Silly Science By William Lama, Ph.D.
Silly Science
By William Lama, Ph.D.
Happy Merry-Go-Round Day! | From the Grapevine
Despite the continued existence of fanciful merry-go-rounds, we do live in a modern age. Of course, every generation can lay claim to modernity. The great historian Paul Johnson wrote a book called Modern Times with the subtitle: from the Twenties to the Eighties, that is 1920 to 1980. But our modern age seems special with, for example, the explosion of genders -- following the discovery that male and female are insufficient -- or the quaint belief that a little girl from Sweden can predict the temperature of the Earth.
Modern science has also proven to be interesting, and popular. From “The Big Bang Theory” (a TV sitcom) to “The Theory of Everything” (a tragic love story), science has become hip. Indeed, one can imagine a millennial at a cocktail party exclaiming: “I freaking love science!” Here “science” should be in quotes since the old-timers among us would not recognize what today passes for science. Indeed, what many moderns love is scientism, a secular replacement for religion, with its scientist-priests surrounded by a cult of personality.
“My great fear,” Neil deGrasse Tyson told MSNBC, “is that we’ve in fact been visited by intelligent aliens but they chose not to make contact on the conclusion that there’s no sign of intelligent life on Earth.” Good one! As an evangelist for science, Tyson is “the fetish and totem of the extraordinarily puffed-up nerd culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States.” Smarter than Thou | National Review
Physicist John Baez defined a scale, the “crackpot index,” that rates scientific theories and theoretical scientists. As in golf a high score is bad. For example, the “crackpot index” gives 5 points for a thought experiment that contradicts the results of an actual experiment; 10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a paradigm shift; 20 points for suggesting that Einstein was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate; 30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization; and 40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. Lost in Beauty By William Lama Ph.D. — Palos Verdes Pulse
Mass Extinctions and Dark Matter
Which brings us to the subject of this piece. It seems that mass extinctions, like the one that killed the dinosaurs about 70 million years ago, happen periodically.
Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley
The Dino’s were killed in the disastrous aftermath of the collision of a large asteroid with the Earth. Data show that massive impact events occur every 30 million years or so. Now, when something happens on a regular time-scale, periodically, one is motivated to search for a physical cause. What might cause collisions with the Earth every 30 million years that might lead to mass extinctions? The merry-go-round pictured above provides a clue. As the horses go around in a circle they also oscillate up and down. It turns out that the motion of the solar system mimics the motion of a horse.
Milky Way Galaxy showing the Solar System oscillating through the central plane
The Sun rotates around the center of the Milky Way galaxy while oscillating up and down through the Milky Way disk with a period of about 60 million years. Thus, it passes through the disk every 30 million years, coinciding with the regular periodicity of impacts. Theoretical physicist Lisa Randall (Harvard) speculates that the dense layer of matter in the plane of the disk causes a gravitational push and pull that deflects comets or asteroids in the Oort cloud that could enter the inner Solar System and might strike the Earth. What is the Oort Cloud? (phys.org)
Lisa Randall and her book
It turns out that the period of the vertical oscillations of the solar system depends uniquely on the mass density in the stellar disk. Higher density produces a shorter period. However, it was thought that the measured period (60 million years) is too short to be produced by the observed stellar mass. In 1932, astronomer Jan Oort noticed this problem and suggested that some unknown “dark matter” must be adding to the observed visible matter to produce the shorter period.
Lisa Randall’s calculation of the force needed to deflect comets and asteroids from the Oort cloud to strike the Earth also required higher mass density in the disk. Thus, she adopted Oort’s speculation about the existence of unseen (and unknown) dark matter. However, dark matter is presumed to exist in the galaxy halo, and does not naturally settle into a disk configuration since it is too energetic, moving too fast. Normal matter settles into the disk shape by losing energy in the form of emitted photons (light). To get around this little problem Randall invokes a further speculation (#3) that the dark matter loses energy by emitting “dark photons” that we can’t see. Randall put it all together in a popular science book called Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs. Did dark matter kill the dinosaurs?: Nature News & Comment
Enter the Gaia satellite, a European spacecraft endeavoring to measure the speeds and locations of one billion Milky Way stars. A team from UC Berkeley (including grad student Katelin Schutz) analyzed the Gaia data and excluded any dark disk denser than about four-thousandths the mass of the sun per cubic light-year at the midplane of the galaxy – not enough to produce Randall’s comet deflections.
Katelin Schutz
A scientist such as Newton or Einstein who proposed this theory would conclude that it was faulty (silly?). It appears that Randall is made of sterner stuff. She isn’t prepared to admit defeat. So, she tried adding another speculation (#4). A thin dark disk in the midplane of the galaxy could pinch other matter inward, resulting in a higher density of matter in the midplane. Since the total visible mass of the Milky Way is obtained by extrapolating outward from the midplane density, a pinching effect would lead to an overestimation of the visible mass, making it seem as if the mass matches up to the Solar System oscillations. “That’s the reason why a lot of these previous studies did not see evidence for a dark disk.”
The question remains: Is Randall’s theory scientific? How much speculation is allowed? Does it belong high up on the crackpot index? Debate Intensifies Over Dark Disk Theory | Quanta Magazine
My friend Jonathan suggests that referring to it as “silly science” may be a bit harsh. He suggests “poetic science,” sort of an allegory, or one of Kipling’s “just so” stories. Or perhaps Bucky Katt is right: “I’ve got news for you Pinkish, science is just a big bunch of theories!”
Dr. William Lama has a PhD in physics from the University of Rochester. Taught physics in college and worked at Xerox as a principle scientist and engineering manager. Upon retiring, joined the PVIC docents; served on the board of the RPV Council of Home Owners Associations; served as a PV Library trustee for eight years; served on the PV school district Measure M oversight committee; was president of the Malaga Cove Homeowner's Association. Writes about science, technology and politics, mostly for his friends.
email: wlama2605@gmail.com