dark matter/galaxy rotation curves. The "missing mass" is dilated mass.

[@pandrosof]

Maybe the real Dark Matter were the friends we made along the way.

[@gomahklawm4446]

Or, highly likely, it doesn't exist at all and we've got something fundamentally wrong. There are alternative explanations for every supposed "proof" of dark matter. Zero proof Indeed.....

[@theostapel]

This comment has appeared in many discussions - suited to the topic - I hope there is some new ink ordered - for the scribbling pens needed. Fare thee well - on life's journey

[@stillatwork]

Honestly, at this point, you might be able to publish that in a scientific journal.

[@cherruthrose33]

I wondered that... if some people were like magnets.

[@snakerman2612]

🤣🤣🤣🤣 thats funny as fuck. I hate the positivity

[@romanceano7519]

It si very nice that KZbin has offered Sabina a refuge. Many iconoclasts of the past would have liked to have such thing. She is doing science in her way, she is doing epistemology that is a very important discipline that is not given the attention it deserves.

[@ssdfgardiner1233]

As I watch this, I am mesmerized not just by the topic and your presentation themselves but also by the consideration given to editing the closed captioning so that it is actually not just correct verbally but also uses proper mechanics. I know of no other KZbinr who does this, and I see it in your other videos. Thank you to you and your team for setting the bar high.

[@carlphilippgaebler5704]

I think the nightmare scenario would be that dark matter isn't real and we are simply missing a term in our force of gravity equations. We've only directly measured gravity on a small local scale, and just trust that the equations scale up to galaxy size without any surprise terms.

[@0biwan7]

not a nightmare. just another manic MONDay

[@wnkbp4897]

​@@0biwan7I don't like Mondays 🤪💣💥☠️

[@Thomas-gk42]

It would mean to change GR.

[@leonardodavinci303]

Exactly!! The data strongly suggests we do not have a complete theory of gravity (with equations) in the first place.

[@carlphilippgaebler5704]

@@leonardodavinci303 Right... It "feels more likely" that we are simply missing a term in the GR equations than that there is a particle we've never seen that exactly has the specific properties required for our equations to be correct.

[@petercumpson6867]

I once went to a lecture by Hermann Bondi. Someone asked "What do you think dark matter is?". "Bricks!" he said. Much smaller and they would diffract light. Much larger and they would clump together and form stars. If there are things throughout the universe the size of bricks, we could only detect them gravitationally.

[@davidgro2000]

I know something that's about the size of a brick! A teapot.

[@petercumpson6867]

@@davidgro2000 There may have been a very large number of identical civilisations before us, each leaving a Tesla roadster

[@sammy-the-crab4107]

Brick sized objects of regular fermionic matter would be detectable. They would emit and absorb light at some detectable wavelength(s) depending on their composition.

[@petercumpson6867]

@@sammy-the-crab4107 They would, but at equilibrium the emission spectrum must be exactly that of the microwave background, whatever emisivity it has or whatever it is made of. Look at it from the Principle of Detailed Balance or Kirchhoff's Law of Thermal Radiation, or straight from the 2nd Law, the result is the same. Incidentally, if its a conglomeration of dust its likely to have a slowly varying refractive index, which would make each brick pretty black - but thats incidental and not necessary. To make up the low average density of dark matter required, and the fact that it appears not much correlated in space with emitting bodies means it should not be suprising that we have no absorption spectra from it. Almost all of "Bondi's bricks" are way out in cold space between galaxies. No emission spectra - nor absorption spectra - nor diffraction. I think the valid objection to "Bondi's Bricks" comes from the dynamics they would have over time due to gravitational attraction - but if we are really at a loss to find dark matter I'd say those dynamics are worth revisiting just in case.

[@petercumpson6867]

@@sammy-the-crab4107 Priciple of detailed balance - or Kirchoffs law of radiation, or straight to the 2nd Law - all would suggest that at equilibrium, whatever the material or emissivity of "Bondi's bricks" they would re-emit with exactly the same spectrum as the microwave background. A low averge density is needed, and most would be way out in cold space between galaxies. No diffraction, no (distinguishable) emission, and no detectable absorption. The real agrument against Bondis bricks is a gravitational dynamics one, but I'd say worth looking at again if we draw a blank elsewhere. Hmmm... these bricks would make the CMB appear more uniform. Interesting.

[@blauemadeleine]

I do love your sense of humour. If you ever get bored with science (which seems unlikely to me) you would certainly be successful as a Stand up comedienne 🎉

[@AmsterdamHeavy]

but not as good as you saying that

[@Pierre-Leloup]

I could see her in a remake of the Pink Panther.

[@brothermine2292]

"After eliminating the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth." -- Sherlock Holmes But that assumes only one possibility remains.

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

And it assumes that one can judge accurately what is impossible and what is possible.

[@crinolynneendymion8755]

Conan-Doyle

[@stillatwork]

That leads more to dark matter doesn't exist and our theory of gravity is wrong.

[@ruprecht9997]

After eliminating the boring stuff, what remains requires grants!

[@nyyotam4057]

"Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible" - Dirk Gently.

[@pierickmellerin]

The fact that dark matter only interacts with gravity is not a new idea, it is notably the theory developed by Jean-Pierre Petit for several decades (his first work on this subject dates back to the end of the 1990s).

[@arctic_haze]

The gravitation coupled dark matter particles would be still detectable by... weighting them. Not on the surface of the Earth but in open space. They should have measurable gravitational effects, depending on their density.

[@yeroca]

Yeah, but that's kinda the original hypothesis which was created because of the gravitational observations, right? We do measure the gravitational effects, and (most) have assumed it's due to some particle. From that point you can't really argue with a straight face that if you find gravitational effects, the hypothetical particles must exist.

[@arctic_haze]

@@yeroca No, I meant more sophisticated measurement. For example effects of the of a possible dark matter halo of the Sun on orbits of objects with a peryhelion close to its surface. So not weighting the Sun but the almost empty space around it.

[@rogerphelps9939]

Well, gravitational effects have been measured and are what all the fuss is about.

[@rogerphelps9939]

@@arctic_haze That has been tried using widely spaced binary systems and the results appear tto be negative.

[@ugu8963]

Imagine the frustration. Maybe a whole another zoo of particles with interesting interactions between them, but that only interacts with us through gravity. It's be like trying to describe a painting by only touching it though a drape.

[@patientzerobeat]

I prefer the vaguer term "dark gravity", since the explanation might not be quite as conventional as "because more matter is the only thing we can think of that would even cause these extra gravitational effects in the first place, it has to be this extra amount of matter that we currently can't detect".

[@crinolynneendymion8755]

I wonder from time to time about the impact of language on the development of science.

[@TobiasWeg]

The label "Dark Matter" is indeed often over interpreted. On dark matter conferences, their indeed physist who will talk about MOND, which is not a particle based explanation and indeed, I think 'dark gravity' would probably the better label for it.

[@alwayscurious413]

Good call - I go further and call it ‘dark curvature’ on the predication that if matter curves space then maybe something else can curve space (space rotating around itself - who knows.).

[@nic.h]

Spooky action at a distance would be another one. Not sure why it's spooky, it just there was a previous correlation event.

[@dandantheideasman]

🤔

[@314sj]

You should now understand that the hypothetical grounds of dark matter rely just on trying to model in the thin air what we don't understand. Some sound bases have already been defined with Janus Model, time to acknowledge, rather than digging deeper in a dark hole. Light is out !

