Recent content by SpaceTiger

I'm definitely playing devil's advocate here (I tend to think dark matter is proven beyond reasonable doubt at this point), but modified gravity theories have their own predictions for gravitational lensing that generally agree with observations. I don't know if they have modeled this system...

I'd say the point is largely irrelevant to the scientific process, since any of the current cosmological models could simply turn out to be local approximations. Even if the models formally project to infinity, there is no way we could distinguish between a universe that is truly infinite in...

Well, technically the observations are consistent with w=-1 and w_a=0 (i.e., a cosmological constant), but our constraints aren't that great. The latest WMAP results (7-year) measure w to be consistent with -1 at the ~15% level, but the time variation of the equation of state is still wildly...

More discussion of this result: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=619641

Well, you have to remember that I look at this from an astronomer's point of view. I would be far more interested in a time-variable dark energy since it would lead all sorts of interesting observational follow-ups and would allow us astronomers to make another exciting discovery concerning...

Rereading his posts, I think you're probably right. In that context, this question might be better posed to the General or High Energy Physics forum, since they probably have more to say about the limitations of the SM. It's still worth noting, however, that the standard model of cosmology...

One way to put it is that the SM has been extremely successful for astronomers, but a perpetual enigma for physicists. It is largely an empirical model -- that is, we have parametrized the dynamical equations that govern the expansion of the universe with time. This means that the SM predicts...

"Direct detection" of dark matter usually implies that detection and identification of particles/objects that make up the dark matter, so in that sense the article's wording is misleading. Also, I don't think the authors are making the claim that this system is useful for distinguishing dark...

Welcome, sounds like this forum is just what you had in mind. There are lots of great people here, so don't be surprised if it turns into a learning experience for you as well.

Thanks! I probably won't be around very much (my 4-month old son keeps me very busy), but I thought I'd stop by and say hello. Fiction, philosophy, and theater (in that order). The first one is my favorite -- it's about a guy that gets turned into a donkey and is dragged around from owner...

I'm not quite that dedicated about it, I'm afraid, I'm just reading translations. I thought about teaching myself classical Latin, but decided the return probably wouldn't equal the effort required. By "working my way through," I meant that I'm reading the classics forward in time, starting...

I don't remember this ever coming up in college (or even high school). If your assignments are so vague and general that you can frequently reuse old essays, you might want to consider a new college.

There are quirky statistics all over the baseball media, I don't think the "cycle" is so bad. It's extremely rare, anyway. You ask me, the "save" is the most annoying statistic in baseball. It's a very poor measure of a closer's ability and sometimes it actually does impact coaching decisions...

Been working my way through some ancient literature. Currently in the middle of: The Golden åss - Apuleius Meditations - Marcus Aurelius Chattering Courtesans - Lucian This is all written around the 2nd century AD. Needless to say, conversations with people about what I've been reading...

Thanks, D H! I don't see how this is inevitable... when Bush decided to pursue another mission to the moon, he ended up cutting the Hubble Space Telescope, the most important scientific tool to astronomy. Similar cuts would almost certainly occur in the pursuit of a Mars mission. As far as...