Caption: an interview dialogue
- Are dark matter models unsuited to explain observations? [the “dark matter models” and “to explain observations” parts are poorly edited onto the image, overlaying the original text]
- In my view, they are unsuited.
- Why?
- That’s my opinion, don’t ask me why.
End of caption
Dark matter is the mainstream among physicists, but internet commentators keep saying it can’t be right because it “feels off”.
Of course, skepticism is good for science! You just need to justify it more than saying the mainstream “feels off”.
For people who prefer alternative explanations over dark matter for non-vibe-based reasons, I would love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment!
Im not reading on that specifically right now, but I think one problem with dark matter is that it’s not a falsifyable hypothesis and likely never will be. I can make up an explanation over any body of proof of a phenomena and just say that my explanation is due to undetectable things. An alternative theory would be something like stars spinning produce electromagnetic fields which account for the apparent acceleration that’s attributed to gravity caused by an invisible mass. You can measure electromagnetic fields and you can refine models of our sun to try and prove it, and then reach for further discovery. Dark matter feels like a well that’s that. Can’t see it, can’t touch it, can’t prove it doesn’t exist. It should be what remains after we’ve actually tried explanations based on observed phenomenas. That’s just my barely informed take on it.
Dark matter is not a theory.
It’s an observation with several theories to explain the observation. So far no theory seemed to be conclusive.
This is a very fair take, but I’d say dark matter is harder to falsify, but not totally unfalsifiable.
You can’t see it, true. But what makes sight so special? We can’t smell stars either. You just need to sense dark matter in some other way. Namely gravity! We have seen the way visible matter orbit, and that points to dark matter. We have seen gravitational lensing due to dark matter. Hopefully soon we’ll observe gravitational waves well enough to sense dark matter around the regions the waves are being emitted from.
Most individual dark matter models are falsifiable (and many have already been falsified) through non-gravitational means too. People have been building all sorts of detectors. The problem with this is that detectors are expensive and there are always more models beyond any detector’s reaches.