[@anton9690]

Agree. Always keep in mind that nature does not have any obligation of making our theories not boring.

[@Samasiam]

Dark matter is a sadistic easter egg one of our simulation programmers coded for laughs. There, now you know the truth.

[@steffenbendel6031]

No, he just changed the sliders until the results got interesting. No ill intentions were involved in creating this universe.

[@magedude999]

Or it's just something we made up and it doesn't really exist at all.

[@Techmagus76]

@@magedude999 the observed effects are real and as long as you do not have a better explanation what causes them the dark matter term remains the best description. Not to forget the search for alternative explanations is as old as the search for the particle itself, both without success so far.

[@magedude999]

@Techmagus76 maybe einstein was wrong? 🤷

[@onlyguitar1001]

If there is a God they don't give a fuck about humans. God is mathematics.

[@FreddieD-k5p]

A perfect definition of dark matter. Dark Matter: "A term or factor inserted into a calculation to compensate for anticipated errors, or to arbitrarily make the result conform to some desired conclusion."

[@denysvlasenko1865]

No. "Make the result conform to experimental data", not to "desired conclusion". This is what all theories are doing: trying to find math which match experiments.

[@FreddieD-k5p]

@@denysvlasenko1865 "Make the result conform to experimental data." That is fudging.

[@SarajevoKyoto]

​@@denysvlasenko1865 fair enough, howsabout, "force math behind experiments to match preconceived notions that the Universe is atheistic"?

[@boontish1104]

​@@denysvlasenko1865 you are still assuming that the distant universe follows the same physics as our local universe. The desired conclusion is that the physics is the same so they add in fudge factors. There are other ways of matching theory to data. The problem is that physics has become obsessed with particles and colliders. They have a big hammer so everything is a nail.

[@grahamokeefe9406]

Michio Kaku has made a whole career out of pushing speculative ideas because they're more interesting than reality.

[@JamaicaWhiteMan]

Avi Loeb is similar.

[@SekaiOfficialYoutube]

I been saying this!!!

[@JackT13]

Nothing is more interesting than reality. Our inability to explain it evidences this

[@mandogundam5779]

I callit 'popcorn science' science updates for hollywood purposes only🙃

[@orokusaki1243]

Kaku certainly throws the "what ifs" out there, and may inspire people to explore the possibilities.

[@valeriobertoncello1809]

The problem with this kind of explanation for dark matter is not just that it is uninteresting, it's that it is profoundly anti-scientific. Because it's too easy: it's an argument that could have literally been used at any step of the way. What are celestial bodies made of? They are made of celestial matter. What is celestial matter? It's the thing which constitutes celestial bodies. Why do celestial bodies move the way they do in the sky? Because that's the way celestial bodies move. Why does Newton's law hold? Because that's just how the universe works. Why do magnets attract? Because there's a dark magnetic force which makes them. Et cetera, et cetera: It's an argument we can apply any time we get stuck in our understanding of reality. Why would it hold now, and not yesterday? Why should we assume we are special, in this sense, with respect to all past scientists? Why should we be so arrogant as to think that we deserve this luxury, this easy way out that any great scientist of the past correctly recognised as cowardly? This idea of gravitationally coupled dark matter, just like the anthropic principle, is nothing else than a version of Appeal to Mystery, which of course has always served as the ultimate justification for any authoritarian ideology. It's a staple of religious and superstitious thought, and it's precisely what science was born to overcome. It's maybe the essence of institutionalized anti-science, which is the most dangerous form of anti-science.

[@sammy-the-crab4107]

“A dark magnetic force” It’s called the electromagnetic force which is extremely well understood and controllable to the point that I am using it right now to point this out.

[@sammy-the-crab4107]

What exactly is your definition of scientific? If you can use a theory to make predictions which are repeatable in experiment then it’s scientific. It’s not an “Appeal to Mystery” just because you don’t understand it.

[@TK199999]

It needs to be said, scientists are leaning more and more toward Gravity not being what we think it is. To the point we are once again questioning if the Graviton exists and Gravity is an emergent property of matter/space time and not fundamental force like strong nuclear force or electromatic.

[@magicmulder]

I only have a hard time wrapping my head around what spacetime *is*. It can be curved, yeah, what exactly does that mean? What is it made of, and how exactly does matter interact with it to curve it? As my math prof said, if someone asks you what a vector is, don't paint an arrow because that's not what a vector *is*, say "A vector is an element of a vector space."

[@timothychartier]

​@@magicmulder I tend to think of space time as a fast flowing stream. Matter is like a rock protruding out of the water. The stream must bend around the rock to continue flowing. The presence of matter bends time around it, such that if another object is flowing down the stream and goes near the rock, the stream is going to throw the object into the rock. While space does bend it is mostly the bending of time that results in the effects of gravity.

[@StuHol-jb1hh]

gravity is just an attractive force property of mass. people just keep trying to apply stupid affects to it. also "spacetime" isnt a real thing, its just mathmatical shorthand, not literal. space and time are not "forces" that are equal to things like mass, gravity, kinetic energy, ect. they are simply rules which the universe obeys.

[@baxterwilliams2170]

This is exactly the type of things that I love following Sabine for. I have no idea how to interpret any of these papers behind the headlines. Sabine bringing the results out of the physics lingo and into every day language is so helpful.

[@farleylyma5321]

I really wish i can live to the point we figure out all this dark matter madness.

[@gomahklawm4446]

It doesn't exist. There's something else we're missing. Done.

[@stop_AI_hate]

It’ll probably be something stupidly obvious and everyone will be really disappointed

[@stormtrooper9404]

The last time the Great Theory was proven (kinda) right... it was the Standard Model(of particle physics). It contributed exactly zero to our life's 🤷🏼 So just cant apprehend why are you so anxious about the dark matter!? More so.. if it happens to not be particle of a sort, but actually new aspect of a gravity that we are yet to discover.. even better.

[@Zionswasd]

​​@@gomahklawm4446 Hey idiot. The idea/fact that "something is missing" IS the concept of dark matter. 😮

[@valentinmalinov8424]

Your wish is fulfill. "we" already figured out. Ask yourself why "They" are so vocal about gravitational integrity of spiral Galaxies, but They are muted on the Gravitational stability of the Globular Clusters? Why the Globular Clusters do not collapse? They is not rotating and should collapse, but they do not collapsing. So... Dark Matter is there where they need and is not there where their Physics is helpless. The New Physics is here and all these speculations are explained in the book - "Theory of Everything in Physics and The Universe"

[@tscoffey1]

Were I a researcher in this field, and I came to the choice between GCDM (Gravitationally Coupled Dark Matter) and MOND, I would have to choose to further research MOND. The reasoning is that with GCDM, you have little to no way to test your hypotheses, whereas with MOND there is still that option. MOND is still falsifiable, at the least. The analogy is if I told you that your car keys could be anywhere in a massive parking lot. But it's completely pitch black, except for a few dim overhead lights. Your best option is to first search only under the lights, and ignore the dark patches, since your likelihood of finding them in a dark patch is negligible. Maximize your search time to what has the best chance of positive results.

[@faroncobb6040]

The problem with that idea is that there are limited resources to be put into science, and wasting a bunch of those limited resources on crazy long shots takes them away from fields where that time and money could have actually produced useful results. My understanding is that MOND has already been pretty thoroughly disproven, with some galaxies and galaxy clusters having lost their dark matter in ways that wouldn't be possible for the field based MOND.

[@tim40gabby25]

What if you're looking for dark places, not keys?

