Ain't Nothing New Under The Sun

[BaalChatzaf]

Here is my epiphany for the day:

The Dark Matter postulated by cosmologists over the past 20 or 30 years is essentially a rigid disk to account for the motion curves of stars in the outer portions of galaxies. Under Keplerian/Newtonian laws the stars in the outer parts of galaxies should have a slower angular and linear velocity than stars rotating closer to the galactic center (given by the rotation curves. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotation_curves). But this is not the case. The tangential velocity of stars do not fall off with their distance from the central core. So Dark Matter was postulated to account for this observation. Think of a merry go round. The horses are firmly affixed to a rigid rotating disk and they all go round at the same angular velocity. This is highly non-Keplerian motion.

Now back to Rene Descartes. He postulated a vortex theory to account for the motion of planets around the sun. He said the planets sat in vortexes in a rigid aether (a weird kind of solid or rigid thing) and that accounts for the fact they all rotate about the sun in the same direction. Newton studied Descartes and found his explanation contrary to telescopic observation. Newtonian gravitation won out for over 300 years. But now a revival of the the rigid disk rotation is at hand, to wit, Dark Matter. Can it be that Rene Descartes will have the last laugh?

So it seems there is nothing new under the Sun nor around the galactic center.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Mindy Newton]

Here is my epiphany for the day:

The Dark Matter postulated by cosmologists over the past 20 or 30 years is essentially a rigid disk to account for the motion curves of stars in the outer portions of galaxies. Under Keplerian/Newtonian laws the stars in the outer parts of galaxies should have a slower angular and linear velocity than stars rotating closer to the galactic center (given by the rotation curves. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotation_curves). But this is not the case. The tangential velocity of stars do not fall off with their distance from the central core. So Dark Matter was postulated to account for this observation. Think of a merry go round. The horses are firmly affixed to a rigid rotating disk and they all go round at the same angular velocity. This is highly non-Keplerian motion.

Now back to Rene Descartes. He postulated a vortex theory to account for the motion of planets around the sun. He said the planets sat in vortexes in a rigid aether (a weird kind of solid or rigid thing) and that accounts for the fact they all rotate about the sun in the same direction. Newton studied Descartes and found his explanation contrary to telescopic observation. Newtonian gravitation won out for over 300 years. But now a revival of the the rigid disk rotation is at hand, to wit, Dark Matter. Can it be that Rene Descartes will have the last laugh?

So it seems there is nothing new under the Sun nor around the galactic center.

Ba'al Chatzaf

So, Baal, what's your take on it?

= Mindy

[BaalChatzaf]

So, Baal, what's your take on it?

= Mindy

I am surprised how old ideas get recycled. Who knows? Someday, aether may make a come back (in somewhat altered form). Or an even better example: atoms. Atoms were conceived of by Demokritos and Luekippus in the 4-th century b.c.e. and the idea came up again and again. Isaac Newton was an atomist, for example. He even believed that light was particulate in nature. This idea went into decline after Young's double slit experiment in 1803 but it made a come back with Einstein publishing his Nobel Prize winning paper on the photoelectric effect.

As it says in the Book of Ecclesiastes: There is nothing new under the sun.

Ba'al Chatzaf