[extropy-chat] Dark matter and ET

[Damien Sullivan]

On Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 08:22:48PM -0400, Dan Clemmensen wrote:
> There are many fundamental questions to which we currently have no 
> scientific answers.
> 
> Two of the biggies:
> 1)  Dark matter: We have not been able to detect by other means enough 
> matter
>     to account for all of the gravitational effect we see in the cosmos.
> 2)  The Fermi Paradox: Why have we not detected signs of other 
> intelligent life in
>      the cosmos?
> 
> Perhaps these questions answer each other. Dyson spheres have been 
> considered and rejected,

I don't know the details, but my impression is that current models predict
that the amount of baryonic matter we see is about what is out there, e.g. the
missing mass is mostly not dark normal matter.  If it were, the models of 
nucleosynthesis in the Big Bang would give different results than we observe.

As for Eliezer's idea of stars really being information nodes: given that the
model, of stars being big clumps of hydrogen and contaminants which collapse
under gravity until they fuse, gives predictions which match observations
pretty damn well, I'd be leary of assuming anything else is going on.  Life
should be postulated for things we can't explain through simple physics and
chemistry, such as persistent oxygen atmospheres.

-xx- Damien X-)