[@markdowning7959]

Classic Sabine. Thank you!

[@jloiben12]

Economists do this type of nonsense all the time. Hell, ask economists that are using “standard” economics what the assumptions to their models are and how they know those assumptions can actually be assumed. This is one of my favorite things to do. For the rare economist that actually understands the assumptions and can articulate them, asking how they know the assumptions are assumable will literally just lead to some version of “because the theory says so,” NOT because they are actually assumable in reality. Pretty much all of “standard” economics is basically just the phenomena you are making fun of here. It is why economists, as a collective group insofar as they rely on “standard” economics, are so bad at actually doing their job

[@michaelpieters1844]

Economics is not even a science (although economists like to believe it is). It is one stage further than astrology.

[@willsingourd2523]

The only actual science involved with Economics is that of (honest) statistics. (Which is both a scientific discipline and a mathematical method/s.)

[@jloiben12]

@@willsingourd2523 Insofar as you are talking about "standard" economics," I agree.

[@Thomas-gk42]

💯

[@Titere05]

@@willsingourd2523 So basically not much different than technical analysis in stock trading, another pseudo science with abundant charlatans

[@tomcaniff6437]

so basically dark matter is a theoretical figure that has been used to describe the excess presence of gravity, but so far it's as if it doesn't exist whatsoever, and this excess gravity is just *there* somehow, otherwise in order for this hypothetical to be real and have a particle, it would have to have properties that make it insanely hard for scientists to study it, or in a nightmare scenario, completely impossible. *Please correct me if I have the wrong idea!

[@hoon_sol]

Can be explained by magnetism.

[@temmy9]

Dark matter reminds me of quintessence

[@the_sceptic]

In the 19th century, particle physicists would have been looking for the Ether particle.

[@raycar1165]

Orgone Biophysical Research Lab Ashland, Oregon, USA Dayton Miller’s Ether-Drift Experiments: A Fresh Look “Dayton Miller’s 1933 paper in Reviews of Modern Physics details the positive results from over 20 years of experimental research into the question of ether-drift, and remains *the* most definitive body of work on the subject of light-beam interferometry. Other positive ether-detection experiments have been undertaken, such as the work of Sagnac )1913) and Michelson and Gale (1925), documenting the existence in light-speed variations (c+v>c-v), but these were not adequately constructed for detection of a larger cosmological ether-drift, of the Earth and Solar System moving through the background of space. Dayton Miller’s work on ether-drift was so constructed, however, and yielded *consistently positive results*.”

[@raycar1165]

See, OrgonelabPeriodorg/millerPeriodhtm

[@listonheinz9103]

@@raycar1165​​⁠​⁠ ”I still dream of Orgonon, I wake up crying”…

[@Pandaemoni]

Except that distant galaxies really do have more mass than we can see or that can be explained by the particles in the Standard Model; and that effects both their rotation curves and the degree to which they can form gravitational lenses. Ether was a theoretical substance that people spent time trying to find evidence for (i.e. observations), dark matter is a set of observations that people are trying to find a theory for.

[@Barten0071]

@@Pandaemoni wasn't point of eather that radio waves needed some medium to be waves of?

[@GadZookz]

That must be where all the Fermi aliens went. Once they converted to dark matter they knew they would never have to answer all of our silly questions. 🤔

[@fredrik241]

Or they are incredibly long lived and experience time different from us and found going round and round the galaxies so boring they decided to speed them up just a bit?

[@sststr]

I've actually had that thought before - that the universe is absolutely teeming with life everywhere, but it's all made out of dark matter, and we are the one weird freak life-form that isn't. It's a funny thought. But I'm of the opinion that dark matter doesn't exist at all. It was just a mathematical plug to make the models fit the observations. Just imagine when your model explains a pitiful 5% of the observations (once you toss dark energy into the mix), but you are convinced your model must be right, and the universe is wrong. LOL! Are they even doing real science at that point, or is it no better than astrology? Just scrap the whole thing and start over from scratch.

[@archaonzero7401]

Nah, they are all inside their Dyson spheres, trying and still failing to invent FTL travel.

[@XDEnd00]

@@sststr This doesn't really answer the Fermi paradox though. One can just as validly reframe the question so as to refer to the likelihood of life made of the kind of particles we can interact with. The universe is already big enough taking only these in consideration

[@artdonovandesign]

Great episode! Wonderful descriptions! Thank you, Sabine

[@bertt646]

I fail to see how this would be a boring solution? If true then it'd raise lots of questions about why it doesn't interact.

[@sophieluni5207]

You try to fit a cube into a round hole. Have you heard of the Occam's razor? The most plausible hypothesis is that Dark Matter does not exist, and not that it does not interact with visible matter.

[@a.karley4672]

A direct consequence of your "plausible hypothesis" is that gravity doesn't work in either the nice simple way that Newton thought, or in the nice, not-so-simple but usable way that Einstein proposed, but in some other, probably much more complicated way. Which neither the theorists nor the experimentalists have come to any sort of consensus over, leaving Newton the only usable model on small scales (Solar systems) and Einstein on larger scales. The onus is on proponents of an alternative model to come up with either a really convincing theoretical argument for "their" model, or some clear experimental data differing form Einsteinian or Newtonian models. Neither of which has happened (yet). So "Occam's Razor" remains a blunt, ineffective argument.

[@Peter-y5y9i]

@@a.karley4672 Why? What does it matter? (no pun intended). Surely there are enough human problems to attend to without wasting time and money on so much pointless research? Personally, I think that dark matter is an illusion. I have no real basis for saying that. And who cares?

[@Radagast49230]

@@a.karley4672 We've always been wrong about things when it comes to science, ALWAYS. Why should it be any different now? When you have been trying to find a thing for this long with absolutely no evidence beyond the supposition that it must exist in order for your model to work. Then the answer is that your model is not correct somewhere. There's nothing wrong with that, it just means we need to keep looking for how we are wrong instead of trying to make up reasons we are right and adding extra constants in to correct the math of the model to fit observed results. When your theory doesn't work, stop trying to make it work and start trying to figure out where it's wrong.

[@baz_astra]

@@Peter-y5y9i We often don't know what research is useful or useless until afterwards. You could've made the same statement about ANY scientific research in the last 500 years. Lasers were of unknown use when first theorized, same with penicillin, IP packet switching for networks, graphene, quantum computing, the list goes on. The point is we just don't know whether some avenue of questioning will have profound and useful applications for society until much later.

[@Peter-y5y9i]

@@baz_astra Not true. Einstein's theory of mass and energy gave rise to nuclear research. Atomic bombs put an end to the war in the Pacific. It gave rise to nuclear energy and the prospect of fusion power, however remote that may be. I'm not against that kind of research. One group of scientists complain about global warming while others demand vast amounts of energy to look for something that may not exist. How about we fix problems now instead of chasing knowledge purely for the sake of it.

[@Paul.Riggs2932]

There is another hypothesis: that dark matter simply does not exist and that the phenomena are the result of a geometric paradigm shift. This is what is proposed by the Janus Cosmological Model, in which our universe interacts with another, symmetrical CPT universe. As T-symmetry leads to the inversion of energy and mass, this second universe obeys the laws: masses of the same sign attract, masses of opposite signs repel. So this accounts for all the observations. The people of quantum mechanics are beginning to envisage interaction by entanglement. In the Janus model, the universe is a two-folds covering of projective space, which gives rise to this CPT symmetry. Sabine Hossenfelder is perfectly qualified to analyse that work, which has been published in top-level journals, the most recent (2024) being Annals of Physics

[@PathfinderPhysics]

"interaction by entanglement" is just another way to say magic.

