And again, like with the galaxy cluster, the simplest explanation is that there is a lot of mass that’s ‘dark’ and undetectable. And also that this mysterious mass extends far beyond the edges of the galaxies that we can see.
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And in a nutshell, that is pretty much the story of dark matter. Now, you might be wondering, if we can’t detect it, how do we know that it’s there? What if something weird is happening on large scales of the sizes of galaxies that’s causing these phenomena.
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Well, almost everyone’s considered that at some point, but we can’t find a simpler explanation than ‘weird undetectable matter that somehow makes up most of matter but we still can’t see it.’ That doesn’t seem very convincing, but it is what it is.
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There are people out there who advocate for a theory which claims that the force of gravity changes on large scales, and that in fact no extra mass is needed. The majority of the physics community however, are not convinced.
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So if we’re sticking to the theory of dark matter, then do we at least have any clues as to what it may be, and why it’s hiding so well? Well, the good news is that we do ( and we probably have way too many ideas about this than we should)..
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One obvious answer would be: black holes! black holes are dark, are they not? Maybe black holes are dark matter. We wouldn’t be able to see them, after all. Although it would be really cool, dark matter probably isn’t made of tiny black holes.
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Replying to @Plinz
I believe there are people out there trying to find evidence for tiny black hole, but so far nothing.
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In any case, our models of the universe are entirely based of the information that gets back to us.
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