5 ms·

Yeah we should stop calling it dark matter and call it “missing matter” or “the unexplained matter issue” or something that is more obviously a placeholder.

commentenjoyer 3y ago
Why should the academic community care about your opinion? Dark is a very accurate term
- T-A 3y ago
  Not really. "Transparent matter" would be better.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > "Transparent matter" would be better Dark implies the unknown. The Dark Ages weren’t literally dark, we just don’t have a lot of written sources from the era. Transparent matter implies a known property about something we don’t know. To the extent dark matter is a problematic term, it’s in the matter but.
    - T-A 3y ago
      Dark is ambiguous: it can mean light is not emitted, but it can also mean light is absorbed. Even going with the first one, it's an incomplete description at best. "Dark" matter does not simply fail to emit light; it does not interact with light at all (other than by gravity, and that only bends it slightly, no absorption or emission involved). Transparent fully captures this. The overloaded meanings of those words which you are invoking are not relevant to the description of a physical property.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > "Dark" matter does not simply fail to emit light; it does not interact with light at all We don’t know this. We have a parcel of observations from which we are trying to intuit a cause.
        T-A 3y ago
        Those are two separate things: 1) We have unexplained observations. 2) A hypothetical explanation is dark matter, defined as a form of matter which does not interact with light (other than through gravity). Whether dark matter actually exists does not affect how it's defined.
  - dekken_ 3y ago
    "Assumed" tbh cause it's an assumption our "measurements" are representative of the reality of what's actually going on that far away. we can't verify anything from this distance, so calling it empiricism is a stretch
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > we can't verify anything from this distance, so calling it empiricism is a stretch We can’t directly sense most phenomena, and even then our senses can be misleading. Empiricism just means based on observation; that describes cosmology to a tee.
jfengel 3y ago
If it is matter at all, then we do know something about it, that it is "dark" (does not interact with electromagnetism). The alternative is that it isn't matter at all, and that some other explanation is required for galactic rotation curves, the Bullet Galaxy, observed gravitational lensing, and the configuration of the cosmic microwave background. It's nice that one theory currently does all of that. That doesn't guarantee that it's right, but it means it's more than just "we have a guess about one thing".
ArekDymalski 3y ago
Let me suggest Lorem Ipsum Matter ;)
somenameforme 3y ago
Another practical issue with this name is that it suggests a singular entity. 'Dark matter' could very well be the result of multiple independent phenomena.

commentenjoyer 3y ago

Why should the academic community care about your opinion? Dark is a very accurate term

T-A 3y ago
Not really. "Transparent matter" would be better.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > "Transparent matter" would be better Dark implies the unknown. The Dark Ages weren’t literally dark, we just don’t have a lot of written sources from the era. Transparent matter implies a known property about something we don’t know. To the extent dark matter is a problematic term, it’s in the matter but.
  - T-A 3y ago
    Dark is ambiguous: it can mean light is not emitted, but it can also mean light is absorbed. Even going with the first one, it's an incomplete description at best. "Dark" matter does not simply fail to emit light; it does not interact with light at all (other than by gravity, and that only bends it slightly, no absorption or emission involved). Transparent fully captures this. The overloaded meanings of those words which you are invoking are not relevant to the description of a physical property.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > "Dark" matter does not simply fail to emit light; it does not interact with light at all We don’t know this. We have a parcel of observations from which we are trying to intuit a cause.
      - T-A 3y ago
        Those are two separate things: 1) We have unexplained observations. 2) A hypothetical explanation is dark matter, defined as a form of matter which does not interact with light (other than through gravity). Whether dark matter actually exists does not affect how it's defined.
- dekken_ 3y ago
  "Assumed" tbh cause it's an assumption our "measurements" are representative of the reality of what's actually going on that far away. we can't verify anything from this distance, so calling it empiricism is a stretch
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > we can't verify anything from this distance, so calling it empiricism is a stretch We can’t directly sense most phenomena, and even then our senses can be misleading. Empiricism just means based on observation; that describes cosmology to a tee.

jfengel 3y ago

If it is matter at all, then we do know something about it, that it is "dark" (does not interact with electromagnetism). The alternative is that it isn't matter at all, and that some other explanation is required for galactic rotation curves, the Bullet Galaxy, observed gravitational lensing, and the configuration of the cosmic microwave background. It's nice that one theory currently does all of that. That doesn't guarantee that it's right, but it means it's more than just "we have a guess about one thing".

ArekDymalski 3y ago

Let me suggest Lorem Ipsum Matter ;)

somenameforme 3y ago

Another practical issue with this name is that it suggests a singular entity. 'Dark matter' could very well be the result of multiple independent phenomena.