Dark Matter Is an Illusion, New Antigravity Theory Says is a great article for the physicists and physicophiles in my audience.  According to the opening of the article:

The mysterious substance known as dark matter may actually be an illusion created by gravitational interactions between short-lived particles of matter and antimatter, a new study says.

You’ll have to read the article to understand what the new theory proposes. I like the sound of this theory and am rooting for it to be proved.

For background on this topic, see my previous post, Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

MardyS has provided a link to a more accurate explanation Dark matter may be an illusion caused by the quantum vacuum.

Before I received the above link, I was suspicious of the explanation in the National Geographic article:

According to quantum field theory, this sudden snapping to order of electric dipoles, called polarization, generates a secondary electric field that combines with and strengthens the first field.

I did a little review of my electricity and magnetism and had already concluded that the more accurate description in the second article would be the correct one.  I was so pleased to have the confirmation that, though I have retired, I have not forgotten everything I knew about electrical engineering.

As Hajdukovic explains, the effect of the stronger gravitational field can be understood by looking at what happens when an electric field rather than a gravitational field causes polarization. He gives an example of a dielectric slab being inserted into a parallel plate capacitor, which results in a decrease in the electric field between the plates. The decrease is due to the fact that the electric charges of opposite sign attract each other. But if the electric charges of opposite sign were repulsive instead of attractive, then the electric field would increase. Back to the quantum vacuum scenario, since the gravitational charges of opposite sign are repulsive, the strength of the gravitational field increases.

You always have to be a little suspicious of articles in the popular press that purport to explain scientific matters.

Ever since the day that I woke up, weighed myself, had a cup of tea, and weighed myself again, I have believed in anti-gravity tea.  According to my scale I weighed a little bit less just after I drank the tea. Perhaps I was more right than I ever imagined. 🙂

Warning – that last paragraph was a true story, but I was not serious about the conclusion I drew.

The above warning is for those who cannot see my wry humor when it slaps them in the face.

The idea that there may be gravitational monopoles reminds me of the controversy that was raging when I was in college. Back then there were arguments in the literature about whether or not a magnetic monopole existed. I don’t know if that argument was ever settled. Perhaps I ought to Google it.

There is a Magnetic Monopole article in WikiPedia.

In his recent decision to cancel the new EPA smog rule, President Obama is showing how his thinking is more like that of a corporate officer than that of a President of the United States.

There was a tremendous lobbying effort by business and Republican legislators complaining about the billions of dollars of costs that some corporate entities would endure.  Was there a powerful enough lobby on the other side telling him how many jobs would be created in the pollution control industry?

Without waiting for the lobbying efforts from multiple sides, as a United States President, Obama has to be aware that one company’s costs are another company’s sales.  The jobs created by designing, manufacturing, and installing pollution control equipment might have more than offset the jobs lost in the industries paying the costs.

The companies incurring the costs might even have taken the money to pay for this out of their cash reserves.  In other words the money they had sitting idle and not creating jobs could have been used to pay other companies to create jobs.

Who was making this cost/benefit analysis and presenting it to the President for his consideration?  Unless he knows enough to ask for it, there is no constituency that has the interest in doing the analysis for him.

Unless Obama starts thinking like a President and looking at the economy holistically, he will miss opportunities to get the economy moving again.

Here is  an exercise for the reader.

Since I have made no attempt to enumerate all the economic benefits of the new EPA rule, see how many other benefits for the economy as a whole that you can think of that would offset the costs of the new rules on the economy as a whole.