Dark Energy and Empirical Science III
... But -- a computer programmer, who believes the sun has a solid iron surface, is fantasizing that all these professionals are wrong and he has a better understanding because he does not like the name,
"dark energy."
And that's the really pathetic truth. No mention of physics anywhere, no reference as to
why any specific model of dark energy must be wrong. I did present him with yet another opportunity to say something intelligent ...
... Physics recognizes the existence of 4 and only 4 fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force (with the caveat that general relativity does not recognize gravity as a genuine force, treating it as geometry). So which of these 4 is dark energy? It can't be either the weak or strong force, they are extremely short range forces that show up only over nuclear distances, roughly 10-15 meters. It can't be gravity as we know it because gravity is attractive not repulsive. And it can't be classical electromagnetism, as illustrated in my posts above (electromagnetic fields are not at all "dark" in any sense). At once we see that all of the known forces are ruled out by observation. ... If Mozina thinks that dark energy is in fact one of the 4 known forces, then let him say which one, and explain why anybody should believe him. Otherwise, it's just one more in a long line of failures for Mozina and his pseudoscience.
But in responding to me,
Mozina completely ignored my comments about the 4 known forces or about
observation. Why might that be? Like I said before, even though we may not know what dark energy
is, we can know (and do know) what it
is not, and we know this through the time honored scientific process known as
observation. We
observe the universe, see how it behaves (and in great detail I might add), and use those observations to eliminate things that cannot result in the
observed behavior. The result of this process is that no combination of the known laws of physics plus the 4 known fundamental forces will result in the observed behavior of the universe. So, either we need a new law of physics, or we need a new fundamental force, or we need to identify where we have made a mistake in assessing their combined affect on the universe.
Now,
Mozina has not simply maintained that no new fundamental force, or new law of physics is required. Rather, he has maintained that to even suspect or suggest either of these is unscientific and should never be done (hence the constant reference to figments of the imagination). So clearly he does think that one of the 4 fundamental forces, in combination with the known laws of physics, will explain dark energy. Will he explicitly tell us which force he thinks it is? No, but he has suggested both electromagnetism and gravity in the past. Will he tell us how the laws of physics allow this? No, but he has dropped an interesting hint ...
... Worse yet, you don't even know if it actually related to 'energy" (inside this universe) or that it's 'dark'! There is no empirical link to that observation and your trumped up term.
Here we have yet another (
false) lament that we have "no empirical link", but the lament is shoved up against the explicit statement that we should consider that the accelerated expansion of the universe has nothing to do with energy, and may be caused by sources outside the universe! Considering
Mozina's significant devotion to what he (
wrongly) thinks is "empirical", and his significant devotion to "controlled laboratory experiments", I think it quite ironic that he thinks we should look outside the very universe itself for the cause of the accelerated expansion. Perhaps he will now cite for us the controlled laboratory experiment in which he (or someone else) has detected another universe. Or perhaps he can cite an experiment in which things expand, but no energy is involved. They should be quite interesting experiments.
I have provided undeniable empirical evidence for the existence of dark energy (see
Empirical Evidence for Dark Energy) in the form of 8 published papers. Did
Mozina read any of them? If he did, there is certainly no empirical evidence for it. Has he responded to any of the assertions, claims, scientific arguments, or observations reported in any these papers? No, he has not. So, has he provided us with
any empirical evidence to support whatever vagueness he is actually claiming? No, he has not.
So there we are, back to the truth outlined above by the
Perpetual Student.
Mozina has nothing left to do except to assert that the choice of words, "dark energy", is by itself a fact sufficient to prove that all of modern cosmology is completely wrong. This is no longer a productive or intelligent conversation (if it ever was).
): lets call the cause something shorter that reflects its properties - we see no light from it, the most likely theories about the cause have it as an energy.