What I Learned From Last Night's Horizon
Mar. 10th, 2010 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThe Standard model of the universe is brilliant. It explains everything. Only it isn't and doesn't- because it only works if we factor in a couple of unknown unknowns (thank you, Rummy). The first unknown unknown is dark matter- which supposedly makes up most of the mass of the universe and is invisible and undetectable- and the second is dark energy- which allegedly fills the vaccuum of space- and is similarly invisible and undetectable. Naming these unknown unknowns creates the illusion that we know what we're talking about- when we don't.
And now we've detected something we've decided to call dark flow. A whole bunch of galaxies is moving, in a determined manner and faster than the standard model allows, towards a mysterious vanishing point in the sky. This could be evidence of the gravitational pull of universes beyond our own or....well.... cosmologists are still at a loss. The standard model is a lovely thing- Big Bang, inflation, formation of stars and galaxies, slowing down of the outward expansion of the universe- except that the more data we assemble the more likely it seems that it could be completely and absolutely wrong.
And now we've detected something we've decided to call dark flow. A whole bunch of galaxies is moving, in a determined manner and faster than the standard model allows, towards a mysterious vanishing point in the sky. This could be evidence of the gravitational pull of universes beyond our own or....well.... cosmologists are still at a loss. The standard model is a lovely thing- Big Bang, inflation, formation of stars and galaxies, slowing down of the outward expansion of the universe- except that the more data we assemble the more likely it seems that it could be completely and absolutely wrong.
