I post the detection of a alleged Dark matter particle, because it's so vague, 1 data point per a test. Something is there but I don't think it's dark matter in the way it's explained now.

Might it just be possible that because we built everything around this one theory that we can't get physical proof that we are missing multiple different reasons and even fields.

I feel a lot of science has bogged it's self down with theory and maybes for decades and decades now with no proof. And with the paper printer of Universities, even old or disprove theories keep getting posted.

I am not denying the existence of some kind of matter but everything is so varied I don't believe just dark matter exists. And Science just keeps bogging it's self down in theories and running around in circles

Wanna see a opinion or someone disproving me.

I need to go to bed so I won't be answering if people have some questions in couple of hours.

Sounds somewhat like the reasoning for the existence of a creator.

Dark Matter is just a placeholder AFAIK until something more proven comes along. It explains why galaxies hold together, but it's just a stand-in for the time being.

I feel a lot of science has bogged it’s self down with theory and maybes for decades and decades

I mean, scientifically there's a huge difference between the two. For example, the theory of gravity is so well-tested and supported that it's about as close to proven as can be. A "maybe" isn't even a hypothesis yet, but it's perhaps an intermediate step. Maybes are good, because they represent relevant scientists coming up with ideas to help explain reality, which can then fade away or solidify as things unwind. Without maybes you don't get well-supported theories... which is like science not able to get anywhere.

Saying "just dark matter" might be missing what could be a whole category of types of objects and particles. The wiki for dark matter is rather long and detailed. There isn't one type, that's part of the problem of seeing unexplained influences that need certain properties but by principle is hard to detect normally.

In short, something is going on in the observed evidence of what is termed as dark matter. Normal matter we're familiar with doesn't work. So we make models of things it might be and try to verify them.

There's experimental evidence for dark matter

Absolutely not. Only if you have the brainslug maybe

There are some particles that don’t interact via the electromagnetic force. There are some particles that don’t interact via the strong force. And there are some particles that don’t interact via the weak force. All the particles we know, we’ve detected because they interact via at least one of those forces—but there’s no rule that says a particle must interact with any of them.

Why should we assume that every particle in existence must be conveniently detectable? It’s like a blind person assuming nothing can exist unless it makes a noise.

dark matter could be a lot of things. its a known x factor and it does not necessarily mean its definately some kind of esoteric matter. That is why they work to detect it to narrow down what it could be. I mean I have not looked at the most up to date stuff and honestly don't care to atm. its a complicated topic. would likely look for a pbs space time if anything. there are lots of things like that when you get to the edges.

It's distributed mass. Not concentrated.

I think it sits in a place similar to where "the ether" used to sit. Similar because lots of ppl take that it is an actual known thing. Dissimilar b/c those who do work around it understand it's more like, as you've found, stuff implied from all we've learned regarding physics to date. Without it the math kinda falls apart.

Then you might ask "well, could the math we use now actually be wrong?" I think the answer to that comes back around to "but the math we do have actually works really well; throwing that out is very hard to do".

Personally I think it needs new naming; calling it anything other than a question adds bias that may end up wasting time.

No this is Patrick, I mean science doing its thing where it continuously corrects and updates as new information is introduced. Something which religion seems rather incapable of doing. Though I do believe religion has some valuable tidbits about the core of human existence, creator myths were only really ever a method of social control, and perhaps an easier answer prior to industrial/modern knowledge.

That is exactly what the "dark" in "dark matter" and "dark energy" means: that our theories require it to exist to explain our observations, but we have no way to detect it, ergo it is "dark".

It's like the infamous cosmological constant that Einstein initially added to the theory of relativity. Just like the "dark" things it had no physical analogue, and was there so that his equations held for a universe of constant size. When Hubble demonstrated that (contrary to the belief at the time) the universe was expanding the cosmological constant was no longer needed.

It is entirely possible that a new theory will explain what the dark stuff is and we will be able to remove those terms from the equations that need them in order to explain our observations. It is possible that we will find some kind of actual matter that interacts with the gravitational force but not the strong, weak, or electromagnetic forces, which I think is what would be needed for a "dark matter particle".

In my personal opinion, the best explanation I've heard is that the error terms are best explained by the expansion of space itself. Specifically, we have some very recent evidence that the expansion of space isn't uniform, and that might explain a significant amount of the dark energy. PBS Space Time does a good job with relevant videos and keeping up with the science.

