Marcel S. Pawlowski | 24. November 2010, 15:27
While the official video podcast of the Bethe Colloquium "Dark
Matter,
a Debate" is not available yet, there nevertheless have
already been some reactions send via email or posted on astronomy blogs. Some are based on
the live
blog
of the debate. In addition to that, there will be a discussion about Dark Matter in German television this thursday.
Reactions to the Dark Matter Debate
Before the debate, a number of people labeled it as a "MOND vs. Dark
Matter" debate, which is simply a wrong statement. This is not the
question we as scientists have to ask today. The real issue at hand
is the question whether we understand LCDM as being falsified or not.
This is independent of the possible existence of an alternative and its
successes or failures. Unfortunately, in his report of the debate, Daniel Fisher, who was there himself, also presents it as one between a Dark Matter and a MOND
advocate. He shares his impressions (in German) on his Blog Skyweek
Zwei
Punkt
Null.
In contrast to that, Nando Patat, astronomer at ESO, who posts his
thoughts on the matter in a post titled "We
do
not understand nature, we measure it", puts more emphasis on the
sociological points Pavel Kroupa raised. He even backs up the statement
that it is difficult to go against the mainstrem by refering to one of
his papers about very old stars, which was "brutally but superficially
rejected". This is in-line with reports by other scientists who for example had observing proposals rejected because they suggested observing disk galaxies at a high redshift. Because the time-allocation commission "knew" that these cannot have formed in a LCDM universe, the observing time was not granted.
On her Blog "One Small Step",
Sarah Kendrew, a Post-Doc in Heidelberg, posts a good
introduction
to the background of the debate. She also mentiones
that Pavel Kroupas main point was not to fighting for a particular
alternative theory. She writes: "I get the impression that a large part
of Kroupa’s argument is actually sociological: he’s calling for research
into paradigm-challenging cosmologies like MOND to be given more
attention (without smirking) and funding, rather than creating ever more
patches to cover the holes in concordance cosmology." Concerning Simon
Whites position, she makes an interesting statement: "White acknowledges
the problems yet doesn’t think that a radical new line of thought is
needed either [...]. Given his views on the future of astronomy [...] I
would have thought he’d be all in favour of setting bright students’
creative minds loose on a problem like this."
As a last point, there was an email by a colleague. He shares some of his thoughts about the debate, which he attended himself. However, he asked us not to mention his name because he does not have a permanent position yet. He is afraid that articulating his point of view publicly will reduce his chances to ever get one. Of course we follow his request by citing him anonymously and would like to thank him for his trust in us which he showed by sending this email.
Simon
White's statement that Pavel Kroupa is arguing with a "proof through
assertion" is an insolence, as it supposes that the arguments lack any
evidence.
Consistently, in the following Simon White did not really adress the
problems of Dark Matter. Instead, he showed where the standard model
works. Ignoring criticism is bad scientific practice.
In addition to this, Simon White tried to reduce Pavel Kroupa's
arguments to a pro-MOND position, while the failures of the
concordance cosmology have nothing to do with the question whether MOND
is valid or not. While Simon White initially said that alternatives have
to be investigated, he later argued that he gets a lot of letters each
day proposing alternative cosmologies. This made Professor Klaas de Boer
protest, as it puts theories like MOND on the same level as, for
example, crackpot-ideas of non-academics claiming to have disprooven
Einstein.
But there was also criticism concerning Pavel Kroupas presentation during the debate. His statement that he does not see any possibility to verify LCDM was perceived as a too fixed position. He might also have insisted more on discussing the small-scale problems of LCDM and that they can not simply be dismissed by stating that the physics at these scales is too complicated. This might have made the debate more ground-breaking, as a lot of people were hoping to see if there are proper counter-arguments to the findings presented in the recent paper. Furthermore, he could have reacted to Simon White's claim that Fornax fits excellently in LCDM, using the isophote-plots of the satellite galaxy he showed in his talk: If the galaxy were embedded in a dark matter halo, it could not be too asymmetric but would mostly be spherically and non-structured, which is not the case. During the debate, Pavel Kroupa did not raise this contradiction between Fornax and the LCDM model.
Another Debate (on TV)
This Thursday (November 25th 2010), at 9pm, there will be another discussion about dark
matter in the TV show "scobel". It will be broadcasted on 3sat, a TV station in German
providing a common program for Germany, Austria and Swizerland. The
title is: "Dark
Matter
- New Studies Question its Existence". Guests in the show
will be Arnold Benz, Gerhard Hensler and Simon White. A TV team of 3sat
was filming at the
Dark
Matter Debate between Simon White and Pavel Kroupa last week,
so this will probably be the first chance to see some footage of the
event. Furthermore, Pavel Kroupa and Robert Sanders were interviewed for
the show. Unfortunately, it is in German. It will be available online
in the 3sat mediathek afterwards.
by Pavel Kroupa and Marcel Pawlowski (24.11.2010): "Reactions to the Dark Matter Debate and Another One in German TV" in
"The Dark Matter Crisis - the rise and fall of a cosmological
hypothesis" on SciLogs. See the overview of topics in The Dark Matter Crisis.
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