News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 7... by jeffdavis on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:57AM (#21406086)
Assuming we find dark matter, do you think it will represent some departure from our current understanding of gravity and how it relates to mass? Or do you think it will just be some boring dust clouds?
Re:Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 7... by ISL on Thursday October 31, 2019 @02:15AM (#21406146)
We have already tested the equivalence principle toward dark matter [1]. It appears to fall like everything else, at the 1% or better level.

It is extremely difficult for modifications of gravity to simultaneously fit the cosmic microwave background, big-bang nucleosynthesis, galactic rotation curves, and the Bullet Cluster. The safe bet these days is on some sort of non-baryonic dark particle (which is why so many people are looking for them). Most other loopholes are closed or in the process of being closed.

The coming decade or two should have something significant to say about dark matter. We will either discover its nature or severely constrain its properties through a plethora of varied experiments and searches.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.2442.pdf

Re:Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 7... by Zenst on Thursday October 31, 2019 @07:50AM (#21407681)
From my understanding `dark matter` is an explanation for what we expected and what we see regarding the mass of the universe?

It's a bit like exploding an apple and measuring all the bits that fly of and missing some bits. Whilst we do not know what the apple looked like initially, we are from our measurements, trying to reconstruct that apple.

How convinced are we that their is dark matter and not a case of how we have measured things so far. Hence, differences in results based upon how we measure are evident, whilst many are close to the same, they just don't exactly match up - hence - dark matter theory.

How likely is it that dark matter as we know it - does exist?

Re:Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 7... by Brotkrumen on Thursday October 31, 2019 @03:42AM (#21406479)
this is all fine and dandy, but when do you think will we have anti-grav drives?
Re:Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 7... by ISL on Thursday October 31, 2019 @03:58AM (#21406549)
Don't bet more than you can afford to lose.
Re:Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 7... by karma_fountain on Thursday October 31, 2019 @07:16AM (#21407520)
Make me a hover board, get to work!
Re:Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 7... by bluGill on Thursday October 31, 2019 @08:59AM (#21408205)
He is working on it. Give him more money and he will hire more assistants, and in turn make progress faster.

Of course you are risking that he eventually proves your hover board is impossible.

Re:Military Has Been Researching "Anti-Gravity" For Nearly 7... by poelzi on Thursday October 31, 2019 @11:36AM (#21409918)
They will find dark-matter when they unify GR and QM, never :)