Re:Dark Matter Doesn't Exist
by Georgelemental on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @02:38PM
(#32416578)
Epicycles had low predictive power and was needlessly complicated compared to later theories, but it wasn't "nonsense"; the predictions the theory made about the relative positions of the Earth and planets were pretty accurate.
Re:Dark Matter Doesn't Exist
by SAI_Peregrinus on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @04:54PM
(#32418308)
And thanks to our knowledge of Fourier Series we could come up with an even more accurate epicyclic model today! It's only when you try to explain tides or Lagrange points that a geocentric epicyclic model falls apart.
Where we run into trouble is by assigning too much credence (or too little skepticism) for that which has not been proven yet. This can be counter-productive as it may stifle research into other areas (in this case gravity). When we take the "best current theory" and deride skeptics of it to the point that it discourages other areas of investigation, that's a bug, not a feature.
Our current understanding of gravity is woefully inadequate, as shown by our inability to reproducibly measure the gravitational constant as well as we should be able to with current technology. The flyby anomaly is another example where DM does not help. I hope that the current popularity of DM does not stifle research into gravity.