Re: I don't object to changing my mind, but can take more convincing than I really should. - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 19/05/2011 04:34:14 AM
Ten percent seems to me a rather large variance. The difference between Mercurys predicted and actual orbit that provided experimental proof of Relativity was smaller than that. That's a big improvement over a hundred orders of magnitude worth of variance, but not airtight, and a variance that large to begin with doesn't inspire confidence. Even if that great a correction is valid on that basis though it (and the vague but exotic nature of dark energy in general) is more than just a trivial fine tuning, it's a fundamental revision. Again, if the best evidence warrants that, well and good, but if that's the case there's no reason not to call what it is and cite the evidence as justification.
These are, as stated, first results. The fact is that they match up fairly well with a basic principle of the theory of general relativity. (The cosmological constant was included in the original presentation of the theory by Einstein, but he gave it a different value based on an incorrect assumption that the universe was static.) This is a good indicator about the nature of dark energy, though it is not as conclusive as the evidence for exotic dark matter. Again, though, dark energy is a much newer problem than dark matter.
Fair enough; I'm not demanding all the answers immediately, I just don't want to ask the wrong questions indefinitely because we expect a given answer. When you cite a preliminary measurement as evidence isn't it reasonable to note that it's significantly different from the predicted one?
I'm not so sure. I asserted my confidence in an explanation through familiar matter rather than exotic, and referenced as an example of why the multitudinous particles in the zoo regarded as fundamental until they grew to a number that made that contention absurd and led to the discovery of quarks. That the men who made that discovery are still alive indicates persistent errors remain quite possible; it also shows they'll ultimately be corrected, but is definitely a recent caution against overconfidence in current models. You've largely convinced me that normal dark matter isn't viable, and that does leave exotic dark matter as the best available explanation by default; it does NOT make it the CORRECT explanation by default, nor do two nebulae prove it so. You seem to agree in principle that it could be disproven and/or a better alternative found, and ultimately that's all I'm asking; I was fairly confident normal dark matter was sufficient, but don't mind being wrong. Scientific laymen need as much convincing as any other kind that the catechism isn't just smoke and mirrors though, or the Higgs bosons nickname may prove ironic. 
But the particles in the particle zoo were new discoveries; it's just that their nature wasn't understood right away. I don't see how that supports your argument at all.
Mainly in the fact that their nature was actively MISunderstood to be that of fundamental particles. It was only after they continued to multiply at an alarming rate that very capable physicists had the common sense and temerity to suggest that if there were THAT many of them maybe they weren't fundamental particles at all, but composites of more fundamental ones. Had no one every questioned the canon we'd still have dozens of "fundamental" particles and a much more impoverished (and not understood right away) grasp of physics.
Galactic clusters are not nebulae. The former are orders and orders of magnitude larger than the latter.
Right, sorry; I DID know we were talking about galaxies and not nebulae, the super imposed images in the article just reminded me of the latter.
The ever-obnoxious "God particle" nickname is the fault of the publishers. The author of the novel, Leon Lederman, wanted to call it the goddamn particle, because it's such a pain in the ass to find.
Particularly if it's "The God Particle Who Wasn't There".
Understand, I think it IS there, I just don't want to bet the house on it.The key word being "traditional"; Wikipedia still claims GUTs to be an intermediate step to a ToE, which indicates more than a few physicists are still pursuing them. I get the impression of the field as a solid monolith because of phrases like "the Standard Model". In many ways it's a good thing, because theories usually aren't widely accepted without a significant amount of reproducable experimental observation (I say, "usually" because, again admitting I'm not well versed on the subject, speciation seems difficult to reproduce in a lab, even if I do happen to believe it's happened countless times). It does, however, lend itself to group think, and in areas (of which this is one) where reproducable experimental evidence will be hard to obtain even if the theory is valid, acceptance can get ahead of the evidence as people get impatient for the latter. Cruising through the Wikipedia articles on quarks again I noticed that long before the charm was actually FOUND the top and bottom quarks were theorized based on the theory that predicted it. If you're hard at work on a new model, knowing that someone else could announce it tomorrow, how long will you wait for the theory on which it depends to be proven before bulling ahead with yours? In the referenced case (which occurred about the time I was born, not in the days of Galileo), apparently not long.
Yes, some sort of GUT will be necessary for a theory of everything, but that doesn't mean it will be a traditional GUT (the ones which predict proton decay).
Those increasingly seem to be ruled out entirely. I really don't have a problem with throwing out a theory contradicted by the evidence, which seems to be the case for MACHOs as well, but by that same token I'm leery of the impression I'm getting that refuting MACHO and MOND theories proves exotic dark matter by default. That amounts to saying, "Once we've conclusively demonstrated x isn't 2 or 3, it MUST be 4". Um, not really. Even if we know it must lie between 2 and 4 it may just mean we need to stop looking at whole numbers exclusively.
There are plenty of people who look for "beyond the Standard Model" physics. That's one of the major purposes of the LHC. So, basically, once again you have a bad impression about science due to a lack of in-depth research. Forming opinions based on the presentations of news media, where stories are written and edited by people with largely no scientific education and whose motivation is to sell copies rather than to be accurate, is not productive.
Alright, but I don't have a problem with the Standard Model, per se, just the notion that anything is set in stone. If that's mostly my impression, my mistake, I just want to be sure that we're testing theories rather than trying to prove them.
Speciation has been observed numerous times. See, e.g., http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html.
I'll dig through it later; I don't have a dog in that fight, but I'm more interested in stuff like "Speciations in Plant Species not Involving Hybridization or Polyploidy" than cases that are solely hybridization or polyploidy, and the latter seem multitudinous. A mule is not a new species, after all, or we wouldn't have been doing experiments to observe speciation.
I don't understand your point about the bottom and top quarks. Somebody made a prediction and turned out to be right. Other people made predictions and turned out to be wrong. So what? What misimpression about science are you trying to support by contorting this incredibly basic situation?
My point was that before any experimental evidence of the charm (beyond the anomaly that led to its postulation as an explanation) people were already postulating additional quarks based on it eventually being found. That all three eventually were found doesn't vindicate that approach; it amounts to extrapolating a cosmological theory that requires dark energy to exist: You're making a fairly weighty assumption your PREMISE.
If I overstated my skepticism, my apologies, but it's easier to deal with overstated skepticism than understated, because where the former is vulnerable to facts the latter selectively seeks favorable ones.
Or you could just state things more exactly, instead of creating this overstated/understated false dichotomy.
Well, I'm all for precision; I'll try to work on that.