4 ms·
> I don't understand why consensus jumped to the conclusion that there must be a new form of undetectable matter instead trying to figure out what we don't know
by digbybk 5y ago
> I don't understand why consensus jumped to the conclusion that there must be a new form of undetectable matter instead trying to figure out what we don't know about gravity.
Is it implied in "I don't understand" that "it's not understandable?" There is quite a bit of evidence that point towards dark matter and away from problems in our theories of gravity. We have direct evidence for forms of matter that do not interact with particular fields, it would be unsurprising to find other forms that are extremely difficult or impossible to detect.
- godelski 5y agoMost notably if it was just gravity then we'd expect the effect to be more homogeneous. But with dark matter distribution it isn't. The distribution of dark matter is highly non-homogeneous and acts just like matter does, creating webs and clumps. It would be weird for a field to do this, especially since fields are associated with particles (we still haven't found the graviton, which is the exception to that statement, so far. But we also don't expect to find it without a substantially larger accelerator. One that would be difficult to build on earth)