[@a.karley4672]

Hmmm, "Janus cosmological model" rings a faint bell. I'll add it to my "to do" list of theories to search Arχiv for on an occasional basis.

[@a.karley4672]

On the other hand, a "cosmological model" "published in top level journals" whose proponents are so numerous and enthusiastic that it doesn't even have a Wiki page ... is it worth the effort? I'm not going to read every article in Annals of Physics in 2024.

[@Paul.Riggs2932]

@@a.karley4672 ....and what would you say if your publications were sabotaged, muzzled and prevented from appearing in numerous highly scientific documents because they would simply render 50 years of cosmological studies and various nobels utterly meaningless and untrue?

[@madenglishman3417]

@@Paul.Riggs2932 that’d merit the label “nightmare scenario” for those involved

[@spedi6721]

6:35 where is the surprised prairie dog?

[@lukesellars7178]

Thanks!

[@SabineHossenfelder]

Thanks from the entire team!

[@joansparky4439]

@@SabineHossenfelder other fields where this is going on? Sociology (+Economics) are pretty much in "Hold my Beer!" mode on that one (IMHO).

[@nailabrain6714]

​@@SabineHossenfelder m.E. gibt es 4 Arten dunkler Materie. Schwarze Löcher, kalte Sonnen und Planeten, Photonen und einen Denkfehler. Es ist sehr schwer eigene Fehler zu erkennen und zu korrigieren. Es ist noch schwieriger anerkannte falsche Theorien zu erkennen. Es gibt einige Probleme mit der Gravitation und für jedes dieser Probleme hat man eine andere Lösung gefunden. Aber alle Probleme weisen auf eine gemeinsame Lösung hin. Und es gibt die 5,9 Jahre Periode bei der Messung der Gravitationskonstanten. Hier hat ein indischer Wissenschaftler zwar eine Lösung gefunden die mit der unterschiedlichen Rotationszeit der Erde etwas zu tun hat. Er hat auch erkannt, daß es mit der Umlaufbahn des Jupiter zusammen hängt. Er kann aber nicht berechnen weshalb es zu Abweichungen der Gravitationskonstanten kommt.

[@athanatic]

Your sense of humor is delicious! It reminds me of the dry humor from reading the few physics papers I have ready (mostly really engineering Atomically-Precise Manufacturing, etc.)

[@Omnifarious0]

If dark matter observations are explained by some kind of thing that can vary in amount in different parts of space, there should be a way to measure that, even if you're just using gravity to do it. It should interact with gravitational waves, for example. That's likely far beyond our current engineering capabilities though, unfortunately.

[@tomfeng5645]

We've been trying to do that, with galactic rotational velocity, lensing measurements etc. Those have been on the very limits of what's currently technologically feasible, so the data quality isn't the highest These are often compared to various models (Dark Matter, MoND, etc) to see what works out - Sabine has done some videos on these kinds of studies previously, for example. The problem is, the data is too poor to be particularly selective, so it can only rule out some models that are entirely off, and oftentimes, modifications to marginal models can make them fit much better :P Hence you'll find Sabine covering papers that wiffle-waffle on what models seem to match and what seem not to.

[@Omnifarious0]

@@tomfeng5645 - Something in me keeps being obsessed with the idea of looking for shadows of the stuff in gravity waves. To me, that would be the ultimate proof that it was stuff rather than a misunderstanding of the laws of physics. But those other experiments you talk about sound good too. Except I'm always concerned about using models in this way. It feels a little like generating the hypothesis and the proof of the hypothesis from the data, rather than generating the hypothesis then gathering the data to see if it supports or disproves the hypothesis.

[@tomfeng5645]

@@Omnifarious0 Yep, that's a real concern! Hence astrophysicists are always scrambling for the next dataset they could use. The data is just too limited - and our understanding too poor - to do much better. Gravity waves, the problem is we basically have 1 pixel detectors. If we could get their shape better, certainly there's a lot more that can be done. There's been proposals of array-type setups, but the scale that would be required for one is what makes that prohibitive. Given the wavelengths, the resolution would be very limited (by diffraction limit) too unless we could make one spanning multiple astronomical units - most of those proposals are so we can get even a rough sense of the direction, currently our best accuracy for the origin of the detected waves are "well, it's probably somewhere in this half of the sky, we think" :P

[@Aceofhearts529]

In science 'not knowing' isn't a nightmare or a nightmare scenario, it simply means that we do not know, it happens in life 'not knowing'..... no matter how hard we try 'to know'. So best for us to get on with our lives doing the best we can more times than not and enjoy a glass of red or three at evenings end.

[@Greenicegod]

Scientists are indeed very familiar with "not knowing". They do science because of the possibility of finding out. If dark matter is indeed a particle that *only* interacts with gravity, then the possibility of finding out is zero. That is the nightmare... That something fundamental to nature is nonetheless unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. When science fully distills the universe into the known and the unknowable, there will be no more science. Nobody wanted to hit that barrier so soon.

[@bbigboy01]

Always great to hear your explanations of complex theories, and especially like your "interactive" humor :-).

[@oliviervancantfort5327]

I missed the "if dark matters exists, which it may not..."

[@Thomas-gk42]

😂

[@Spherical_Cow]

What bothers me the most about dark matter, is our apparent inability to generate dark matter from energy (in particle colliders). The momentum sums of collision byproducts always add up to comply with conservation laws, with no indication of anything suddenly "going missing" from the detectors. If we can't convert pure energy to dark matter - only to regular matter - then how did dark matter form in the first place?

[@Thomas-gk42]

It depends on the mass of the particles. In the early universe you find energies to create everything, if the conditions allowed it. They predicted to find Wimps in the LHC, but they didn't. So they changed their theories and are yearning for a bigger collider. That's what Sabine's point of criticism is about.

[@RipleySawzen]

It could easily be comprised of energy of a different form than we know. I tend to think of dark matter now as a "shadow universe" comprised of god knows how many particles and forces that we cannot interact with in any way, shape, or form. But they affect gravity. Dark matter could truly be completely separated from the standard model forces.

[@zualapips1638]

​@Thomas-gk42 But what if that's what you need? A bigger collider? According to Sabine, if you try something once and it fails, you should give up altogether. I don't see anything wrong with trying, realizing your theory did not agree with your experiment and trying something else. It looks like she cannot stand scientists doing science if there's even the slightest amount of uncertainty that the entire thing is wrong.

[@Thomas-gk42]

@@zualapips1638 She explains it in her book "Lost in Math": The problem is that all based theories of high energy physics predict nothing new up to 15 or so magnitudes. It´s called "The Desert", since the chance, to find something new before is very low, that´s why she argues to use the money for more promising experiments. 15 magnitudes would mean to build a collider of the size of the galaxy, surely nothing we will be able to construct in the next decades.

[@a.karley4672]

@@Thomas-gk42 ... or a change in collider technology. Such as the potential of "wave rider" linear accelerators currently under experiment.

[@Keemin]

2:09 hypothethis!!!! An extremely rare occurence for sure, your videos always display such perfectionism in editing together precise articulation

[@sebastianschubert7945]

I think really bringing home a null result is also important:)

[@safestate8750]

The problem is you can nearly always come up with reasons as to why you have not detected them yet, at some point you have to end the search

[@Zionswasd]

​@@safestate8750 no you dont have to end the search. that would be stupid. the point of science is to always continue searching.

