What is a Law of Nature?

I agree with your interest. I don't think science is as dogmatic as you claim. Perhaps some older scientists are, but the young whippersnappers are looking to make a name for themselves.

And all they often manage to achieve is fail to progress new theories that don't align with the current "foundational" theories of science.

Meaning that the current entrenched Materialist theories fail to get dethroned.

I'm not sure why dark matter/energy is problematical. You have to explain the lack of mass somehow. Sure, it's possible that the entire theory of gravity is broken. If so, time will tell. It takes time to sort these things out. The fact that we are impatient is not a good reason to blow off the current theories.

Dark Matter / Energy are problematic precisely because they are hypotheses without any evidence to support them.

There is only a "lack of mass" because the Big Bang theory would collapse otherwise!

It's not the theory of gravity that is broken here ~ it is the Big Bang theory!

You're doing exactly what I stated in my previous comment!

You're just being a blind adherent to the current stagnation of the sciences, unable to recognize the current situation.

I'm not sure why dark matter/energy is problematical. You have to explain the lack of mass somehow. Sure, it's possible that the entire theory of gravity is broken. If so, time will tell. It takes time to sort these things out. The fact that we are impatient is not a good reason to blow off the current theories.

I guess it seems a problem because it implies that we are able to observe only a tiny percentage of the universe. The dark matter/dark energy (which we cannot detect) is deduced to comprise most of the universe.

However, we are making our 'laws of nature' by observations of this tiny observable fraction.  That is to say, the parts which we can directly observe are considered to be the exception, rather than the rule. Isn't there something very peculiar about that?

i.e. a generalisation based on everything we know which concludes only that we know almost nothing.

And all they often manage to achieve is fail to progress new theories that don't align with the current "foundational" theories of science.

Meaning that the current entrenched Materialist theories fail to get dethroned.


Dark Matter / Energy are problematic precisely because they are hypotheses without any evidence to support them.

There is only a "lack of mass" because the Big Bang theory would collapse otherwise!

It's not the theory of gravity that is broken here ~ it is the Big Bang theory!

You're doing exactly what I stated in my previous comment!

You're just being a blind adherent to the current stagnation of the sciences, unable to recognize the current situation.

You have to come up with a better story to join our observations together. We don’t chuck away our best stories, even if we guess they may be wrong, unless and until we have a better story to replace them with. That story has to be predictive. Stories are not nature, they are only what we can say about nature. Lots of groups are working away on new stories, as they too can see the storm clouds gathering around our stories of Quantum Mechanics and Spacetime.

You have to come up with a better story to join our observations together. We don’t chuck away our best stories, even if we guess they may be wrong, unless and until we have a better story to replace them with. That story has to be predictive. Stories are not nature, they are only what we can say about nature. Lots of groups are working away on new stories, as they too can see the storm clouds gathering around our stories of Quantum Mechanics and Spacetime.

A scientific hypothesis can fail without any replacement being immediately available to replace it. It is better to discard what is wrong to clear the way for fresh research to hopefully get at the truth.

BTW Quantum Mechanics isn't affected by the DM issue (as far as I can see), but the concept of spacetime might indeed be under threat.

Remember that GR is used all over the place to deduce the existence of black holes, predict gravitational lensing, etc etc. If this theory fails on the scale of our galaxy, it doesn't say much for those predictions.

Physicists never used to think of singularities as 'objects' that could be located in the night sky - just as regions of parameter space where the theory was inadequate.

David

But why claim more than has really been proven - then we wouldn't get in these messes in the first place, and we might have some ideas for new experiments that would push science forwards.

Imagine if science had become really wedded to PV=RT, and started inventing "dark pressure" to keep the equation balanced at high pressures or low temperatures!

Einstein came up with a gravitational law that works in the solar system but appears not to work at the galactic scale. Stated like that, there is no need to science to retract anything. If, later on, someone actually discovered "dark matter", and it was then found that this did supply enough matter to make the Einstein formula work, then the qualifications on using the formula could be relaxed.

