Re: Radial Velocity Profile in Globular Clusters

In article <5jgppaF3u4ib2U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
<dirk.bruere@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

So what's the state of play? It seems to me that everything is being
thrown into question in cosmology. We need increasingly bizarre DM, plus
supposedly unrelated Dark Energy and then we have *partial* explanations
of data using MOND etc. So my question is this - is there likely to be
a single explanation for all of this or have the experimentalists
discovered evidence for a slew of fairly unconnected phenomena?

Does it matter? The universe is what it is; it is the job of science to
figure it out. Some of the ancient Greeks wanted to explain everything
with 4 or 5 or even just 1 element. It turns out that there are roughly
a hundred elements. Aesthetic perceptions based on the ancient Greek
ideal have to go, but that's a small price to pay for understanding
chemistry.

Science proceeds by coming up with the simplest explanation which fits
the data---not because there is any guarantee that it is correct, but
just because it is a good working hypothesis. The process is known as
Occam's razor. If more data come a long which require one to make the
working hypothesis more complicated, then there is no need for a crisis
of faith---that's just the way science works.

Of course, if the explanation becomes so contrived that it is difficult
to believe it, then it might be worth looking for a radically different
explanation via some paradigm shift, but the burden of proof is on those
calling for the shift (i.e. they have to demonstrate that the new
hypothesis explains all the data but is simpler). Also a new hypothesis
should make a testable prediction by which it could in principle be
falsified.

Cosmology as a data-driven science is relatively new.

There seems to be a bias against "bizarre" dark matter. However, why
should most matter glow for our convenience, or even be composed of
baryons? Isn't this just chauvinism? Most people probably expect that,
by weight, if not humans then at least large multicellular creatures
(including plants) make up the bulk of the mass of life on Earth, but
actually bacteria have that honour. So, in a sense, bacteria are the
dark matter of biology (and for a long time, they were invisible, but
due to their small size).

.

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