[@safestate8750]

​@@Zionswasd I don't know the numbers to be honest, but any detector becomes more expensive the more precise it is. So in my opinion unless there is a good theoretical reason to expect the next measurement to find dark matter it is no longer worth the cost to build the detector. There is finite money in academia, so I don't think it's worth spending much more money on dark matter particle detection in favor of other things to research.

[@Thomas-gk42]

safestate8750 💯

[@Thomas-gk42]

​@@ZionswasdBut not running in the same dead end a thousand times

[@samedwards6683]

Science: The one place where Skepticisms and Doubt are just as important as Curiosity. I Love it. Thanks for another Brilliant episode.

[@frankxu4795]

Fundamental researches can certainly use more people like Sabina. Few questioned why billions of $$$ were spent on things that people already knew to a large extent that it likely would produce no outcome. Limited resources shall not be wasted by just a few people’s personal interests.

[@altrag]

This isn't skepticism or doubt. This is outright dismissal. She's not arguing the pros and cons of a particular theory or experiment, she's just saying we shouldn't bother full stop.

[@Doutsoldome]

@@altrag She is criticising the bad methodology, which is reason enough to dismiss it.

[@altrag]

@@Doutsoldome There's nothing wrong with the methodology. You come up with a hypothesis, you design an experiment to test that hypothesis. That is exactly how science is supposed to be done. Just because the experiments are more complex (and expensive) than they were 100 years ago doesn't change the basic process. The only difference is that the experiments we have to design cost a lot of money, and Sabine has long been of the opinion that we should just stop pushing the boundaries of science entirely and just spend our time tweaking things we already know in order to get small incremental _economic_ benefits (she doesn't seem to care as much about the scientific pursuit as she cares about the price tag). I mean she's welcome to have that opinion, but that opinion does not justify callously dismissing those who still think pursuing new knowledge is worthwhile. Science was never about "I have the right answer and I'm only doing the experiment so you believe me". That kind of thought process is why scientists rarely publish null results, why journals tend to factor in elitism more than the actual work they're publishing, etc. This idea that science must to be "right" (or worse, that it must target some pre-defined "commercially viable" product) is what's really dooming the concept of science as a whole. The foundation of science is the assumption that we are _not_ right. That we're going to have to get it wrong 1000 different times before stumble across the next correct solution. Stopping at 50 wrong answers and claiming "well I guess we'll never figure it out so we shouldn't even try anymore" is just a slap in the face to all the giants whose shoulders Newton stood on as he demolished 2000 year old dogma. All of the people whose work Einstein built upon as he turned around and showed Newton up.

[@Doutsoldome]

@@altrag I could elaborate an answer, but I don't have to do that, since Sabine explained it very well in the video "What's Going Wrong in Particle Physics? (This is why I lost faith in science.)" Not all hypothesis are of equal worth.

[@markrix]

I like how you have a slightly different opinion about a few things, predestination, wimps .etc and its nice because i think we can agree your not a moron

[@DocDealgood]

I think the Turok-Boyle approach with right handed neutrinos is promising. And they make predictions which are testable in principle. Perhaps it is worth a video about it.

[@osmosisjones4912]

Wormholes linking area's of gravity and closing before much light can get through explains what seen in dark matter

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

@@osmosisjones4912 There's another hypothesis that micro wormholes entangle different parts of space and form a web that constitutes actual Spacetime. Sounds outlandish but many scientists believe this is credible. Needs much work though.

[@brothermine2292]

Carlo Rovelli also has a theory of dark matter involving primordial black holes. He theorizes that evaporating black holes stop emitting Hawking radiation after they've shrunk to planck size, and become stable (and very tiny).

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Turok's approach basically describes a shadow universe in which all the missing particles (like right-handed neutrinos) reside, but still interacts with our reality through gravity. Also his solution proposes a mirror universe which is fully CPT-reversed and thus symmetric, and covers the timeline in the negative part of the scale, before the big bang. In other words, the big bang was two-lobed, with one going backwards in time, and one forward. We are in the latter.

[@bjornfeuerbacher5514]

@@osmosisjones4912 Is that your own idea? Then please show your math. If not: By whom, when and where was this published?

[@DSBrekus]

1:04 There's a gluten-gluon joke in there somewhere.

[@bernardsmith1329]

Fission chips anyone?

[@Abernis]

Stephen J Gould used to be - still is, really - my go to author when I wanted to be entertained as well as learn a few things (along with Douglas Adams ;-). I have now discovered Sabine and her sarcastic, dark, teutonic brand of humor that has me in tears every time.. Good on you lass! 😊

[@BigZebraCom]

Dark Matter makes the difference between an ordinary and an excellent yorkshire pudding.

[@willsingourd2523]

I've never eaten Yorkshire pudding, but this sounds plausible...

[@ZaphodOddly]

👍💯

[@jeremywilliams5107]

Hmmm... I wonder about the Gravy effect.

[@gbcb8853]

@@jeremywilliams5107if only there was a weakly interacting massive Yorkshire pudding

[@jeremywilliams5107]

@@gbcb8853 I think a large amount of money could be usefully put into that research program

[@Divadtube]

I think it doesn't exist, not the way we have pictured it. It's not matter, not how we are thinking.

[@bencebalint1956]

Sabine, you are my daily dose of Brilliant.

[@philochristos]

If Dark Matter doesn't interact with regular matter, couldn't it be that there's a whole slew of different kinds of dark matter particles that interact with each other, but not regular matter? In that case, couldn't it also be the case that there's a whole 'nother universe occupying the same space as our universe, and it also has stars, planets, and life? They would basically be ghosts to us, and we'd be ghosts to them.

[@meierandre1313]

My thoughts exactly.

[@willsingourd2523]

EXCEPT gravitationally, as Sabine, um, stressed. Nevertheless, "Counter-antimatter" - A very interesting speculation. Interacts with neither matter nor antimatter. Another point: ANY "whole 'nother universe" = parallel or not, which has at least one (type/&-or/quantity) connection with our universe is renders both ONE Universe. "Ghost" or no ghost...

[@manuvillada5697]

There are many theories like this: A new set of particles, mini black holes, gravity coming from a parallel universe, etc.. But without evidence it is just Sci Fi.

[@Adam-zt4cn]

The problem with this hypothesis is, you need dark matter that is fairly evenly distributed. "Ghost stars" and "ghost planets" would be too dense, and too obvious to just miss. We should commonly see visible planets and stars orbiting seemingly empty patches of space, more often then not, as dark matter should (by popular estimates) be outweighing regular matter by a factor of 5. Even in our solar system, you would expect the occasional moon without a planet, or a ring system without a gas giant. For dark matter to stay evenly distributed, it needs to never slow down and clump up, so it can't have friction, and therefore no electromagnetic interaction, not even with itself.

[@andrewharrison8436]

It makes a great Science Fiction plot but this other matter would require other forces as it can't use any of the interactions used by normal matter so the whole thing is pure speculation. It becomes even less falsifiable if that's possible.

[@luudest]

1:30 The particle physics also wishes for a new collider 😂

[@WillySalami]

Maybe they're Sterile Neutrinos, I read about them once and they're exactly that in that sense: Having the "wrong" chirality, the weak force ignored them, leaving them only with gravity to interact with. While I'm no physicist, I'm curious, why shouldn't we be able to detect them in a far future? What if we detect the Graviton and, with some other technological advancements, manage to use gravity for our detections?

