this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
231 points (95.3% liked)

Science Memes

10950 readers
2192 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (2 children)

As a non-sciencey person, can someone explain the chasm of ignorance?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Most of the "chasm of ignorance" is the stuff we know that we don't know. We don't know what dark matter is made of. We don't know what dark energy is. We don't know how to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Isn’t it the stuff we don’t know that we don’t know?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

We don't even know if there IS Dark Matter

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I am not a scientist, but I do like to watch them on youtube: We're pretty sure something we don't know about has a ton of mass. Otherwise a bunch of other stuff doesn't really make sense, for example the universe should be way way bigger than it is now without something unseen keeping it condensed. So the existence of "dark matter" is about as confirmed as it can be without observing it directly. What we don't know is what dark matter is, how to observe it, or how it works. But math, as we currently understand it, implies its existence pretty heavily.

Which does in fact mean that our math or understanding could just be wrong. Technically you're right, we DON'T know if there really is dark matter. But if we assume our current knowledge is correct we can make a pretty reasonable guess about it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I personally lean towards "we've done all this work and it's incredibly scary that modern observations actually tell us all the work we've put in is actually wrong and we have to create brand new formulas again."

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

I’m not a physicist, but im pretty sure it’s just the gaps in our knowledge like exactly how/why gravity works. And like we don’t know the things we don’t know so it’s all in the chasm.