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this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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You see this thinking in science too. Dark matter has always struck me as an awful solution to a model breaking down. It's basically "the numbers don't add up so let's add a fudge factor to make it say what we want". But you're generally considered a kook for questioning it now. People will spout a bunch of big words and hope you shut up if you do.
It's called dark because we can't see it, and matter because it interacts gravitationally. There is nothing wrong with the term and the model of it even if we don't fully understand what the hell exactly it actually is and most importantly why it actually is. It's literally how science works. We don't know what the hell quantum probabilities and all the weird particles and fields mean on a metaphysical level either but QFT is the most tested and predictively powerful theory of science ever made. Is it complete? No, we may even never find the theory of everything. But it doesn't make our discoveries wrong.
Dark matter has been supported by various observations and is the best explanation we have. It's not the most widely accepted model just by pure faith, you know.
I have to admit I never liked it too much myself, but what do I know? There is an alternative theory, but it has its own problems.
I think it's more a matter of, "We know there's something that's causing an effect, but we can't see it or fully explain it... yet." There's something in the science and observations that's just not lining up the way it should. There are some ideas that have floated around that say that dark matter isn't necessary, it's just a misunderstanding of one factor or another, but nobody has really been able to nail the question yet, so it persists.
It’s more than that. There’s something that doesn’t add up, but if we assume the answer is “dark matter”, we can make predictions about it, that can guide us toward proving or disproving. Similarly, if we assume it’s one of the other theories, we can make predictions on what it must be like.
Dark matter is most straightforward because we understand best how matter acts. How much more matter do we need for the observations to make sense, based on current understanding? Ok, what could that matter be that acts gravitationally but we can’t see? How can we detect that?