[@HerbertHeyduck]

I love your sarcastic jokes 😂

[@theostapel]

very light and dry - flashing by - twinkling here and there why should we care - they are a dare but will you hear - the point - no fear just a wink - and the road - is clear Fare thee well - on life's journey

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Downright cynical sometimes

[@theostapel]

@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 Exact words I would have used BUT - one has to leave - a gently sinister piece of laughter - echoing.

[@nooonanoonung6237]

3:59 99% of gamblers quit before they win big.

[@Lucien86]

The lucky ones quit before they win big. The big win fuels the addiction to keep playing, and the house always wins it all back in the end. The only way to win in reality is not to play. [WarGames ref]

[@DS-ry5dd]

Because their broke.

[@patrickday4206]

The moral don't be a quiter. Because you're only 99 percent away.

[@richardchapman1592]

@@nooonanoonung6237 do you get paid for advertising the excitements of gambling when the best sellout mathematicians are employed to make the odds against you?

[@aziouss2863]

Bro what do you mean? There 1% chance that this chest is not a mimic! That is where all the great discoveries happen!

[@Haighdr02]

Simple solution: little particles are little and big things don't care about little pieces. We see light from the early stages of the universe, therefore we should be feeling gravity from the early stages of the universe. Of course we don't see it, hence why everyone is flapping, but we feel its effects. Perhaps it can give us a clearer indication of the early stages of the universe or even what came before it. After all, if there was a big bang, there was a lot of bloody mass before it went pop. That mass would be influencing its own constituents eons later as it flies away from it. Also, if the observable universe is smaller than the real universe, there would be gravity acting on objects at the edge of our universe due to objects in That objects frame of reference and at the edge of It's own observable universe. It's being pulled away from us by something invisible to us.

[@canuckinsk]

It should be called "Dark Gravity" cause that's the only things we know. The assumption that it must be because of matter is baffling to me.

[@axle.student]

Another one :P Woo hoo! Give it another six months and they will be using "Dark Gravity" as a legit physics term :P

[@xNul]

No one is assuming. Just what most physicists think is most likely for some reason. There is another camp of physicists that believes it's most likely the equations are wrong

[@RipleySawzen]

Matter is that which has mass, and thus gravity.

[@axle.student]

@@RipleySawzen Some branches/theories of physics don't directly associate mass or gravity with matter. All separate particles to them.

[@yetanotherstronk]

If every physical effect we have ever observed or described has been caused by either matter or energy (these being ultimately the same thing), then I guess we have no basis on which to theorise gravity without mass or energy. I don't know if you could achieve the necessary effect with a lot of energy rather than mass, but energy in big clusters in the centre of galaxies seems unlikely to be dark. Disclaimer: not a physicist.

[@X3MgamePlays]

This whole situation might be a "looking inside the box". While it perhaps should be a "looking outside the box".

[@GeorgeSmiley77]

I'd say that Theoretical Physics IS looking outside the box. That's what they do. Everything inside the box has already been written down and published as a paper. Whatever is left is outside that box of papers.

[@kricketflyd111]

As above so below means the information is locked up underground.

[@chuckschillingvideos]

Or, perhaps we should stop inventing boxes that did not previously exist.

[@kricketflyd111]

@@GeorgeSmiley77 Maybe there should be a prize like immortality?

[@Johnny_Appleweed]

OMG, no one has ever thought like you before, and this is going to change everything! :-P I love how people assume all scientists are rigid thinkers. Some are, but generally not theoretical physicists. Those people are the most outside the box thinkers you'll ever meet. They can take just about any insane, fictional ideas, and propose a quasi-logical explanation for how that could actually be real. It's easy to come up with irrational ideas, but it's a whole other level of thinking to make something impossible seem possible. Can you imagine the theoretician who proposed sub-atomic particles? Germ theory? Heck, they laughed a guy out of his whole career when black holes were first proposed. Most of us aren't risking anything when spout a crazy hypothesis. These people lose their livelihood and go literally nuthouse bonkers to risk proposing ideas in the learned communities that come from outside the box. They've done it for hundreds of years, with many casualties along the way. Look up Gotlieb Frege. And that's why we have things like Quantum mechanics and elusive particle-waves that didn't used to be considered plausible, instead of hard, Newtonian particle mechanics, or some even more ancient emotions of the spheres and mysteries of the ether.

[@Ray25689]

4:20 I think at least this answer can be found easily: Economics. You can constantly make predictions that tell you the opposite of what's happening, but still be considered a great economist. Heck, at least physicians try to produce data, while one can become a world famous economist by just analyzing the wealth distribution properly

[@scene2much]

Kurt Goedel warned us about this! As the New Englander said to the city slicker asking for directions" you can't get there from here ".

[@mconnah1]

That joke arises everywhere… we have the same Irish joke…

[@caleballen4721]

Are you talking about the Gödel metric?

[@davidrennie8197]

The yokel who says that or "I wouldn't start from here" is always correct though

[@evad7933]

Goedel is overrated.

[@naromsky]

Dark matter is the last-second hack by The Architect.

[@rogerphelps9939]

It is essential for a universe as we know it.

[@sapphireshore]

​@rogerphelps9939 maybe a lot of "as we know it" is wrong.

[@bikebudha01]

What is dark matter: Think of a bottle-rocket shooting up and exploding in the air. We tend to view this as the firecracker blowing up "in nothing". (Because we can't see the air...) Now think of that same bottle-rocket being shot under water (yes, this can be done). We now view the firecracker as blowing up "in something". That's what dark matter is. When the big bang blew, it wasn't in a void. It was in some form of a "medium". The "extra" mass we can't see is remnants of the medium (a medium of stuff made 'before' our universe, and thus doesn't quite work like regular matter).

[@robhp1]

Forget to take the dog out and you’ll detect plenty of Dark Matter 💀

[@lukesellars7178]

Yep

[@Don.Challenger]

Hmm, Sabine my nightmare is that you are rushing Halloween because dark matter impels you to it, next you will start playing Christmas carols in October so you can open your gifts in November. (At least this episode gave me the idea for my costume, I'll dress as a WIMP.)

[@sarg3146]

I think the "missing mass" is not not missing. It derives from a misinterpretation of the redshift. When I was an astronomy grad student at U. of Ariz. in the 1970's my advisor, William Tifft, began publishing observations of galaxies showing that galaxy red shifts were quantized - not simply kinematic. He went on for decades making observations of different kinds of objects, optical and radio, showing quantization. Ultimately I expect this to be settled either by a different interpretation of redshift or a different theory of gravitation. Dark matter and dark energy are modern epicycles.

[@ardalla535]

Interesting

[@leonardodavinci303]

But errors in redshift don't explain the rotational data.

[@paroxysm6437]

@@leonardodavinci303 or the cosmic background radiation/gravitational lensing

[@tmst2199]

WIMP: Term describing most Internet comment sections

[@dellseasandoval8187]

I love your personality & how strong you are generally speaking. I also really love your intelligence. Your family & friends are fortunate people to have you in their lives. You would be fun in real life social engagements. You are always captivating when you speak with colleagues on social media channels like KZbin.

[@altrag]

The problem with the "boring" answers isn't that they're boring, it's that they don't do anything for us. The "it's too hard so why bother" answer doesn't grant us any predictive power and doesn't lead us to any deeper theories. It's just giving up on science entirely. I know there's a lot of people who want us to give up on science and if you're one of them then that's fine, but at least just say that instead of constantly insulting those who still have optimism while providing no better ideas of your own.