The DM concept is also unfortunate because it is arbitrary. You just pour in enough DM to balance the equation. If DM is something that you can have more or less of, then how come a lot of galaxies have structure. Stars have to orbit the centre at just the right rate to maintain that structure.

David

First of all, there is no proof in science. Second, "claim" isn't the right word. If you never discuss anything except those parts of the theories that have fantastic evidence, who's going to propose hypotheses for the unfinished parts?

It seems people just don't have the patience.

~~ Paul

You have to come up with a better story to join our observations together. We don’t chuck away our best stories, even if we guess they may be wrong, unless and until we have a better story to replace them with. That story has to be predictive. Stories are not nature, they are only what we can say about nature. Lots of groups are working away on new stories, as they too can see the storm clouds gathering around our stories of Quantum Mechanics and Spacetime.

No, you don't. Science doesn't require "better" theories or hypotheses for a current theory or hypothesis to be declared unfit.

That said, science isn't about "stories", either. That's the purview of religion, not science.

Physicists never used to think of singularities as 'objects' that could be located in the night sky - just as regions of parameter space where the theory was inadequate.

David

An alternative I saw proposed was that black holes aren't "singularities", but rather just regular physical objects, albeit with an extremely power gravitational pull. Light can't escape, but there's no actual "black hole" or "singularity", just a physical object we cannot directly observe.

Probably something sort of similar to what white dwarfs are theorized to be like ~ extraordinarily dense clumps of matter whose state is uniquely bizarre.

First of all, there is no proof in science. Second, "claim" isn't the right word. If you never discuss anything except those parts of the theories that have fantastic evidence, who's going to propose hypotheses for the unfinished parts?

It seems people just don't have the patience.

~~ Paul

Patience...? If a theory is broken, it needs to be discarded, not given more time to pad the theory out some more. Enough with the promissory notes...

The Big Bang theory is simply broken. Indeed, it should been under extreme suspicion the moment the hypotheses of Dark Matter and Dark Energy were proposed.

The theory, before DM and DE, predicted a universe nothing like it is currently, so its proponents had to fudge their numbers to make it "fit".

That alone makes the BBT completely untenable.

First of all, there is no proof in science. Second, "claim" isn't the right word. If you never discuss anything except those parts of the theories that have fantastic evidence, who's going to propose hypotheses for the unfinished parts?

It seems people just don't have the patience.

~~ Paul

The problem is that science as it is done at present grabs hold of an attractive new idea (sorry scientific theory) and runs with it. After a short period of time, it is practically impossible to oust the idea - it just gets ever more encrusted in fudges to keep it alive. A huge reason for this is that more and more people have written papers using the idea/scientific theory, and don't want to see their work go down in flames because it is based on a failed idea.

Just to take another example, there was once a theory that protons and neutrons are made of quarks - distinctive little objects with 1/3 or 2/3 charge. This wonderful idea unleashed the 'standard model' of high energy physics. The only problem was that nobody could find evidence for quarks, so the problem was patched by a new theory that said that quarks could never appear singly. That may be a great way to write science fiction, but it just isn't science.

The only science I believe in by now is that which has unequivocally contributed to making something tangible and useful - such as faster computer chips.

I know that GR is supposed to contribute to the calculations that run the GPS system. However, I wonder if that system contains a few parameters that pull the data into alignment and are adjusted empirically.

I don't like to see what has happened to science, but I don't want to pretend it hasn't gone astray.

David

An alternative I saw proposed was that black holes aren't "singularities", but rather just regular physical objects, albeit with an extremely power gravitational pull. Light can't escape, but there's no actual "black hole" or "singularity", just a physical object we cannot directly observe.

I suspect finding a black hole is a great thing to put on a CV. I do wonder if these things may have themselves emerged from tortured data!

David