this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 19 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (4 children)

Alright I’ll bite. I don’t think this is AI drivel, I do think this article comes from a place of a serious lack of understanding of the standard model and quantum mechanics.

Yes, prior to the discovery of quantum mechanics some physicists realized that if they made certain assumptions, the math “just worked out”. They did not understand why this was the case, and being good scientists they sought to. They were also clear about their lack of a model to justify this math.

The development of quantum mechanics not only solved all these problems, but also predicted additional physics that has since been verified (solid state mechanics for example is just applied quantum mechanics, and predicted and described the transistor).

The reason quantum mechanics and the standard model of particle physics are treated as the best description of reality we currently have is because they are in fact. Attempts to describe cosmology and observational physics based in alternative models all do a worse job, either failing to account for observations or making unphysical predictions.

A quote from the article:

While MOND successfully predicts many galactic phenomena, often with greater simplicity than dark matter models, it faces its own challenges, particularly in galaxy clusters, and has often been dismissed by the mainstream physics community, sometimes explicitly because it is perceived to “lack mathematical elegance” or deviates too far from the established framework of General Relativity, suggesting theoretical preference can overshadow empirical parsimony.

This is incorrect. MOND is generally dismissed because as the article admits, it fails to account for all observed behavior. If you have to pick a model that describes more observed phenomena, which do you choose: the model that matches nearly all empirical data, or the one that only matches a subset but maybe could do better if someone could come up with the right formalism? If one insists that MOND is the path forward, then it is they who are dogmatically blinded by their choice of model.

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