Franktalk wrote:DrW wrote:Before people decide to base their entire decision making process and worldview on such perceptions, it might be a good idea to look for some confirming physical evidence.
So where is the physical evidence of dark matter and dark energy? Where is the physical evidence that objects smaller than a planck length lose locality? Are you sure you wish to open this can of worms?
Dark Matter: The fact that the galaxies don't fly apart due to rotational inertia. If you calculate the amount of mass in a typical galaxy versus how fast a typical galaxy rotates, the galaxy should be throwing stars into deep space. The fact that it doesn't means that there is extra matter there. Hence, dark matter (because we can't "see" it -- little interaction with photons).
Dark energy: The measurements on type 1a supernovas are what showed the existence of this in the first place. In fact, the scientists that discovered it got the Nobel Prize this year, If I recall correctly. For more information, check out the Wikipedia entry.
Planck Scale: We don't have any direct evidence of this, which is why this remains one of those "unproven hypothesis" that Physics likes to speculate about. Most of the reason why we can't get direct evidence is that we can't accelerate particles to the speeds necessary to probe this length, and likely we won't be able to for thousands of years, unless another way to see the particle can be found besides a particle accelerator. So, I can't explain it to you because there is no empirical evidence one way or another yet -- which is why I put the theory in the basket of things I don't worry about too much.
So, the first two have strong evidence supporting them, the last is an interesting hypothesis that still needs to be proved or disproved.