[@themoretruthfultruth]

Anytime science creates something with no proof other than to make the equations work it is on shaky ground and laymen rightly don't trust the science. They know that in a decade or so the scientists will change their minds, again.

[@FatFilipinoUK]

Nobody's giving up on science. We're not giving up on the science that gave us modern technology & medicine. We are just closer to acknowledging there is a limit to human understanding about dark matter. Decades of research by extremely smart and motivated people assisted by billions of dollars worth of modern, cutting-edge equipment has yeilded nothing conclusive. It should be humbling that the world's brightest phycisists have not solved the dark matter problem since it was first detected in the 1930's.

[@altrag]

@@FatFilipinoUK > We're not giving up on the science that gave us modern technology & medicine You mean the science of subatomic particles? You know, the science that people thought was crazy 100 years ago and hadn't even dreamed of 200 years ago? That science? Yeah, that's _exactly_ what you're wanting to give up on. > We are just closer to acknowledging there is a limit to human understanding about dark matter So where is that limit? Oh right, we don't know because the only way to figure out the limit is by _doing the experiments._ Null results are results - and are often important results. But you still got to do the experiment to get a null result. > Decades of research Is a vanishingly small amount of time. It took 400 years of incremental improvement before Einstein could put it all together and figure out how to best Newton. Guess how long it would have been if people had told Maxwell and Born and Planck and any of a thousand others to just give up because "no progress has been made in decades" - they were the ones _making_ that progress. > It should be humbling that the world's brightest phycisists have not solved the dark matter problem since it was first detected in the 1930's. Why would that be "humbling"? Nobody in all of history, no matter how smart or motivated, has been capable of solving a problem before the first person solved it. They either are the first person to solve it, or somebody else has already solved it. But they cannot solve it _before_ the first person. By definition of the word "first".

[@John-tc9gp]

Einstein was wrong. Maybe not wildly wrong, but not quite right. That's the most obvious explanation for the anomalous observations.

[@Mentaculus42]

So when one tries to merge quantum mechanics with Einsteinian gravity, do you get a superposition of a “right AND wrong” Einstein at the same time ‽

[@ericthyren1015]

Saying he’s wrong is not really an explanation though. If someone asks “what’s with these anomalous rotation of galaxies?” Saying “Einstein was wrong.” Is not an answer.

[@Mentaculus42]

@@ericthyren1015 Saying that General Relativity is INCOMPLETE and thus not universally “correct” is a safe generalization. Saying GR probably has significant issues with regard to aspects of Black Holes is probably reasonably safe. Saying that GR and Orthodox QM are significantly incompatible is an understatement (and thus how can they both be correct). Since the Universe seems to have worked it out, things must be wrong somewhere. But you want to know exactly what is wrong. To suggest that one might have an idea about that topic will immediately brand a person as a “crackpot”. So kinda a no win scenario.

[@mertc8050]

Lack of info isnt wrong im afraid lol. Cor example newtons equation of gravity arent WRONG they are incomplete, those incomplete equations are still all correct until you get closer to a high mass object which then and only the realtivity and time distortion gets significant enough to make the newton's equation wrong. What we have here is guarenteed the same thing.

[@michaelpieters1844]

Relativity theory has been overhyped since Arthur Eddington put it into the spotlight. There are many false claims like that it passes every test with flying colours or that relativity theory is required to make gps work. Lies spread by the scientific community and the media.

[@GD-L80]

Physicists very often forget that Physics is an EXPERIMENTAL science and one must follow the scientific method formulated by Galileo Galilei some four centuries ago. It seems trivial, but many pretend to forget.

[@fondueeundof3351]

I think before introducing magical concepts like dark matter and dark energy, physicists should first focus their money and efforts on combining quantum physics with general relativity. It is entirely conceivable that the resulting grand unified theory naturally explains all the phenomena that are now attributed to that dark stuff.

[@ThePowerLover]

There are many other things that signal that we went too far with too few.

[@mattropolis7857]

Sabine is so great because she keeps calling out the ugly truths behind almost certainly bunk theories like string theory and wimp. She’s the only one with the guts to give up tenure, stand up, and say the emperor has no clothes when most scientists are more interested in funding and publishing than actual truth.

[@Zroolmpf_Celmbror]

Back in the day, a fundamentally non detectable thing would relegate it to the world of fiction. Like the ether.

[@Eatbutternow]

When my work ends up wrong, I always invent undetectable new types of matter with unique properties that explain why it seems wrong instead of admitting that I made mistakes. That’s the most scientific thing to do

[@paroxysm6437]

dark matter is a placeholder name and theory to attempt to explain something that we currently cannot explain. we know something is happening, it pretends to be like matter and exhibits properties similar to it. yet the only thing it lacks is we can't visibility see it. dark matter is appropriate name. you should do more research rather than bashing people who dedicate their lives to figure things out.

[@malcolmfletcher7295]

A little observation from Goethe: 'I could never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.'

[@defteame]

I was really on the verge of trying my chances in academia, but your channel convinced me to go into industry and have a happy family life instead. Fuck this toxic environment - it's better to stay sane and fulfilled.

[@evad7933]

Congratulations on your sanity.

[@oldnordy2665]

If you can handle it for a decade or two, without children, it's not so bad. After that, it depends on economic cycles and many other influences beyond anyone's control... And if you are young enough, you can still switch or go the KZbin way or found your own start-up.

[@richardchapman1592]

Wise for you and I'm glad it seems to be working out. The challenges in industry must be just as large as those in academia. You get sold competition for it's own to sake in either I expect.

[@strangeone7198]

I think they should start looking at mega low vibrations. Like absolute zero of frequencies

[@DoppelSkumm]

02:10 "If we can't verify a hypothesis, we might never find a way to falsify it." Sabine is savage...

[@chuckschillingvideos]

Perfect! Then you can wallow in the grant money forever....just keep spitting out some unintelligible maths and you're golden.

[@surfingonmars8979]

This is actually an important notion in epistemology: if you can neither confirm nor falsify a theory, the theory is empty and meaningless.

[@throckwoddle]

@@surfingonmars8979 I still think it's epistemologically meaningful to be able to say that there are realistically possible causes, that we can model some of the effects of, that we can't confirm or deny, but that also aren't magic. "I don't know, but here are some possibilities" is a great improvement over "I don't know and have no clue" or "I don't know so it must be God or a simulation".

[@surfingonmars8979]

@@throckwoddle I think what I was trying to convey was the notion that a theory - e.g., God exists - that cannot have ANY imaginable verification process (not pro or anti), is meaningless, ultimately. To say that God Exists or God Created the Universe, sounds like a theory, but because there is no imaginable process by which one could test the hypothesis or theory, what does it really mean? Nothing.

[@Mutex30]

@@chuckschillingvideos String theory says hi!

[@msromike123]

LOL, "they have wishes." Brilliant as always! The magic wand was a great touch.

[@bananacabbage7402]

If you believe that dark matter is a particle that only acts gravitationally, you still build detectors to look for them interacting weakly. The only difference from those who believe they interact weakly is that you can declare that you were right when you find nothing.

[@iliaponomarev1624]

From what I hear, dark matter sounds awfully lot like a flaw in theory rather than actual matter that we can't find because it's dark...

[@danarrow]

I agree. There are no mysterious particles. The truth will out!

