Dark Matter’s Last Stand - I’ll believe it when I see it

[BeAChooser]

Here is an article about the XENONnT experiment that started collecting data last year title "Dark Matter’s Last Stand'.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ast-stand/

I love this part of the article …

To the outside world, the years of painstaking work without the reward of a discovery might seem disappointing, but physicists see it differently. “If you're judging by whether it has detected dark matter, they haven't, but in the eyes of the community it is a dramatically successful experiment,” says theoretical physicist Dorota Grabowska of CERN, who is not part of the project. Its success, she says, lies in the many possibilities it has ruled out and the ever increasing sensitivities it has achieved.

Only in the dark matter world is absolute failure success. Call that another gnome.

The article goes on to admit

Now the search for WIMPs stands at a turning point. In the relatively near future, underground dark matter experiments will have searched most of the theoretical landscape they can reach. If they have not found WIMPs, it may mean they do not exist, or it may simply mean they take some form that has managed to escape notice.

Read the rest and you'll see how carefully they keep hope alive … and dollars flowing. Because that’s what this is really about … keeping the dollars funding. Someone has to pay for their nice homes, cars, vacations and their kid’s liberal (woke) educations. XENONnT is reported to be a $12 million dollar experiment. But they have MUCH bigger and more expensive detectors planned. XENONnT uses about 8 tons of XENON. DARWIN is the next planned experiment and it will use about 50 tons. And after that comes the ARGO experiment (billed as the ultimate detector for dark matter) is scheduled to begin operations in 2029. It which will use 300 tons of xenon. Xenon costs about $2500 per kg … so 300 tons of xenon will cost about 700 million dollars. Add in all the other experiment costs and you are probably talking over a billion dollars to field that experiment alone. And with money like that involved, I don’t see any of them declaring dark matter is at it’s "last stand". Wonder who bought xenon futures? Someone is getting rich off this. Just saying …

[Michael Mozina]

The really bad part of the dark matter hypothesis, is that they've essentially ruled out all WIMP space down to the level of neutrinos, and LHC hasn't seen anything that would account for dark matter. In no other area of science would it be acceptable to keep moving the goal posts and dreaming up new variations of invisible unicorn experiments to try to "keep hope alive". Falsification of DM is impossible which makes the whole thing 'dogma', not actual science. Even worse still, the mainstream methods of estimating ordinary baryonic matter in distant galaxies has been falsified more times than I can even count, so the whole premise of the concept is bogus. They've found more mass in ordinary plasma in the last 15 years to more than account for any "missing mass', but since their whole LCDM model *requires* exotic matter, it cannot be allowed to die a natural scientific death, so the charade just goes on and on and on, for *entire generations*.

I remember about 15 years ago before they fired up LHC having a conversation at what was then called "bad astronomy" (aptly named) about what would happen if LHC never found evidence of DM. I was *assured* over and over again that no such thing would happen, yet here we are 15 years later and that's exactly what happened. They're *still* yammering on an on about WIMP theory too in spite of the fact they've already ruled out all the logical energy ranges it could hide in. The new experiments work exactly the same way as the old one, only they have more Xenon in the vat. Same dance, different tune. It's downright embarrassing now.

[jackokie]

Hmmm. Now tell me again, what are the characteristics of a cult?

[BeAChooser]

Hmmm. Now tell me again, what are the characteristics of a cult?

Exactly. There was a 2015 article ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/26/t ... l-warming/ ) titled “The ‘Cult’ of Climate Change (née Global Warming)”. It listed a bunch of characteristics that make AGWalarmism a religion.  Here they are, and why I think they can also be applied to modern astrophysics:
 
**********
 
“1) Climate alarmists pretend to possess indisputable truths about the past, present, and future. From minute details of the paleoclimate to the world state 200 years in the future, alarmists know everything."
 
Now I ask you, are Big Bang proponents any different?   Aren’t they claiming to possess indisputable truths about the past, present and future?  Down to the minutest detail?  Into the state of the universe billions of years past and future?
 
"2) The alarmist movement stubbornly refuses to debate its dogma, calling it “settled science” and viciously attacking its critics. The attacks are not limited to name calling but include prohibiting scientific research that contradicts this dogma."
 
Alternative believers have a great deal of trouble getting Big Bang proponents to debate.   Big Bang proponents call their beliefs “settled science” and they viciously attack it’s critics.   And the attacks include prohibiting scientific research that contradicts Big Bang.   I don’t know if they’ve made any death threats against the doubters … but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
 
"3) The alarmist movement has a formal doctrine-setting body — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The reports and summaries by this body are considered by the alarmists to be the main source of authority on all things related to climate, energy, the biological cycle, and consequentially, everything else. The cult followers (individuals, organizations, and even governments) regularly quote these unholy texts and use them to justify their decisions."
 
What is NASA if not that doctrine setting body?
 
