Re:Is dark matter made of primordial black holes?
by contoraria on Wednesday April 25, 2018 @12:46AM
(#16918689)
It's hard to abandon the old idea, when the new idea, I mean, it's there, everywhere and nowhere at the same time, if you don't look, isn't particularly convincing, and the retort that it doesn't need to be convincing if you (read: I) just aren't smart enough, because it's counterintuitive, then I have a counterintuitive disregard for your cleverness.
I have to concede, though, that "empty" is not a particularly meaningful physical concept, quite the opposite. Disregarding the Aether theory, only to replace it with fields of potentials, that is kind of running in circles.
A model is fundamentally wrong. That's what it means to have a model. At that "clouds" is no more helpful then "empty". The fact of the matter is that no one has ever seen these things, no nucleus, no electrons, as far as I know.
Yet, you haven't pointed out what was actually wrong with "Those are simply the electron orbitals which describe the probability of finding the respective election at a given point".
Edit: Perhaps you intended to imply that this description is overly idealized (not to say simple).
At this point, arguing about "are atoms mostly empty space" becomes a futile semantic argument. The model you picked in order to defend this statement is indeed useful in some limits, but it has been proven wrong. Imagining electrons as clouds has proven to be much closer to reality.