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Some comments (and even nitpicking 
) about the above discussion, as well as some further (nitpicky) discussion of the physics and astronomy of WAW:
First, just to be completely <STRIKE>correct</STRIKE> pedantic, the standard terminology for the white-dwarf-accretion supernova that Moeen mentioned in his first post is a Roman numeral 'I' and a lower-case 'a' (i.e., 'Ia', not '1A'). Also, to be really picky, 'Type' should be capitalized (as in "Type Ia supernovae").
Some more substantive points about Moeen's presentation of dark matter and energy:
While the cosmological evidence for dark matter is compelling, it is not the only—or even the first—astronomical arena in which observations required dark matter (or modifications of gravity leading to dark matter-like effects): Dark matter made its first appearance as the 'missing mass' required for galaxy clusters to remain bound, and then in the dark matter halos needed to explain the observed flat rotation curves (of galaxies as close to home as our own Milky Way).
Also, it is not simply the expansion of the universe that requires dark energy, but the accelerated expansion—the simple expansion has been well-understood since Edwin Hubble first observed the cosmological redshift in 1929 (Vesto Slipher's observations significantly pre-date Hubble's, but the effect only received widespread attention after Hubble's announcement). Indeed, the expansion of the universe is regarded as the most sweeping—and astonishing—prediction of general relativity, although Einstein just was too afraid to make it (back in 1917), and thus go against the widespread philosophical prejudice of the time (which he shared) that the universe was static (and had no beginning). In addition, the observational cosmologists who discovered the accelerated expansion (in 1999) were able to do so only after observing many Type Ia supernovae—no one would have believed them if they had based their conclusions solely on one supernova! (It could have so easily been something anomalous—they have enough trouble with fellow astronomers worrying about changes in the luminosity of their putative "standard candles", or other possible scenarios with no acceleration.)
Nevertheless, I concur that DD's use of the term dark matter in WAW is highly suspect, and even misleading. However, I am not so concerned with its connexion (or even possible confusion) with dark energy, or even its altering of physics (having offered some possible scenarios for how this could work using known—albeit sometimes speculative—physics in other topics that have seem to have recently disappeared! *) as with its appearance and (presumed) internal structure. First, while the term "dark" may suggest otherwise to some people, the raison d'être of dark matter is not only to supply curvature of spacetime without emitting light, but that also not to absorb light, at least not significantly. Indeed, by my understanding, the nonbaryonic dark matter that Big Bang nucleosynthesis requires cannot couple strongly (if at all) to electromagnetic radiation (and thus cannot absorb it strongly, if at all). This means that the dark matter in WAW should not obscure the stars, as it is seen to do in several scenes (most notably the climactic scene on the Moon). In addition, so-called particle dark matter (on which DD's 'dark matter' appears to be based) is indeed elementary particles, and thus should not be destroyed by being heated—even violently—as it is in Roshaun & Dairine's solution (albeit incompletely). It may be possible that its 'dark energy' effects could be denatured by heat, if they are solely provided by its structure above the level of elementary particles—there doesn't appear to be any 'no-go' theorem that prevents matter from having negative pressure due to its structure (particularly if it is constituted of unusual particles), but I can't claim anything even approaching a comprehensive knowledge of known results in statistical mechanics, so there might be. (However, 'dark energy' is usually thought of being some new field and not a complex form of matter at all, though so little is known about it that these models are mostly in the form of simplifying assumptions.) Moreover, it is not clear (apologies for the unintentional pun) that heating most matter would make it (more) transparent (particularly if it made it undergo a phase transition; for instance, steam is far more opaque than is water)—it certainly would not remove its effects on the curvature of spacetime, by conservation of energy (and, indeed, would increase its temperature, and hence energy, making it curve spacetime more than it did previously, albeit by most likely a miniscule amount); however, this heating could lessen its effects by decreasing its energy density, if it caused the matter to expand greatly, which seems quite likely (and would also increase the matter's transparency).
Back soon after the first one or two WAW excerpts had been put up on YW.net, DD posted, in response to Selden, several possibilities for what could be going on with the (then) putative problems with a possible confusion between dark matter and energy in WAW—unfortunately, she did this in the more recent "The New Excerpt!" thread in the "Wizards at War" section of the forums, which has since been culled, and I have only a rather hazy memory of what she said, though I think that it might have been highly pertinent to this, in retrospect: I recall her mentioning three possibilities of what could be going on with the supposed confusion between dark matter and dark energy, one of which was that they were "'placeholders'" pending her visit to CERN (she mentioned some frequent time interval on which she made these visits, but I can't recall it exactly); I think that another one was that it was a "'deliberate error'" that would be clarified as the book progressed, but I cannot recall the third, and—I believe—most apropos possibility. Does anyone else have a better memory of these? (Or, better yet, saved DD's post for some reason?)
put it, "Cosmology and particle physics are now joined at the hip". (In fact, as I realize when looking up the link for the DD reference, her mention of this was in response to a question from Moeen in the July 30th 2005 chat—these fans include several at Fermilab and CERN, as revealed in DD's answer to my question about Roshaun's T-shirt in the first [and so far only] Q&A WizCast, of July 28th, 2005—indeed, she mentions there [in answer to my question] that "the physics and science communities [as a whole] are very strongly represented among YW fans".)