[@Bodyknock]

The issue for modified gravity theories is they rely basically on changing the strength of gravity at very long distances, but still rely on normal matter to produce their gravitational field so gravity’s effects like gravitational lensing should still be mostly symmertrical about the center of gravity of a source. But we have some observations of galactic collisions like the Bullet Cluster where when you examined the strength of gravitational lensing around the perimeter of the colliding galaxies it appears as though the effect is off the center gravity, as if their is a whole lot of undetected matter off to the side of the collision from where the galaxies are seen. If dark matter are particles that only interact with normal matter through gravity then that would imply when galaxies collide all that dark matter travels sort of independently from the normal matter and that would result in the lensing being shifted. The modified gravity theories have a much harder time explaining an asymmetric shift like that. That’s not to say that there isn’t some modified gravity type solution needed as well. It could very well be that, at extremely large distances, the strength of gravity doesn’t behave continuously like relativity predicts, for instance, but has some kind of limit where its strength becomes more susceptible to random quantum fluctuations at those distances and that in turn leads to stronger than expected gravity on that scale. But at the same time we might also need to infer the existence of particles which only interact through gravity to account for localized shifts in lensing and such, meaning some of dark matter is particles and some of the effect requires a shift in gravitational theory as well.

[@tiranor]

@@Bodyknock To add to that, apart from the direct observations of galaxies, lensing, etc, there are the observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background, and the Lambda-CDM model which is atm the most accurate we have. All alternative theory needs to explain and match those cosmological phenomenons.

[@TobiasWeg]

The Lesson I understood very late. "Dark Matter" is not a physical theory (like Special Relativity). Instead, it is a name/label for observation, which sofa are not explained. There are several hypotheses for what this label "Dark Matter" means, but none of them (Axioms, WIMPS, MOND...) is explanatory. So it is still an open question, we learn everyday more about.

[@Zionswasd]

Yes, dark matter is the name of the apparent problem/gap in physical laws we know, therefore saying "it's fake" and that "we shouldn't research it every way we possibly can/think of new ways to research it" is stupid and antiscientific.

[@dgillies5420]

Can you please use the nightmare hand in more videos - its one of my favorite things in this video especially how the fingers articulate!!!

[@angelechavarria8170]

who else yawned at 5:34?

[@benjaminbeard3736]

Yep

[@skimesss]

Haha i was Reading it while yawning xd

[@tatedarin7040]

What the fuck

[@johndoyle3694]

Funny yes!

[@theophrastus3.056]

Dark Matter Scientist: “We know it’s there, because it’s impossible our measurements are wrong. But you can’t see it, as it’s very, very dark. And mysterious.” Particle Physicist: “We’ll find it!” DMS: “No, you won’t.” PP: “Oh, come on! We already granted your observations ‘can’t be wrong’. And we agreed it’s dark, invisible and very hard to detect. You know, like a good three-card Monty game: it can’t be seen by most observers. But what’s the harm in us experts looking?” DMS: “We have a new theory: It’s not just ‘very hard’ to detect. It’s now actually impossible to detect.” PP: “What?! Like now, with the instruments we have? Or the ones we’re proposing?” DMS: “No to all of that. Absolutely impossible, now and forever. Until the end of time.” PP: “Are you serious?! So your ‘new’ theory is that you’re right, and it’s forever impossible to prove you’re wrong? So just what is dark matter?” DMS: “Well, it’s dark, impossible to detect, and very mysterious. And if you try to detect it, you’re anti-science, possibly a conspiracy theorist, and definitely a heretic.” [NOTE: Satire - IMO, Sabine is on to something.]

[@paroxysm6437]

This is a gross warped view of what was said/the current situation. We know there's something there, as evidenced by gravitational lensing of galaxies, rotational speed, and CBR. There's a ton of evidence for it, and we also know there's "missing mass". But at this current moment our technology is extremely limited. There's poor data, so usually it only rules off the models way off. Therefore most models are modified to fit the new data, and oftentimes it fits much better. Our detectors esp gravity waves are far too limited and the resolution would be poor unless we could get something multiple AU's large. But it's just dumb how so many people mock scientists for attempting to solve this mystery. And criticize them in a field in which they know nothing about.

[@theophrastus3.056]

@@paroxysm6437 It was a joke. Did you not read the part where I said Sabine was on the right track?

[@paroxysm6437]

@@theophrastus3.056 Ah apologies. It’s hard to tell sometimes. There’s a lot of people who peddle the whole anti establishment nonsense.

[@theophrastus3.056]

@@paroxysm6437 No worries. I find the topic fascinating. And I’m glad there’s smart people exploring the possibilities. And I appreciate Sabine’s attempt to explain it to the rest of us.

[@vladtheimpaler7375]

Maybe this is an obvious point, but isn’t the fact that we don’t have an explanation for the quantum nature of gravity to complete our unified theory and that there’s an unexplained amount of gravity in the universe suggest that maybe these two problems are related?

[@katambrose5568]

For decades my field has been researching the same topic over and over with the same disappointing results. What am I? A dietitian, and I’m referring to weight loss diets. The funding for these studies keep coming in, though.

[@Ningishzidd4]

From companies that have an agenda (sugar) or people with an ideology (vegans/plantbased) most likely?

[@djan0889]

My researcher friend also disappoints of the field. I ask sometimes what to eat and she says just eat normal you are healthy. -_- But i want holy grail of diet that is vegan to live 100 years and without cancer or other diseases. ; _ ;

[@denysvlasenko1865]

You do it all wrong. Take $1000 loan from a person who wants to lose weight, on the condition you return the money ONLY if the person does in fact lose weight (by specified number of kg, by a specified date). I predict this will work wonders.

[@blinkingmanchannel]

If people got published for finding ways to render CO2 "...thermodynamically inert" then we would have a lot more time for stupid human stuff ... looking for particles without interactions. (We used to play that game in my dorm room, with whiskey shots.) Don't smart people control the grant committees, ultimately? Why is this hard???

[@orokusaki1243]

Administrators control it, the last I knew. Don't need to be smart to be an administrator.

[@tadc]

Sabine, would you care to check the publication I've just posted? Your critique would be much appreciated. Well, the link to the paper has disappeared I'm referring to above has vanished from comments. Not sure why because it is a proper research paper published in one of the Springer journals. Not sure what to do in this situation. The author's name is Marek Czachor. He is a professor of physics at Gdańsk University of Technology.

[@remiandre5475]

Dear Ms. Hossenfelder, There are many models in which the existence of dark matter is not required. It's a pity you didn't mention astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Petit's Janus model. This gentleman is certainly a nuisance, but his theory has solid foundations and seems to be confirmed by a whole series of observations made by the JWST. Observations that don't seem to be simply explainable by the Standard Model. You, on the other hand, are a competent astrophysicist who unfortunately turned your back on this scientist's proposal to work with you, which is a pity because your talent would undoubtedly enable us to further improve this very interesting model.

[@williamschlosser]

Isn't Janus based on negative mass? There's only one self-contained physical theory of the universe, and that's Plasma Cosmology.

[@remiandre5475]

@@williamschlosser If you are interest in Janus model's theory you should read this : www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com/JPP/telechargeables/English/janus-model-livre-Zejli/Janus_Cosmological_Model_Hicham_Zejli.pdf

[@vadymkvasha4556]

It's not dark, it's transparent)

[@MWodenberg]

In English, 'dark' is often used to mean 'unknown'. Ex: 'dark side of the moon', 'dark ages', 'dark ops', 'dark matter'.

[@Techmagus76]

it's not light so must be heavy. Language can be so incomplete and misleading.

[@ianstopher9111]

Theories of the dark sector (or sectors, there might be several) often have an associated dark photon.

[@petercofrancesco9812]

"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."