this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Might work for some countries, but the problem is that schools in the USA completely lack centralization: each school district is its own separate governing body. Jason was taught that Pilgrims to America were persecuted Christians seeking adventure and made treaties with Natives, while Derek was taught about socioeconomic nuances of 17th-19th Europe leading to incentivized settlements particularly attractive to hardcore religious extremists who then waged relentless war on the Native Americans.

There are no Universal Lies that everybody was taught, except for Dark Matter.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (3 children)

What's wrong with dark matter (and energy)?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There's a big debate now about whether dark matter really exists or there's a better explanation for how most of the mass of the universe seems to be unable to be perceived. Related to gravitational waves lately I believe.

Take this for what it is I'm not a scientist I just occasionally read science articles.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I think you're getting confused with dark energy. There is very little debate about dark matter--it's an observation that many many many people have made.

Dark energy is the name for whatever is causing the ~~explanation~~ expansion rate of the universe to increase. There's quite a bit of debate about whether the expansion rate even IS increasing. And the amount of increase is different according to how you try to observe it. So yeah, there's a lot of debate about whether dark energy is actually a thing, but there is very little debate on whether there's more matter than we're able to observe, something that we call dark matter but which we don't really understand. Similar names, but totally different concepts!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I thought the only observation we have of dark matter is via cosmological models.

Maybe it isn't needed to balance the books

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's an interesting idea, but it assumes that physical forces are getting WEAKER over time, and that's a pretty big assumption. It's not very parsimonious.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm not a subscriber to this particular theory, but I do think model error is a more plausible explanation than magical, undetectable mass.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The mass is definitely detectable--it's just not visible. And it's detectable in several different ways that all match, that's the key here. This is definitely an observation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Dark matter is an infinite number of free variables we can place anywhere in our universe to make our current gravitational models work. Of course they match.

Can you call it an observation if the lens you are using may be faulty?

Why is dark matter given so much precedence over model error? (Particularly because we know our current model can't do things like quantum gravity)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Can you call it an observation if the lens you are using may be faulty?

If you use many lenses you can assure yourself that they are not all faulty in the same way. This is why we can safely say that dark matter is observed fact, because we observe it in so many different ways.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

We see many datapoints gatheredbl by multiple technologies and approaches, but they all use the same cosmological model. The same lens.

Maybe lens was the wrong word. All the data gathered is interpretated using the same brain.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

That was just a bit of snarky commentary, no need to read into it.

Dark matter fits what we observe the best out of all of our models, but we've never observed it despite the many massive detection chambers we've built or probes we've sent out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It’s long been stated by astronomers it’s an ad hoc theory until they figure out what’s going on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Dark energy yes. But lots of cosmologists seem convinced dark matter is proven fact. Why are they so certain?