Hmmmm

From "Clarke's Three Laws" in Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

<<Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.>>

I was thinking of the third one when I searched for a better-than-memory wording and found the above. Why I think it is relevant is that when those who are educated to greater depth than ourselves (in some area) it becomes indistinguishable from magic and/or twaddle because we do not understand - and I for one - am quite scepticle of explanations and declarations that I don't understand.

I think its quite human to be scepticle. If we were not then we become submissive to, rather than being enlightened by, the specialists of this world.

Or - If I can quote a saying attributed to Hypatia of Alexandria:
<<It is better to think - and be wrong - than not think at all>>. (1)

I buy dark matter - I see the evidence - gravitational lensing and the abnormal rotation rates at the periphery of galaxies. Both phenomena being by something with mass but that something is - in itself - invisible (apears to have no electromagnetic interaction). Dark isn't a bad adjective to apply to this matter. That is "dark matter" is as good a name as any until we can say exactly what it is in addition to being mass-bearing matter.

Dark energy - in my oppinion - is a very imaginative description for something that we know very little at all about. Its an apparent acceleration of the expansion rate of the Universe for which I don't think we have a clue.

Mark C.

(1) There is a lot of myth on Hypatia and difficult to distinguish historical fact from that myth.

Or - If I can quote a saying attributed to Hypatia of Alexandria:
<<It is better to think - and be wrong - than not think at all>>.

OR some others may have read

'Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt'

and said nothing to challenge a bogus theory.

The great pull of the dark matter/energy thing is that it helps to balance the standard model of the universe. The effects that it has been used to explain could also be a big dam clue that the standard model is wrong and that we are missing a major factor. We also have the fact that gravity remains outside the quantum theory. Lateral thinking and a disregard for current dogma may get us to a point where dark unknowns become obselete.