The data for this new image of the Orion Nebula star-formation region is from multiple exposures using the HAWK-I infrared camera on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. This is the deepest view ever of this region of the nebula and reveals more very faint planetary-mass objects such as brown dwarfs than expected.
Image Credit: ESO
Is it just me, or is the image missing?
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They keep finding more and more stuff than expected. I wonder if this will force a reconsideration of the dark matter hypothesis.
I’m so old, I remember when if our observations didn’t match our theories we changed the theories, not the observations.
Dark matter and dark energy are the additions to our observations needed to preserve out theories.
Inasmuch as it allows us to make useful predictions I’m OK with it. But then epicycles allowed us to make useful predictions too.
Since we have not observed dark matter or energy, they are a change to the theory, because the theory does not match the observations we’ve made as we’ve improved the instruments.
Current gravitational theory says (among other things) that galaxies shouldn’t rotate as fast as they do given the observed amount of mass.
So instead of changing the theory to match the mass, we’ve change the mass to match the theory.
To me they appear to be the epicycles of our age.
Eh. If you have another theory, that explains what’s been observed, then you should write that paper. Theorizing that there is mass and energy that we haven’t yet been able to directly observe, because that explains what we actually have observed, is a change in theory. It’s not fudging the data the way you imply.
What do I look like? Karl Popper? The issue is that the theory doesn’t match the observation. Their response should have been to change the theory, but they didn’t; they invented an undetectable new form of matter to prop up the existing theory rather than reconsidering the theory in light of what can actually be seen.
Nobody has to come up with a new hypothesis in order to state that the current one is bunk.
The standard model is on pretty shaky ground these days. Give it another generation and I expect dark matter will be mentioned in the same sentence as phlogiston and luminiferous aether.
A nice binocular object
Can we be sure of a nebula’s sexual preferences?
It’s nebulous.