3 ms·

No its not a hypothetical. The measurements are there. Something unexpected is happening and nobody knows for certain what. The problem is someone picked the m

No its not a hypothetical. The measurements are there. Something unexpected is happening and nobody knows for certain what. The problem is someone picked the misleading name "Dark Matter" and then pop science, and actual scientists talking to laymen did the massive disservice of wording the explanation in such a way as to make it sound like there is a real theory that proposes there is some matter that interacts with gravity yet is invisible and undetectable in literally every other way called dark matter. I only learned the distinction in college when another student pointed out that dark matter as described was unscientific because it was an unfalsifiable, not to mention generally useless anyways. That led to patient explanation that it wasn't a hypothesis or theory and it was just what they called the observations. Would have been nice if anyone had bothered to start with that. There are a lot of hypothesis about what it really is. Neutrinos, WIMPS, SIMPS (heh), MOND etc etc. Personally I lean towards the got gravity wrong bit although not any specific explanation. I'm not a physicist but history and logic would suggest that while relativity is a pretty good explanation its far from complete. And I see no reason why forces necessarily have to work the same on the small scale and grand.

Maursault 5y ago
Dark matter first gained notoriety when hypothesized to explain observations of galaxy rotation curves. Since the late 1930's, there have been a number of observations unrelated to galaxy rotation curves that couldn't be explained with contemporary science, so... it's dark matter! A lot that can't be explained got shoved into the dark matter hypothesis. Once enough things that couldn't be explained were lumped into dark matter, it became a part of the science paradigm. Once you understand paradigms, you'll understand why it seems like all of science is convinced that dark matter exists. But this is not actually the case, it is merely that dark matter has not been disproven. The luminiferous ether, another famous hypothesis, was once also embedded in the paradigm of science, and it only took one experiment to prove it did not exist to dislodge it. Dark matter is going to stick around until disproven, that is the nature of paradigms. As it turns out, dark matter is absolutely unnecessary to explain galaxy rotation curves, which can be simply explained and demonstrated accurately with a toy model without needing anything remotely like dark matter nor even Modified Newtonian Dynamics, but just the ordinary Newtonian physics. I suspect as time goes on, more and more of the stuff unrelated to each other that dark matter is employed to explain will be explained without the need for dark matter. There are no direct observations of dark matter, none whatsoever. And by definition, there never will be. It can't be seen! What there is instead are observations that don't have immediate explanations, so dark matter is hypothesized to explain it. That makes dark matter a hypothesis.
- kitchi 5y ago
  Can you expand a little bit on how the galaxy rotation curves were explained from standard Newtonian physics? From some Googling it appears that dark matter is still the dominant favourite theory, followed by some kind of MOND.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    > dark matter is still the dominant favourite theory, followed by some kind of MOND. Yes, this is a precise problem with scientific paradigms! > Can you expand a little bit on how the galaxy rotation curves were explained from standard Newtonian physics? Maybe I exaggerated a bit as with these scales surely Relativity is involved. No, I think it's just tidal forces, no need for dark matter. Fundamentally, I think, it was unrecognized human error that became foundational, massively built upon, such that even though the original pivotal need for dark matter is eliminated, dark matter is still successful for other models. Galaxy rotation curves were originally observed in a galaxy in isolation, without consideration of nearby galaxies, creating the illusion of gravitational isolation. When accounting for nearby galaxies tidal effects, rotation curves are neatly explained. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL0ewiwqoTw&t=6m11s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL0ewiwqoTw&t=6m11s

Maursault 5y ago

Dark matter first gained notoriety when hypothesized to explain observations of galaxy rotation curves. Since the late 1930's, there have been a number of observations unrelated to galaxy rotation curves that couldn't be explained with contemporary science, so... it's dark matter! A lot that can't be explained got shoved into the dark matter hypothesis. Once enough things that couldn't be explained were lumped into dark matter, it became a part of the science paradigm. Once you understand paradigms, you'll understand why it seems like all of science is convinced that dark matter exists. But this is not actually the case, it is merely that dark matter has not been disproven. The luminiferous ether, another famous hypothesis, was once also embedded in the paradigm of science, and it only took one experiment to prove it did not exist to dislodge it. Dark matter is going to stick around until disproven, that is the nature of paradigms. As it turns out, dark matter is absolutely unnecessary to explain galaxy rotation curves, which can be simply explained and demonstrated accurately with a toy model without needing anything remotely like dark matter nor even Modified Newtonian Dynamics, but just the ordinary Newtonian physics. I suspect as time goes on, more and more of the stuff unrelated to each other that dark matter is employed to explain will be explained without the need for dark matter. There are no direct observations of dark matter, none whatsoever. And by definition, there never will be. It can't be seen! What there is instead are observations that don't have immediate explanations, so dark matter is hypothesized to explain it. That makes dark matter a hypothesis.

kitchi 5y ago
Can you expand a little bit on how the galaxy rotation curves were explained from standard Newtonian physics? From some Googling it appears that dark matter is still the dominant favourite theory, followed by some kind of MOND.
- Maursault 5y ago
  > dark matter is still the dominant favourite theory, followed by some kind of MOND. Yes, this is a precise problem with scientific paradigms! > Can you expand a little bit on how the galaxy rotation curves were explained from standard Newtonian physics? Maybe I exaggerated a bit as with these scales surely Relativity is involved. No, I think it's just tidal forces, no need for dark matter. Fundamentally, I think, it was unrecognized human error that became foundational, massively built upon, such that even though the original pivotal need for dark matter is eliminated, dark matter is still successful for other models. Galaxy rotation curves were originally observed in a galaxy in isolation, without consideration of nearby galaxies, creating the illusion of gravitational isolation. When accounting for nearby galaxies tidal effects, rotation curves are neatly explained. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL0ewiwqoTw&t=6m11s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL0ewiwqoTw&t=6m11s