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cowl 4 hours ago

It's funny how for MOND we cant accept that it has some unknowns yet but we are more than willing to accept the FULL UNKNOWN Dark Matter. it's easy. put "Dark" in front of something and you don't have to explain it at all, no matter that something else explains at least 60-70% instead of 0.

GuB-42 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Dark matter is invisible, but it isn't magic. It is not significantly different from neutrinos. No one seriously denies the existence of neutrinos nowadays, even though they are invisible (i.e. they don't interact electromagnetically).

Dark matter is actually a very parsimonious theory. None of the laws of physics have to change to accommodate it, unlike with MOND. We may not see it, but it has to move around and affect normal matter in predictable patterns consistent with our current understanding of physics. If it doesn't, then the theory is wrong and may need some revision (which may be a dark matter + MOND hybrid).

In parallel with the research that attempts to find the properties of dark matter that best describe our observations is research that attempt to find what other properties it may have. It is a new particle? Can it interact in ways other than gravity? We didn't find anything, but the universe is under no obligation to make things easy for us.

One possible idea called the "nightmare scenario" is that dark matter is made of particles that only interacts gravitationally. It is a perfectly fine theory, maybe the cleanest one, but unfortunately, it would mean that we may never be able to detect these particles because gravity is so weak that the required detectors would be way beyond our technological abilities.

gus_massa 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We make a similar guess for the stuff that is in the center of Earth. We measure local gravity and speed of sound velocity, and we guess here is liquid, here is solid, here is this rock, here is this another rock [1]. See for example https://www.livescience.com/64943-nobody-understands-the-gia... nobody has seen them, we guess they are there.

Dark matter is another guess. We guess there is more matter in galaxies than what the telescopes show. We can compare the amount of mater guessed from galaxy rotation with other measurements. In this case they compare it with the gravity between a few galaxies.

Nobody is happy that we don't know what dark mater is. There are a few theories, but none of them has enough experimental support. More lack of confirmed details in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Composition

[1] I don't know enough about rocks https://xkcd.com/2501/

cowl 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Dark matter is not another Guess. is no guess at all. its the same as saying the center of the earth is made of Dark Core. and when someone proposed liquid core, there would be papers how a liquid core doesnt explain 100 %, and neither does rock or solid so Dark Core it is because it's sIMpLer to have just one Dark Something than 3 different somethings to explain anything.

The fact that there are tentatives to identify what it might be does not ammegliorate the fact that at it's core (pun intented) Dark matter is something to make equations fit without any other thought behind it or whether there might be several things behind it or god forbid that we juddge the equations themselves. I mean we got relativity because of a minor discord with newtonian Laws. (the orbit of Mercury). just a tiny percentage of obeservable behaviour at that time but it was a different time. a time where you could bring down the existing science of the day for a tiny percentage and now we accept 90% observation disaccordance (dark energy+dark matter) with what the equation require.

yfontana 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> at it's core (pun intented) Dark matter is something to make equations fit without any other thought behind it or whether there might be several things behind it or god forbid that we juddge the equations themselves

Another way to interpret dark matter is that we can observe something using several different ways, but all those ways use gravity. When trying to observe this something using electromagnetism, we see nothing. It doesn't seem so crazy then to hypothesize that this something only interacts with gravity, and not electromagnetism.

bilkow 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I mean we got relativity because of a minor discord with newtonian Laws. (the orbit of Mercury).

I don't think that's true. One of Einstein's test for General Relativity, using Mercury's orbit, came around 10 years later after special relativity was proposed, which is understood to be motivated by both Maxwell's equations and experimental results suggesting that the speed of light (electromagnetic waves) not depending on the frame of reference. General relativity (explaining gravity) seem to have been motivated by Newton's gravity not playing well with Special relativity (with mass being relative and all).

I understand the frustration with Dark Matter, but my understanding is that Dark Matter is a guess that is known to be incomplete. Scientists are shooting everywhere to try to explain the discrepancy in gravitational effects and some form of undetected matter is currently the best hypothesis (but not the only one). You say that "we accept 90% observation disaccordance", but the source of its effect is being searched for.

See:

- https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/622/what-was-einstei...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gravitational_theor...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity

Edit: formatting, updated links

gus_massa an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> just one Dark Something than 3 different somethings to explain anything

There are many candidates and I think nobody discarded it's a mix, it looks like a plausible scenario. I made a quick look in Wikipedia, but I didn't find anything relevant to a mix of Dark Mater.

There is(was?) some big discussion about cold vs hot (and warm?) dark mater. IIUC "cold" dark mater won. I'm not sure if there is enough details to make a good guess of the split, or if it's a 100.00% vs 0.00% case.

wetpaws 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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