On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net> wrote: " What is "dark energy" other than a postulated or conjecture entity that > is part of an attempted explanation of observations of how light from > supernovae appeared to be streached as if the supernovae are accelerating > away from us >
Dark Energy is not a explanation, "Dark Energy" is just a label for a astonishing phenomena that was discovered experimentally and that nobody even claims to understand. We have to call it something and we could have called it "unknown energy" or "X" or "?" but for one reason or another the moniker chosen was "Dark Energy". The "Dark" in the term does not mean black but rather invisible or mysterious or hard to find, but who cares what you call it, a explanation for it is needed and we don't have one. Unlike religion when scientists don't understand something they admit it. "The same critisism applies to scalar fields and dark matter. Until we > actually find them experimentally [...]" > I don't know what on Earth you're talking about, telescopes are every bit as legitimate scientific instruments as particle accelerators! Both Dark Matter and Dark Energy HAVE been discovered experimentally, the problem is that neither has been discovered theoretically, the most recent attempt to do so for Dark Energy produced a figure that was off by a factor of 10^120, that's a one followed by 120 zeros; it's been called the greatest discrepancy between theory and observation in the entire history of science and I certainly can't think of a larger one. As for Dark Matter, it's the third greatest mystery in Physics, beaten only by Dark Energy and why there is something rather than nothing. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
