Friday, October 3, 2008

SPIEGEL online science news... thumbs down

Ok, I haven't exactly written much here, sue me, but from time to time certain stuff happens that awakes my attention enough to rant about it.
This time it was a SPIEGEL online news article that again unknowingly and unfortunately puts Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the same pot (as we say in German).
Dark Matter has multiple observational support, and I don't say 'support' here lightly, as for the public the word will sound to light, but as a scientist I have to state it correctly.
But to explain the strength of support more in detail: There a plenty, I think it's more then 10 now, independent (!) physical situations now in the history of the universe, where Dark Matter is just the best explanation for the observation. This includes rotational curves of galaxies, but also structure formation at all during development in the Universe, and gravitational lenses.
By the way, the last point is interesting: If you don't trust the evidence of the existence of Dark Matter for gravitational lenses, it basically means you don't trust General Relativity. That way you need a whole lot more of extra explanation to do, if you want to do without Dark Matter.

In conclusion (I know, this could be a whole lot more clearly written, and maybe I do one day), Dark Matter is safe, it's only Dark Energy that's a bit mystic still.
To come back to the post title.. it's also interesting how the SPIEGEL news science writer abuses the potential questioning of the Copernican principle, which states that we don't live in a special place in the Universe, to make it sound like one should even question that the Earth is rotating around the Sun. :(
As a friend of mine stated, he already sees the Creationists jumping up and down in joy...
man man man...
I guess I should start up writing again for raumfahrer.net, they as a student project seem to have higher standards then the professional and paid SPIEGEL writers.. a pity..
Ok, enough for this year's rant.
Enjoy your autumn everybody, or should I say, singlebody, counting the numbers of my readers.. ;)