Could dark matter not exist?
medium.com
Could dark matter not exist?
1–10 of 102 posts
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#2Something has orbits around galaxies
failing to follow the law of gravity
from ordinary matter. The orbits
are as if there
there is some more mass with
gravity, mass that doesn't interact with
light.
Something is in/near galaxies is bending light as if there were more mass there than there is from just ordinary matter.
So, for that extra mass, call it dark matter.
Seems simple enough.
"Flaw in the theory of gravity?" Maybe, but that seems to be the hard way to get an answer.
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#3I found the most interesting part of the article to be this image of a 1919 newspaper illustrating "Starlight bent by the sun's attraction": The Einstein theory.
https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/847/1*LV-wtp9IclSx...
As for the rest of the article, well, Betteridge's law holds, though with the "as best we know"-suffix implicit to science and science journalism.
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#4It reads like a great example of how theory works.
You have some evidence (old planets), and a model that predicts it well (Newton/Kepler). Then some new evidence comes in (Uranus), and the theory is almost right, but not quite. So we modify it a little, or we start searching for an extra mass to explain the error.
Then some more experimental evidence comes in (galactic radial velocity), and we are thinking about modifying the theory a bit more (MOND). This is good for the radial velocity explanation, but not certain other things. We suppose there's some dark matter, and think about the consequences that would have. Then we see evidence consistent with that.
Of course this is a boiled down version. Real science is rarely so clean.
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#5Something has orbits around galaxies failing to follow the law of gravity from ordinary matter. The orbits are as if there there is some more mass with gravity, mass that doesn't interact with light. Something is in/near galaxies is bending light as if there were more mass there than there is from just ordinary matter. So, for that extra mass, call it dark matter . Seems simple enough. "Flaw in the theory of gravity?…
Alternatively:
The orbits around galaxies fail to follow the law of gravity of ordinary matter. The orbits are as if our gravity calculations, which seem to work well otherwise, are flawed.
Something in/near galaxies causes them to bend light as if gravity were different.
So, for that region, call it a flaw in the theory of gravity. Seems simple enough.
"Unseen, never-before-detected form of matter which doesn't interact with any other matter except gravitationally?" Maybe, but that seems to be the hard way to get an answer.
This is tongue-in-cheek of course, but it's hard to trust intuition in these realms, especially when one person's intuition is another person's "hard way" :)
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#6Something has orbits around galaxies failing to follow the law of gravity from ordinary matter. The orbits are as if there there is some more mass with gravity, mass that doesn't interact with light. Something is in/near galaxies is bending light as if there were more mass there than there is from just ordinary matter. So, for that extra mass, call it dark matter . Seems simple enough. "Flaw in the theory of gravity?…
Alternatively: The orbits around galaxies fail to follow the law of gravity of ordinary matter. The orbits are as if our gravity calculations, which seem to work well otherwise, are flawed. Something in/near galaxies causes them to bend light as if gravity were different. So, for that region, call it a flaw in the theory of gravity. Seems simple enough. "Unseen, never-before-detected form of matter which doesn't inte…
Yeah, but AFAIK all the explanations based around adjusting our theory of gravity have failed to match the results, and tend to be pretty complicated and thus prone to overfitting.
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#7Interesting, I always thought of dark matter as just a lot of extra "dust", the dust that clumps to make the stars that make up the universe. The asteroid belt, the extra mass in our kuiper or oort clouds, etc. The dust that blocks parts of our view of the Milky way.
This article (and others I'm now skimming) point out that dark matter needs other magical properties however. Why is that the case? Why does simple "dark dust" not fit?
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#8Something has orbits around galaxies failing to follow the law of gravity from ordinary matter. The orbits are as if there there is some more mass with gravity, mass that doesn't interact with light. Something is in/near galaxies is bending light as if there were more mass there than there is from just ordinary matter. So, for that extra mass, call it dark matter . Seems simple enough. "Flaw in the theory of gravity?…
Exactly. Dark matter and dark energy is just a symptom of the standard model of physics being incorrect.
>Dark matter neither emits nor absorbs light or any other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level. According to the Planck mission team, and based on the standard model of cosmology, the total mass–energy of the known universe contains 4.9% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter and 68.3% dark energy.[2][3] Thus, dark matter is estimated to constitute 84.5% of the total matter in the universe, while dark energy plus dark matter constitute 95.1% of the total mass–energy content of the universe.[4][5][6]
Science is literally religious faith.
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#9Interesting, I always thought of dark matter as just a lot of extra "dust", the dust that clumps to make the stars that make up the universe. The asteroid belt, the extra mass in our kuiper or oort clouds, etc. The dust that blocks parts of our view of the Milky way. This article (and others I'm now skimming) point out that dark matter needs other magical properties however. Why is that the case? Why does simple "dar…
There'd have to be so much of it that we'd see it. There's way more dark matter than normal matter in the universe (stipulating that dark matter theories as we currently understand them are at a coarse level correct).
If it were "dark dust," there would be enough of it that we would be able to detect it through means other than gravitational ones.
Re: Could dark matter not exist?
#10Interesting, I always thought of dark matter as just a lot of extra "dust", the dust that clumps to make the stars that make up the universe. The asteroid belt, the extra mass in our kuiper or oort clouds, etc. The dust that blocks parts of our view of the Milky way. This article (and others I'm now skimming) point out that dark matter needs other magical properties however. Why is that the case? Why does simple "dar…
Because dust would emit something, especially while being hot from nearby stars radiation. It would also absorb waves from background, to some degree. Dust and gasses are pretty familiar guys, comparing to dark matter.