4 ms·

Dark matter and dark energy are like what if there was no Einstein to discover relativity in early 1900s. We later continue to discover that gravity can't expla

• superjan 4y ago
  There is certainly new physics involved, the issue is more that for dark matter, the evidence points to matter that hardly, or perhaps not at all, interacts* with the stuff we are familiar with (standard model). It might be that the correct theory of dark matter is already found and debated, we just have no way to tell it from the false ones, as for all that we know, dark matter might be a shadow world of spaghetti monsters of which we only know its existence via their gravitation. *) Except gravity.
  • throwawaymaths 4y ago
    > the evidence points to matter that hardly, or perhaps not at all, interacts* with the stuff we are familiar with I think this is why people get frustrated with the DM story. It's not the evidence that points to that. It's the lack of evidence that points to that. Specifically speaking, we keep hypothesizing limits on interaction in the hopes of finding it below some threshold but keep pushing those limits back. A multimodal observation would be clutch, but we keep confirming that a multimodal observation can't happen.
• fsh 4y ago
  You are cherry-picking one particular example. The neutrino and the planet Neptune were "dark matter" for decades until better detectors became available.
  • throwawaymaths 4y ago
    Ironically Pluto was found the same way that Neptune was, but it turned out to be a calculation error.