Using black holes for this example is slightly fraught with difficulty, as most people would think of a black hole's volume as being that of the space enclosed by its event horizon (and the radius of the event horizon increases with—indeed is proportional to—the black hole's mass, and the enclosed volume increases as well, proportionally to the cube of the radius, even taking into account the fact that space[time] is curved inside a black hole—this just changes the constant of proportionality for a Schwarzschild [i.e., uncharged, non-rotating] black hole from its flat-space value). However, you were presumably thinking of the (classically) zero-volume singularity at the centre of the black hole, or even just that the Schwarzschild radius for a given mass is much less than the radius of a star of the same mass (e.g., a 1 solar mass black hole is much smaller than the Sun). Nevertheless, it's probably cleaner (and clearer) to use white dwarfs for this example: They exhibit an inverse relation between mass and volume and have no ambiguity in how to define their volume. (And, of course, they also have much smaller volumes than an ordinary [non-degenerate] star of the same mass.)
As mentioned above, I offered several (very rough) proposals elsewhere for how dark matter and energy could be connected, as well as how they could influence physics, based on current speculative ideas as to possible explanations of dark matter and energy that involve (large) extra dimensions and some concepts from string theory—these seem particularly apropos in the YW universe, as they form a significant part of its 'canonical science'. (I can supply further details [in the form of a re-post] if there is interest.) However, I know of no reason, a priori, why either dark matter or dark energy would have to modify physics, beyond the effects on spacetime that their very natures require, though their unknown status leaves abundant room for such possibilities.
To move to some other topics: First, I am not particularly bothered by the lack of accuracy concerning the gem's "re-attuned" colour, particularly as the perception of colour seems to be highly subjective; moreover, I have argued elsewhere that one sometimes has to look beyond purely physical concerns when dealing with wizardry, so I concur with Evangelion's supposition that it is the perceived ('cultural') colour that is pertinent here, and is most effective in indicating the blue-ward shift in the blackbody peak of the star to which it is attuned (from that of G5-K0 III-IV Thahit, with a peak somewhere from ~5090–~6560 Å, probably around ~5590 Å—ranging from the cyan edge of green to well into red, with the 'probable value' [which, by the way, is very rough] near the yellow edge of green, corresponding to [photospheric] temperatures from ~5700–~4420 K, probably around ~5180 K ** to G2 V Sol, with its [photospheric] temperature of ~5770 K corresponding to a peak at ~5030 Å—near the cyan edge of the green portion of the spectrum [!]). (There are some interesting sites related to the Sun's 'true' colour [without atmospheric interference] here and here
I think that there are quite a few points in play here, most of which argue against a wizard's choosing to publish scientific results inspired or influenced by her or his experience with wizardry: First, while there are probably some wizards in academia (and we could argue that, perhaps, those scientists who have been the most visionary have been influenced, probably subconsciously, by what they have learned during Errantry), those who are not would most likely have a hard time getting any putative papers accepted in journals, particularly any proposing the no doubt large number of highly radical paradigm shifts that the significantly deeper understanding of the universe wizardry provides would require. (This would be difficult enough for an academic with an established record of insightful, though uncontroversial, papers.) Second, very few (if any!) of these results would be original to the author, who would thus be bound to cite the original discoverers, which leads to great difficulty in our current state of affairs—do we just cite other wizards (or scientists) who came up with these results (which is problematic enough, considering that the great majority of the discoverers are doubtless alien), or do we go all the way back to the Powers? Thirdly, if we assume that wizards know (or can easily find out) the truly fundamental laws of the universe, would a wizard necessarily find it stimulating to work on these problems (which would be, to the serious research wizard, probably trivial), and have to go to all the trouble of figuring out a way of explaining them to the general public without raising suspicions (as to where, for instance, the experimental impetus for various theoretical steps came from, even disregarding the issue of crediting priority)? I would say not, particularly as such a task seems greatly divorced from the primary mission with which a wizard is charged. In addition, it seems possible—even likely—that a much deeper understanding of science would need computing powers far beyond what we have at present, leading to further problems in dissemination. (Does the Manual do quantum computing?) Moreover, it may be the consensus among wizards that the technological advances that would be made possible by such scientific advances would be, at the present time, more likely to cause harm to Earth than help it (perhaps even in the fields of medicine, climate change, ecology and both environmental remediation and the prevention of further environmental degradation, where I think that several wizards guiding scientific research could do the most good for the planet and its inhabitants), perhaps most obviously if they had an immediate application to highly destructive weaponry (something of a science fiction cliché, I realize, but cf. TVTQ/OHMWS). Also, and perhaps most importantly, I doubt that the assumption in the third point above is necessarily a good one, for deducing a compelling framework for the physical laws in the universe may very well be a far from easy task, even for a theoretical wizard, particularly given what is implied in Carl's comparison of the universe to a balky dishwasher in WAW. (And, as I posit in a post in preparation for the "Wizard [sic] Holiday Horizon Level" topic in the "Nitpickery" section of the forums, it is possible that most wizards may have at least part of the 'nitty-gritty' of the science behind their spells handled by the Manual.)
