is this just bs?

it smelled like bs the first time i heard about it

something invented to prevent dealing with the reality that there are inconsistencies in modern physics

as with newton -> eintstein, i believe in time we will continue to refine physics and what we know today will eventually be considered rough yet inaccurate approximations missing several important elements we've yet to discover

science does not seek to adress the truth. Nothing is provable and it seems nothing is 100% when it comes to science. They make a new discovery every day that can alter any theory entirely. The question you should be asking is, if there is no dark matter, then what takes its place to keep the universe together? if anything?

Neil Gershenfeld,-
"Uncertainty is intrinsic to the process of finding out what you don’t know, not a weakness to avoid. Bugs are features – violations of expectations are opportunities to refine them. And decisions are made by evaluating what works better, not by invoking received wisdom.”

I don't see how a unknown element(matter) is different from Dark Matter(unknown matter). Though my understanding of dark matter could be flawed since i havent looked into it recently.

dark matter is just the name we give to mass that doesn't radiate any energy

An "unknown element" would be some combination of protons/neutrons/electrons that we haven't observed yet. "Dark matter" isn't necessarily matter at all, it is just mass we detect in the universe that we cannot see. We detect it because it still has mass and a gravitational effect.

Examine this image:



If there was no "dark matter" in the universe we would calculate the rotational velocity of parts of the galaxy to follow the red line, decreasing from the center. However, we actually observe that the galaxy is rotating at an almost uniform velocity, regardless of the distance to the center (excluding very close in). We can only explain this by inferring the existence of mass that does not radiate any electromagnetic energy.

This post was edited by Jp2050 on Jun 22 2013 03:41pm

lol wut?

there are no missing elements. once you get deep into and pass the f-shell the elements decay in an instant. thats why they arnt found in nature and have to be artificially made in order to be studied.
and yes dark matter is exactly that, something invented to compensate for our observations. our model was wrong, so we changed the model; thats how science works. the alternative is that our understanding of physics is fundamentally flawed which apparantly is less likely.


first, scientific theories are much less flimsy than you make them out to be. and second im not sure if youre criticizing or praising the scientific method. because the bold is GOOD thing about science: if our observation do match our hypothesis/theory, then the theory must be wrong and we will try again to model the new observations. thats how progress is made, and knowledge is learned.

i mean element as in something, no reference to the periodic table/atoms

to answer your question dark matter is real.

this is his attempt at sounding intelligent

no its really not.. you know how people talk shit on theories all the time because theyre 'just theories'
this is one of the very rare cases where dark matter really is 'just a theory' at this point. adding it into our models fixes a handful of problems but we havnt even come close to confirming it