Oh goodie, another email from a loon who thinks they've got a "better" explanation for dark matter...
This one appears to be (for as usual it is badly written) something about the speed of light being massively slower in intergalactic space because of Bose-Einstein condensates. Inside our galaxy, everything's normal, but outside (because of the lower temperature) light travels a million times more slowly.
This, claims the author, will solve the "problem" of Andromeda being more massive than the Milky Way (it's not a problem, it's a frickin' observation !), make Hubble's Law invalid, etc.
"Let’s now ask the question “Which of these two alternative deductions has more merit?” Firstly, “Is deducing that Dark Energy and Dark Matter are solely responsible for huge amounts of apparently missing universe?”, or secondly, “Is deducing that the speed of light is not an absolute universe-wide and, as a result, the universe is smaller and less heavy."
What kind of mind thinks it's somehow less radical to slow down the speed of light by a factor of a million instead of invoking dark matter ? All without mentioning rotation curves or gravitational lensing...
"I wrote an article which I have been developing and refining over the years."
Oh God, I hope not.
"I now feel it needs peer review."
No, it needs to burned and the ashes scattered to the four winds.
Aaargh.
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Of course you can prove a negative. In one sense this can be the easiest thing in the world : your theory predicts something which doesn...
I also have an alternative theory. To demonstrate, I will use this jar of molasses, this binder clip, a small cup of baking soda, and a paper bag full of bees...
ReplyDelete(60 seconds later)
...I've made a horrible mistake.
Christopher Butler Ah, did you add the bees before or after the baking soda?
ReplyDeleteEasy mistake. And I prefer a small mole-grip to a binder clip - but I guess that depends on the size of the clip.
Christopher Butler I think I'm going to be using that quote a lot.
ReplyDeleteVariable speed of light (and other fundamental constant) theories (although not quite at this level) have been postulated by not-entirely-crackers theorists (there being no such thing as a not-at-all-crackers theorist). Arecibo (and other telescopes) have even been used to look for the signal from such variations - generally with results close to null.
ReplyDeleteNissim Kanekar has done quite a lot on this kind of thing: Kanekar et al. 2012, ApJ, 746, L16 found delta(alpha)/alpha = (1.7 +/ 1.4) x 10^6 at a lookback time of 6.7 Gyr with the GBT, while Kanekar et al. 2010, ApJ, 716, L23 found delta(alpha)/alpha = (-3.1 +/ 1.2) x 10^-6 at a lookback time of 2.9 GYr with Arecibo. These both fall below the 3 sigma limit where anyone would believe they were significantly different from zero change.