* I present my thoughts on this in extenso here. The threads in question were the newer "The New Excerpt!" thread in the "Wizards at War" section of the forums and the "elevens" thread in "The 'Feline Wizards' Novels" section of the forums.
** Data from Bailer-Jones (chap. 6, p. 181). I assume that Thahit is a giant or subgiant (luminosity classes III & IV, respectively), since, according to the Concordance, it is not a dwarf (luminosity class V), and is somewhat larger than the Sun. I also use the largest possible range of temperatures (and thus spectral maxima).
Edited to fix the luminosity class for giants (previously "V", an obvious typo), to correct some grammatical errors and clarify the exposition (still, I fear, rather convoluted in places) in the final paragraph, and to give the reference for where the strong force comes up in WAW.
Edited again (much later) to remove two unnecessary repetitions.
) about the above discussion, as well as some further (nitpicky) discussion of the physics and astronomy of WAW:First, just to be completely <STRIKE>correct</STRIKE> pedantic, the standard terminology for the white-dwarf-accretion supernova that Moeen mentioned in his first post is a Roman numeral 'I' and a lower-case 'a' (i.e., 'Ia', not '1A'). Also, to be really picky, 'Type' should be capitalized (as in "Type Ia supernovae").
Some more substantive points about Moeen's presentation of dark matter and energy:
While the cosmological evidence for dark matter is compelling, it is not the only—or even the first—astronomical arena in which observations required dark matter (or modifications of gravity leading to dark matter-like effects): Dark matter made its first appearance as the 'missing mass' required for galaxy clusters to remain bound, and then in the dark matter halos needed to explain the observed flat rotation curves (of galaxies as close to home as our own Milky Way).
Also, it is not simply the expansion of the universe that requires dark energy, but the accelerated expansion—the simple expansion has been well-understood since Edwin Hubble first observed the cosmological redshift in 1929 (Vesto Slipher's observations significantly pre-date Hubble's, but the effect only received widespread attention after Hubble's announcement). Indeed, the expansion of the universe is regarded as the most sweeping—and astonishing—prediction of general relativity, although Einstein just was too afraid to make it (back in 1917), and thus go against the widespread philosophical prejudice of the time (which he shared) that the universe was static (and had no beginning). In addition, the observational cosmologists who discovered the accelerated expansion (in 1999) were able to do so only after observing many Type Ia supernovae—no one would have believed them if they had based their conclusions solely on one supernova! (It could have so easily been something anomalous—they have enough trouble with fellow astronomers worrying about changes in the luminosity of their putative "standard candles", or other possible scenarios with no acceleration.)
Nevertheless, I concur that DD's use of the term dark matter in WAW is highly suspect, and even misleading. However, I am not so concerned with its connexion (or even possible confusion) with dark energy, or even its altering of physics (having offered some possible scenarios for how this could work using known—albeit sometimes speculative—physics in other topics that have seem to have recently disappeared! *) as with its appearance and (presumed) internal structure. First, while the term "dark" may suggest otherwise to some people, the raison d'être of dark matter is not only to supply curvature of spacetime without emitting light, but that also not to absorb light, at least not significantly. Indeed, by my understanding, the nonbaryonic dark matter that Big Bang nucleosynthesis requires cannot couple strongly (if at all) to electromagnetic radiation (and thus cannot absorb it strongly, if at all). This means that the dark matter in WAW should not obscure the stars, as it is seen to do in several scenes (most notably the climactic scene on the Moon). In addition, so-called particle dark matter (on which DD's 'dark matter' appears to be based) is indeed elementary particles, and thus should not be destroyed by being heated—even violently—as it is in Roshaun & Dairine's solution (albeit incompletely). It may be possible that its 'dark energy' effects could be denatured by heat, if they are solely provided by its structure above the level of elementary particles—there doesn't appear to be any 'no-go' theorem that prevents matter from having negative pressure due to its structure (particularly if it is constituted of unusual particles), but I can't claim anything even approaching a comprehensive knowledge of known results in statistical mechanics, so there might be. (However, 'dark energy' is usually thought of being some new field and not a complex form of matter at all, though so little is known about it that these models are mostly in the form of simplifying assumptions.) Moreover, it is not clear (apologies for the unintentional pun) that heating most matter would make it (more) transparent (particularly if it made it undergo a phase transition; for instance, steam is far more opaque than is water)—it certainly would not remove its effects on the curvature of spacetime, by conservation of energy (and, indeed, would increase its temperature, and hence energy, making it curve spacetime more than it did previously, albeit by most likely a miniscule amount); however, this heating could lessen its effects by decreasing its energy density, if it caused the matter to expand greatly, which seems quite likely (and would also increase the matter's transparency).
