I feel like “dark matter” is the ether or phlogiston of our era
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My understanding is that although something weird is going on there's quite a lot of experimental data saying "no there really is some actual physical stuff there and not much else makes sense as an explanation"
Ok but I still feel that fits the metaphor of ether, in that we say “our current theory and evidence implies something is there so we gonna hand wave and call it dark ma-... ether, until one day we’ll actually know what actual complex thing is going on”
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Like a placeholder
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Now I see through a matter, darkly
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The big difference is that ether was postulated because we went "well there must be some stuff there to support this theory". Dark Matter we don't particularly want there to be stuff there, but the testable predictions keep panning out.
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Which is not to say that we understand what's going on (although "we" probably understand what's going on much better than *I* do), but that it's not like nobody involved has thought of this, it's that they've thought of it and the evidence doesn't pan out.
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Dark energy might be a better fit here (based on my strictly lay knowledge of the field, discount accordingly)
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Commenting as an astronomer. There is rather solid astronomical evidence for dark matter, despite that we don't understand it at all in particle physics sense. The gravitational effects are well measured. However, as long as there is no direct observation of dark matter ...
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I think dark matter is doing better than that. We can now make maps of where it is by the way it lenses light. We don't know what it is, but it's definitely there and acting like matter that is dark. https://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/04/20/how-gravitational-lensing-show …
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The standard alternative is MOND (hello
@DudeDarkmatter) and the compromise model is superfluid dark matter https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.01019 -
It is an either or false dilemma: no need for slow moving non interactive Matter particles nor modification to our understanding of gravity for now. A gravitational wave background has been overlooked as a cosmic agent: http://gregoriobaquero.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/gra …
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