I love that website. I also think it would be terribly solipsistic to think we are a one-off fluke, but the more I learn about what we've learned in the exoplanet project, maybe we are just a unicorn planet. Though probably not. Because, like you said, the possibilities...so many.
How would you even know if I were shitting on them when you don't understand them yourself. I said I didn't start this to make fun of you for thinking that space and time were literally the same thing. You shouldn't egg me on.
Well even if we get real close to the speed of light, it's still basically a non-starter. Unless we learn to fold time or something, which I'm not optimistic is a real thing.
Our ideas for gravity are pretty spot on for the solar system and everything on the planetary scale. If those equations scale up (which there is no reason to believe they shouldn't), then dark matter must exist because there is a lot of something out there affecting the universe gravity wise that we cannot see. Is it possible that something other than gravity as we know it could be causing it? Of course. Dark energy must also exist, as the universe is accelerating in its expansion. But as I say, Dark Matter and Dark Energy are really poor wording because we don't know WHAT is causing it, simply that it is being caused, and and we have not one clue what is causing it.
I think we're on the same page. When we've determined that like 96% of the total mass of the universe is "some shit that we don't know about yet", I think that putting hard labels on what that thing or those things might be is a little disingenuous.
Speaking of something that makes all the planetary models work when you consider that it's there, what do we think about Planet 9? I saw a really interesting show a while back where this guy was demonstrating the relative locations of the planets with different sized spheres in this huge open space. It really put into perspective how far away Planet 9 -- if it exists -- is located, and how difficult it would be to find it as a result. Actually, I just found it: ETA: nvm, that wasn't the same video.
Everyone should watch his Cornell Messenger lectures from the early 1960's. http://www.cornell.edu/video/playlist/richard-feynman-messenger-lectures
Organic chemicals found on Mars. Also seasonal blooms in methane in the atmosphere. Doesn't mean life, but I find the idea fascinating. These are incredibly exciting times!
