ThinkBeat an hour ago

95% of the Universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy. These are words astronomers have come up with to give a name to the mysterious, invisible side of the Universe

whycome 12 hours ago

Caloric. Dark matter. Cosmological constant.

We like placeholders for the unknown.

  • killerstorm 11 hours ago

    Isn't that how equations get solved?

    Pretty much anything known entered through such placeholder, it's just that equations could be connected more easily.

    It's not like Higgs field is something you can directly observe

    • Keyframe 9 hours ago

      Right, but you can push unknowns into tmp vars only so much before you have to introduce constraints, otherwise it's all downright undetermined. You have to inject a structure into the placeholder soup or you're just pushing ambiguity around with no real net gain.. which is also fun to play around, question is will you get a paper out of it or even paid if you play like that to no end.

    • jstanley 11 hours ago

      Maybe, (I don't know), but it's easy to accidentally come up with a theory of "mysterious stuff" that appears to explain something, but neither constrains your expectation nor provides predictions.

      Phlogiston is the classic example. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RgkqLqkg8vLhsYpfh/fake-causa...

      • mr_toad 6 hours ago

        The Phlogiston theory made one crucial prediction - that the speed of light would vary depending on the observer’s movement through the ether. That prediction turned out to be famously wrong.

      • FrustratedMonky 8 hours ago

        Its a process.

        You find some un-identified variables.

        Form some hypothesis, try to narrow it down.

        Sometimes it is a discovery, new particle, and sometimes it is nothing.

        But that is how science works.

        At some point in time, everything was an unknown, and people had to work with unknowns.

        This whole movement from the 'right' that all science has to know the answers ahead of time in order to justify spending money, is hindering progress. How can you know the results are worthwhile, in order to justify funding, before doing the research to know the results?

[removed] 8 hours ago
[deleted]