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Because I was taught at a young age to assume everyone is fallible and question assumptions, and it seemed an awful lot like a rounding error to me at the time.

Because I was taught at a young age to assume everyone is fallible and question assumptions, and it seemed an awful lot like a rounding error to me at the time. As people have mentioned, there is apparently now more substantial support for it, but back then it was posited based on equations only, and seemed a lot more like trying to explain away a theory not fully matching reality

rmah 5y ago
Um, as I understand it, dark matter was not posited by equations but by how observations differed from the the equations. And essentially, this is still the state of things. To wit, the standard model doesn't match observation unless there is this "dark matter" out there. We have no idea what it is. It's just what we call a particular type of ignorance. Current work is either a) assume that the theory is correct and that "dark matter" actually exists so they try to figure out what it is or b) assume that current theory is wrong and so try to come up with a better theory. Or c) a combination. And essentially the same thing for "dark energy".
- sam0x17 5y ago
  I recall that back in the day my thought was that "Or our model of gravity is just wrong and what we're observing is correct (as in, visible matter is causing this behavior), we just don't understand how gravity works at massive scales because there are variables we aren't taking into account" but honestly it's been so long I forget all the basic info on this.
random314 5y ago
> Because I was taught at a young age to assume everyone is fallible and question assumptions It is generally a good idea to have some familiarity (or better still, expertise) with a topic and knowing what the actual assumptions are before questioning them. I was very surprised that you had that kind of expertise in high school. For eg, did you know about the electromagnetic field theory and Maxwell's introduction/invention of displacement current in high school? Or reimannian geometry?

rmah 5y ago

Um, as I understand it, dark matter was not posited by equations but by how observations differed from the the equations. And essentially, this is still the state of things. To wit, the standard model doesn't match observation unless there is this "dark matter" out there. We have no idea what it is. It's just what we call a particular type of ignorance. Current work is either a) assume that the theory is correct and that "dark matter" actually exists so they try to figure out what it is or b) assume that current theory is wrong and so try to come up with a better theory. Or c) a combination. And essentially the same thing for "dark energy".

sam0x17 5y ago
I recall that back in the day my thought was that "Or our model of gravity is just wrong and what we're observing is correct (as in, visible matter is causing this behavior), we just don't understand how gravity works at massive scales because there are variables we aren't taking into account" but honestly it's been so long I forget all the basic info on this.

random314 5y ago

> Because I was taught at a young age to assume everyone is fallible and question assumptions It is generally a good idea to have some familiarity (or better still, expertise) with a topic and knowing what the actual assumptions are before questioning them. I was very surprised that you had that kind of expertise in high school. For eg, did you know about the electromagnetic field theory and Maxwell's introduction/invention of displacement current in high school? Or reimannian geometry?