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A comment on The first nuclear clock will test if fundamental constants change. Parent comment

Re:The first nuclear clock will test if fundamental constant... by cthalupa on Thursday September 05, 2024 @03:56AM (#41454543)
Many, many, many scientists have asked this question. Many have made careers out of arguing the case.

But, the overwhelming majority of scientists that start out asking those questions ultimately land on the mainstream theories around dark matter and dark energy being our best, most consistent, and broadest ranging answers.

If someone were to come to them with a better theory that could explain more completely the sum total of these observations they would almost certainly be open minded about it.

So... is there really dark matter and dark energy? Probably. We've got a whole lot of evidence that isn't explained better by any alternatives. But I doubt any of these scientists would say it's totally impossible.

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Re:The first nuclear clock will test if fundamental constant... by gitaarik on Thursday September 05, 2024 @04:20AM (#41454650)
Yes of course, it's the best theory we currently have. Also Newton's gravitational theory was the best explanation until someone came with a paradigm shift that explained the observations better. And we seem to be quite stuck with the current theories, so I suspect we might need another paradigm shift.
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Re:The first nuclear clock will test if fundamental constant... by zehaeva on Thursday September 05, 2024 @11:18AM (#41457441)
I'm not sure the SR is really that large of a paradigm shift.

All Einstein did, I know that conceptually this was a large leap and just saying "all he did" is doing him a severe disservice for his contributions, is note that the mass of an object is dependent upon the speed of the object. Such that for velocities that are not an appreciable fraction of c we can use Newton's laws of gravitation perfectly well.

TLDR; Einstein did not replace Newton, he tweaked him.

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Re:The first nuclear clock will test if fundamental constant... by foxyv on Thursday September 05, 2024 @06:19PM (#41460864)
Newton's gravitation is still pretty relevant today. Only in special circumstances is relativity necessary. I wonder if Dark Matter and Dark Energy will be just as relevant in the future?
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