Alex Smart Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hello Simon,
>
> You write: "Probably would be best to listen to
> the program before coming out with something like
> that."
>
> No it wouldn't! I wouldn't understand a thing they
> were on about
>
> I just happen to be very suspicious of these
> 'pure' science theories.
>
> It's like the 'black hole' con.
>
> All that the 'black hole' is is an explanation for
> certain observed events in space.
>
> Nobody knows or can prove if it physically
> exists.
>
> Like it or not, Black Holes, Dark Matter, and Dark
> Energy, are actually figments of various
> scientists' imaginations created to explain
> emerging anomalies and inconsistencies in their
> theories about the nature and behaviours of the
> Universe, etc.
>
> At one time, if something couldn't be explained,
> we put God there. Now we put "Black this" and
> "Black that" there instead.
> A rose by any other name...
>
> Regards,
>
> Alex

No. You like to wave the word "theory" as if it were a dirty word. In the case of dark energy and dark matter-- these were introduced not to "justify a theory" or "because they got the maths wrong" but because they were needed to make some sense of factual observations made about the nature of the universe. Since we are dealing with frontier science, scientists make clear that 1) we don't know exactly what these things are like and 2) they are provisional and subject to change and/or elimination if newer data shows they are wrong. However, their being postulated provides scientists with a target for which to design experiments to explore their nature, try to disprove their existence, or to think of alternate ways to explain the observations that led to their being proposed. Einstein's theory or relativity was just a "theory" when first proposed but it has met all sorts of stringent tests and made many verifiable predictions since he proposed it.
Bernard