Could dark matter not exist?

I guess I need to elaborate on this answer.

Perhaps our observations are a result of existing within two gravitational space-time distortions, one trivial and one not. The trivial one being the Sun and the non-trivial being the galaxy which we inhabit.

If curvature of space-time theorized by General Relativity is accepted, then observing non-local energy will be affected by gravity in which the observation is being undertaken. Accounting for the Sun's influence has largely (if not completely) been addressed, but there lies a more difficult "elephant in the room" problem of determining what effect the gravitational curvature of the Milky Way has on any observations we can make.

According to the University of Oregon[1], the observable mass of the Milky Way is 200,000,000,000 Solar masses. The same material indicates that visible stars account for 30% of that. Throw in a bit for singularities and lets call it "less than 50%" for the sake of discussion. In any event, there exists enough mass in this galaxy to plausibly state that the space-time we inhabit is affected. Yet a non-trivial amount considered "unaccounted for."

Using the canonical 3d inverse-cone visualization of matter's effect on space-time, imagine our solar system exists on some point within the galaxy's gravitational cone yet not near its center. Making intra-galactic calculations may be influenced by compressed space-time instead of the presence of dark matter. And observations regarding other galaxies colliding (as mentioned in the article) migth be explained by gravitational phase shifting.

Though all of this likely will be rebuked, it is why I originally said "sure."

1 - http://hendrix2.uoregon.edu/~imamura/123cs/lecture-2/mass.ht...

> Real science is rarely so clean.

I'm no physicist but I've never liked dark matter and dark energy: they smell suspiciously similar to hacks (the bad kind) if a hack could be defined as over-fitting a solution to a problem.

It seems as though, recently, science has become rather bad at the words "I don't know." Things were staying together more than they should so we invented dark matter in order to explain that. Now, whenever something stays together more than it should we claim that dark matter has more evidence[1]: no, there is simply more evidence of the problem that dark matter seeks to solve. How do we even know it's a single problem (a.k.a. force)? How do we even know that dark energy is another problem?

It's like me claiming that little monsters called frombles are responsible for light and every time I see light I claim "see! There's light, so there are frombles!"

Not that dark matter is a bad solution, I just feel as though there is a disproportionate amount of people looking into it given that we've never actually observed a WIMP. Nor do I think that research into dark matter should cease, it has so far found a really good definition of the problem and, yes, WIMPs are a good candidate solution.

If we could have a few more people educated in the field start off at "I don't know," that would be great. You know, the "dirty" kind of science that used to be done when nobody really knew what was going on at all - that's when we learned the most: when we didn't have the "safe bet" research topics. When people came up with stupid ideas and tested those stupid ideas. Stupid ideas are the best ideas because it at least means that one person is thinking outside of the box.

[1]: http://www.iflscience.com/physics/researchers-claim-have-fou...

Dark matter isn't a solution, it's a quantification of the unknown. It's more nuanced than just "I don't know", but it's not far from it. I think you're wrong that science is bad at those words, it's just that's it all plays out a little more subtly than that. There are lots of things we DO know about this unknown phenomenon that we've named dark matter, and we have lots of theories, but everyone will admit it's still a bit of a mystery.

Well, it would be pretty useless if we named every unproven theory simply "don't know".

Perhaps we should call it "dark matter hypothesis", but that also gets awkward after a while.

Dark matter is the eflourescent ether theory of the 21st century.

The quip I'm fond of is:

   Dark Matter is the Phlogiston
   of Contemporary Cosmology

But, right now, dark matter is the best explanation we have of what we've observed.