Quote:
Originally Posted by Jerry
Sorry - this is supposed to be a discussion about ATM topics, not a discussion of an ATM topic, but I did get a little carried away.
I think everyone will concede our vision of the universe becomes distorted, whether we are looking at the micro or macro scale. My (ATM) argument is that this distortion occurs much closer to home than anyone seems to realize.
The greater point - that I lost track of, is that whenever one speculates beyond the known event horizon, the hypothesis should be considered ATM. Otherwise, only the most popular of unproven theories get any press time.
Which brings us back the the ATM thirty day turkey timer. Dark Matter has failed yet another test; a small bubble technique that should detect the weak interactions necessary for DM to form the 'tuffs and curls' it is hypothesized to exist in. In my opinion, this failure places weakly interactive dark matter in an ATM subclass: A theoretical prediction that has been tested and failed.
Gravitational waves pedictions arguably fall into the same category: In spite of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man hours and gigaseconds of computer time, no one has been able to detect them locally. The theory that predicted these events is in jeopardy.
In neither case would anyone dream of limiting discussion to thirty days, and declaring the underlying theory off-limits to discussion. But like it or not, the theories are failing. If discussion of alternative concepts should be contained, where do we go from here?
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Consdering that the ATM rules allow additional discussion upon the presentation of additional research, why is there a problem?
The 30 day rule was made to keep threads from going to hundreds of posts with no discussion. Something that several of
your threads did. There are alot of seemingly unkillable nonsense threads that disappeared cause there was no advancment to the discussion.
Your comments on DM and gravity waves also show where alot of the ATM posters go wrong. You say that DM should be ATM cause it failed a test. What you have never been able to understand that
what dark matter is is not understood well enough to be mainstream or not. If there was an experiment, and a null result was obtained, or a contradictory result was obtained, posting a link to the article is a perfectly acceptable re-opening of the discussion. You have never understood that "there is no such thing as dark matter" is a nonsensical phrase because 'dark matter' is the term used to describe the fact that we cannot see why large scale mass distributions
that we can see dont obey newtonian mechanics. DM is not something you can put in a can. When we find whatever is causing the discrepancy between what we can see and what we think should happen, it will get a real name. All we really know about it is that it is really hard to see, and it should be exerting gravity.
The gravity wave problem you mention is another problem. The most recent detectors have only very recently gone into active service, and they are barely able to see down to the minimum intensities that GR allows. If they get a null result, that is not the last nail in the gravity wave coffin. It is a nail, just not the last one.
Lastly, you are right that the scientific community would never dream of putting a 30 day limit on a discussion. This isnt the scientific community. This is a privately run forum that uses volunteers to moderate. The 30 day rule was imposed to make it so that the moderators were able to keep up as much as to close down useless discussions. That is the difference, and a needed one to keep this forum the way it is.