"4) The alarmist movement has its own priest class: taxpayer-funded impostor “climate scientists” who have no independent (of the climate alarmism) scientific achievements.’ … snip … The alarmists sincerely believe that only members of the priest class are capable of understanding and seriously discussing “climate science.” … snip … It is worth noting that this priest class was appointed by politicians (mostly from developing countries) and is completely disconnected from the eminent scientists who founded climate change research at the peak of their scientific careers and produced the most results prior to 1985. All the eminent scientists who have publicly spoken on the topic since the early 1990s strongly opposed climate alarmism and were attacked or defamed by the alarmists."
 
That’s exactly the situation with regards to the Big Bang “traditional physics” community.   Astrophysicists are taxpayer funded.  They have no independent achievements.   Big Bang proponents believe only astrophysicists are capable of understanding what we see out there in the universe.   Electrical engineers and plasma scientists need not apply.  Even Nobel award winning ones. The astrophysicists the mainstream cites regarding plasma and magnetic fields are completely disconnected from the eminent scientists who founded those disciplines.   All those who speak out opposing the Big Bang gnomes have been attacked or defamed.
 
"5) The climate change cult appears to worship the computer models that its shamans built with their own hands — literally man-made idols. Needless to say, much of the content of IPCC’s texts comes from these computer models."
 
Ditto in Big Bang, Black Hole, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, etc cosmology.  Computer models are the only thing they have.  Observations haven't proven a thing nor corroborated their computer models.  
 
"6) The alarmists deny, ignore, or distort elementary scientific facts, some of which should be known even to kids"
 
Ditto with regards to Big Bang, Black Hole, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, etc cosmology.  How is constantly calling what’s out there "gas" and not "plasma" anything but denying, ignoring and distorting elementary scientific fact, which should be known to even kids?  Don't the school texts tell kids that what we actually see in the universe is 99.999% plasma?   Yes, they do.
 
"7) The alarmists appeal to medieval science errors."
 
Isn’t there something medieval about scientists insisting the universe had a beginning?   After all, the CHURCH, one of the biggest institutions to come out of the medieval period is a big supporter of the Big Bang theory because it too believes in a moment of creation rather than continuous creation and no end either way to the universe.  It’s even formally endorsed Big Bang, just like it now has AGW.
 
"8) The alarmists have created and spread climate mythology, sometimes intentionally modeled on archaic misbeliefs that many alarmists attributed to religion."
 
Aren’t all the gnomes of Big Bang cosmology (inflation, black holes, dark matter, dark energy, frozen magnetic fields, etc, etc, etc) essentially mythologies that have been created out of whole cloth much like demons and angels and rising sea levels?
 
"9) Like an established religion, the climate change cult has its own “start of the time”—usually 1880 (sometimes the 1880s), which is allegedly the beginning of instrumental temperature records."
 
Isn’t the start date for the Big Bang cult when instruments recorded objects whose interpreted motions and distances  seemed to suggest an origin back in the distant past ... some 13.8 billion years ago ... in a single point? Doesn’t the presumption of a single point depend on assumptions about red shift that now are accepted as gospel even though science suggests other possibilities?
 
"10) Climate change cult has its own eschatology—calamities, catastrophes, and the end of the world caused by global warming."
 
Big Bang cosmologists have some people fearing the creation of black holes in their super colliders.  What could be a worse catastrophe?  Others fear the creation of a new universe in those same machines.  And then inherent in the Big Bang Theory is the ultimate death of the universe … either the Big Crunch or the Big Freeze.  What could be more "eschatological"?
 
"11) The climate change cult calls its dogma science but fails to make any scientific (i.e., non-trivial and testable) statements. For example, “Climate change is real” is a trivial statement. The statements about temperatures in 2100 are not practically testable. When alarmists were making testable statements (such as the infamous 1988 James Hansen testimony before Congress and early IPCC reports), they were proven to be incorrect."
 
Now read this:  The Big Bang cult calls its dogma science but fails to make any scientific (i.e., non-trivial and testable) statements. For example, “Big Bang is real” is a trivial statement. The statements about string theory are not practically testable. When alarmists were making testable statements (such as claiming the existence of dark matter), they were proven to be incorrect.   See what I mean?  The Big Bang Cosmology has become just as much a religious cult as AGWalarmism.
 
"12) The climate change cult seeks and actually exerts control over governments.  To add to the above, the climate change cult has survived multiple exposures of its frauds—something that a normal fraud cannot survive. Nevertheless, many cults involve fraud, and even true believers are not against profiting from their position in their cult. The climate change cult has been elevated by the Obama administration into state religion. Both the White House and NASA appear to have converted to this cult."
 
Big Bang cosmologists certainly seek and exert control over governments.   How else have they gotten the governments of the world to shell out the BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars that have gone into costly instrument after costly instrument … all seeking to prove the existence of the countless gnomes that the astrophysicists have created out of whole cloth?
 
Certainly the multiple exposures of Big Bang frauds … like denying the plasma and filamentary nature of the universe … and failing to find proof of their many gnomes … hasn’t seemed to hurt Big Bang cosmologists so far.   The money is still rolling in because Big Bang has become a “state religion” and it helps that the mainstream press is on board too … along with the White House and NASA.    And perhaps one reason Big Bang proponents refuse to engage plasma/electric universe proponents in honest debate now is their fear that the massive fraud might be exposed to the public and then the public would revolt against all three institutions in this state religion.