Back soon after the first one or two WAW excerpts had been put up on YW.net, DD posted, in response to Selden, several possibilities for what could be going on with the (then) putative problems with a possible confusion between dark matter and energy in WAW—unfortunately, she did this in the more recent "The New Excerpt!" thread in the "Wizards at War" section of the forums, which has since been culled, and I have only a rather hazy memory of what she said, though I think that it might have been highly pertinent to this, in retrospect: I recall her mentioning three possibilities of what could be going on with the supposed confusion between dark matter and dark energy, one of which was that they were "'placeholders'" pending her visit to CERN (she mentioned some frequent time interval on which she made these visits, but I can't recall it exactly); I think that another one was that it was a "'deliberate error'" that would be clarified as the book progressed, but I cannot recall the third, and—I believe—most apropos possibility. Does anyone else have a better memory of these? (Or, better yet, saved DD's post for some reason?)
Originally posted by Moeen:
So, if a cosmologist were to read this book for fun, he or she would be in for a bit of a surprise.
So, if a cosmologist were to read this book for fun, he or she would be in for a bit of a surprise.
Increasing mass doesn't mean you have increasing volume, as black holes can attest to.
However, I think DD's main point is that introducing dark stuff could alter how physics works slightly and make wizardry harder to implement. She could get away with this if dark matter or dark energy does change how you do physics locally, but I'm not sure if that's really true.
To move to some other topics: First, I am not particularly bothered by the lack of accuracy concerning the gem's "re-attuned" colour, particularly as the perception of colour seems to be highly subjective; moreover, I have argued elsewhere that one sometimes has to look beyond purely physical concerns when dealing with wizardry, so I concur with Evangelion's supposition that it is the perceived ('cultural') colour that is pertinent here, and is most effective in indicating the blue-ward shift in the blackbody peak of the star to which it is attuned (from that of G5-K0 III-IV Thahit, with a peak somewhere from ~5090–~6560 Å, probably around ~5590 Å—ranging from the cyan edge of green to well into red, with the 'probable value' [which, by the way, is very rough] near the yellow edge of green, corresponding to [photospheric] temperatures from ~5700–~4420 K, probably around ~5180 K ** to G2 V Sol, with its [photospheric] temperature of ~5770 K corresponding to a peak at ~5030 Å—near the cyan edge of the green portion of the spectrum [!]). (There are some interesting sites related to the Sun's 'true' colour [without atmospheric interference] here and here
You bring up an interesting point though. If doing wizardry involves being able to descibe something exactly, and can include such things as white holes or black holes, don't wizards then have answers to all of the physicists questions? The Speech, in the YW universe, after all is capable of describing anything, which means it should be able to transcend even mathematical models of the universe (which is what physics is all about really). The Speech should then provide also the ultimate form of mathematics. This then begs the question, what are wizards in the YW universe waiting for? Anyone of them could become more famous than even Einstein and solve pretty much all scientific problems!
* I present my thoughts on this in extenso here. The threads in question were the newer "The New Excerpt!" thread in the "Wizards at War" section of the forums and the "elevens" thread in "The 'Feline Wizards' Novels" section of the forums.
** Data from Bailer-Jones (chap. 6, p. 181). I assume that Thahit is a giant or subgiant (luminosity classes III & IV, respectively), since, according to the Concordance, it is not a dwarf (luminosity class V), and is somewhat larger than the Sun. I also use the largest possible range of temperatures (and thus spectral maxima).
Edited to fix the luminosity class for giants (previously "V", an obvious typo), to correct some grammatical errors and clarify the exposition (still, I fear, rather convoluted in places) in the final paragraph, and to give the reference for where the strong force comes up in WAW.
Edited again (much later) to remove two unnecessary repetitions.
sometimes they change because the auther realizes they've backed themselves into a corner and need to change something, and sometimes they just make a mistake. If you insist on nitpicking the story, i've got something for you: the second haiku in wizard at war, wasn't a haiku at all. it only had four sylibols! the line was:
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