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lubujackson 2 hours ago

100%. It's important to realize our understanding of "dark matter" is fuzzy because we only understand it through data anomalies. Dark matter is a classic catch-all concept that we use as a crutch while we try to understand the underlying system better.

Similar to how we used to believe in "aether" to explain how light could travel through empty space. It is important to understand how these crutches help and hinder understanding.

kstrauser 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It's kind of weird in this case, though. All the math acts like there's something invisible and heavy everywhere that we find clumps of visible matter. When we look at the motion of galaxies, they behave as if they're much more massive than the count of stars and such in the would have you believe, and in ways that otherwise jibe with our understanding of physics if only that galaxy were heavier.

If you have one galaxy that's acting heavier than you can eyeball, measured by things like light bending around it, then maybe you have some weird phenomenon. When every galaxy calculates out to be about 6x fatter than you'd expect, something else is going on.

fragmede an hour ago | parent [-]

Except (IANotAnAstrophysicist) it's not every galaxy. There are two that stick out as having little to no dark matter.

    * NGC 1052-DF2
    * NGC 1052-DF4
Of course this is hotly contested as it destroys the argument for MOND, but research is ongoing.