Thoughts for fellow supernerds….
SIMPLE VERSION: Due to limitations in technology, physicists are using mathematical physics (ideal) not material physics (real). Dark Matter is the name of an unknown variable in their mathematics. It’s not a physical(real) but a mathematical reference (ideal). This is something Sabine says less directly on a regular basis. Why? Because she’s half-solving the problem of ‘mathiness’ (beauty, simplicity) in physics by saying that this simplicity and elegance are a failed project. But she’s not saying that mathematics as currently practiced is insufficient given the information available from experimentation. Why? Because her correct understanding of science (testimony) consists of limiting us to testifiable observables. And our observables are only presently mathematically testifiable.
MORE COMPLEX VERSION: Operating under the assumption that mass produces all gravity, then there is mass that we cannot observe that produces that gravity. OR there is a problem with our understanding of gravity (more likely). OR space doesn’t curve, is flat, and some other phenomenon is causing gravity (probably the most likely). General evolving consensus is that while there is funding to be gained by keeping the public excited, it’s increasingly clear that einstein-bohr produced a mathematical description of phenomena, but the theory that narrates causality is wrong. And that our mathematical physics is relying on formula insufficient for the description of observable outcomes.
OPEN QUESTION: (from my position of admitted ignorance) If mass consists of displacement of the quantum field (assumption), and gravity is described as a product of mass, then why would not displacement of the aggregate displacement of the quantum field produce the equivalent of mass without the need for particles?
EXPLANATION (Explanation: I specialize in the sources and consequences of human ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, loading-and-framing, fictions, fictionalism, deceit, and denial, including the problems in math and logic. IMO at present, the evidence suggests that we are indeed ‘lost in math’ as Sabine says. But we are lost in math because we are lost in categorization and presumption, under the primary error that Einstein-bohr succeeded rather than failed, leading future generations to use the same methodology – when it was that methodology of ‘pictures’ that made Einstein err, and publish before empirical mathematicians like Hilbert solved the underlying problem of causality. In other words, some early successes providing half truths produce consequential errors preventing future discovery, innovation, adaptation, and evolution. Or as Popper said, there are sources both of knowledge AND of ignorance. This is the reason we must disambiguate between mathematical idealism (language and analogy), and computation and physics (reality and actions). This is the origin of our errors. We failed to institutionalize Babbage and prevent the failures of philosophy, logic, mathematics, and as a consequence, …. physics.. once the initial source of ignorance in Einstein Bohr had been created, by the half-truth that conflated description with causality. (It’s possible I can improve on this narrative).
In a perfect world, we would run a competition with an extraordinary financial prize, for the physical description of physics, explained by mathematics, instead of the mathematical description of physics in the absence of the physical description of physics that we use today. This would ‘correct’ the physics ‘industry’. All organizations and industries follow rational incentives. Ours appear to be wrong.)