> Clearly examining models of the universe that dont depend upon 95% mystical stuff may be an avenue worth exploring. You're far from the first person to sugge

> Clearly examining models of the universe that dont depend upon 95% mystical stuff may be an avenue worth exploring. You're far from the first person to suggest such an idea. And far from it being a new idea. There have been a whole lot of people who have tried to come up with an alternative solution, and the problem is, they're all universally significantly worse. I don't mean to disparage you, but this is pretty much universally the reaction people have when they first learn about the scale of dark matter, and that has resulted in significant research efforts to put forward a different solution... but dark matter is still a superior answer to the question. One thing that isn't immediately obvious is that we have a wide variety of ways to estimate the mass of things. Just for galaxies, we can look at their radial velocities, x-ray spectrum and flux, and gravitational lensing. These approach the measurement from very different methods, yet all of them strongly align with dark matter. Modifying our theory of gravity to alternative explanations has yet to be able to account for just these three methods, and they're just a subset of the observations we have that support dark matter's existence. > How in the world can the dominant theory for the universe be based on it being 95% filled with mystical shit that we cant prove, but makes our math happy. We could write a library's worth of books about things that math has predicted before we could experimentally prove it or otherwise observe it. Dark matter makes a whole bunch of math in a whole bunch of places work, including in areas where MOND and its derivatives and other alternative solutions fall down. LIGO and gravitational waves have also blown big holes in alternative theories like TeVeS. Basically, the more data we get, the more it supports dark matter. Providing a viable alternative explanation that can answer the same questions and would match our observations would instantly shortlist you for the nobel prize in physics. A whole lot of incredibly intelligent people have tried and failed. And it's not like physicists "like" dark matter - no one is more frustrated by the fact that something so hugely important to the makeup of the universe is damn near invisible to us than the physicists who work in these areas.