No physicist will tell you that we know what "dark matter" or "dark energy" is, because we don't. I think most would agree with you that ultimately we will find multiple explanations that add up to "dark matter + dark energy".

I think the one thing that I disagree with you on is that science is "bogged down" with theories and maybes. The theories and maybes are where the most exciting research is happening!

Science isn't the body of knowledge that results from experimentation; it's the cycle of theory and experimentation that generates new knowledge. We don't remember the hundreds and hundreds of false theories that had to be argued about and discarded to get to relativity or quantum theory. Today we only read the papers that were proven right in hindsight. If you look at "dark matter/energy" science of today we're in that churn, so it looks different. In time, all these disproved theories will be forgotten, too.

"Dark matter" and "dark energy" are the "errors in the prediction of Mercury's orbit" (relativity) or "errors in the predictions of black-body radiation" (quantum) of our time.

Dark matter isn't proven or disproven. Dark matter is an unknown force or substance that is required to exist, based on mathematical models of the universe

Something which religion seems rather incapable of doing

Religions update constantly due to changing social pressures. Its why there's constant schisms in Protestentism, or the Mormons coming out and saying "Hey god sent us a message, black people are cool now, they no longer need to be so sinless their skin turns white to be accepted" in the 90s.

im convinced its some kind of black hole rather than an unknown, exotic form of matter

Dark matter is not a theory. Stop treating it like one.

Wanna see a opinion or someone disproving me.

How about just sitting down and recognizing when you have no idea what you're talking about instead of trying to backseat a field whose understanding you have is "I watched some YouTube videos lol".

You sound like a shitty regurgitation of grifter Sabine Hossenfelder.

Our current mathematical models are pretty damn close to how stuff works in reality. But like you said, for it to work out, you need to fudge the numbers a little. That's dark energy.

Dark matter is, as far as we can tell, a real thing, just really hard to detect. It's not a placeholder in the same way dark energy is. Something out there is exerting actual gravity.

Millions of man-hours have been spent on this. No one is going to prove or disprove it for you in some Lemmy comments. I would seek out talks from actual astrophysicists, not YouTube junk pop science.

Tons of fundamental particles were merely hypothesized until people actually built particle accelerators large enough to detect them. Theories are how scientists puzzle out what's worth exploring next. (See the eightfold way )

The reason particle physics might seem to be moving slower than it used to is just because we've found all the "easy" stuff. The more elusive particles are going to be a lot trickier to wrangle.

I think our fundamental understanding of gravity is wrong. Thats why quantum gravity can't by combined with our gravity. And why it can't be messed with what im going to call macro gravity at a universal scale. And thats why 95% of the matter in the universe has to be fabricated.

Came here to say this. It's called "dark" because we know so little about it. Everything we know about it is based on what has to be there to make the equations we've "proven" balance. As we know more about it, we'll give a new name to reflect what we've learned about it.

But... but they're convinced!

Edit: It is worth noting, though, that the "some kind of black hole" they'd be referring to are the hypothetical primordial black holes, which does have proponents as an explanation of dark matter.

Mainly I'm just dogging on the "convinced" part – like anyone in this thread seriously has even the remotest understanding to be convinced of an explanation of dark matter.

I think it's "dark" because it doesn't interact with photons (except gravitationally, of course)

Keep an eye out for results from the Roman space telescope, with any luck we're about to have a buttload of new data about dark matter.

And, predictably, Americans will literally use anything before they use the metric system.

And, predictably, Americans will literally use anything before they use the metric system.

But what metric unit would you use instead of square degrees?

I take offense to that, we use the metric system all the time!

why, one of our most popular products is in 9mm!

(alt: Glock 9mm pistol)

we even produce our own!

(alt: Browning hi-power chambered in 9mm)

Oh, I was talking about the 25,500 full moons.

I'm as American as the notion that apple pie is American and I use metric all the time. I convert in my head though, I can't get my brain to completely switch over.

It is super funny that Americans will deign to use millimeters for ammo, considering how much cultural cachet "caliber" has. Or had, I guess, I think it's less cool than it used to be.

You're correct.

Checkout Angela Collier’s video on the topic. Dark Matter is not a theory!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbmJkMhmrVI

Well if the particle doesn’t interact with anything does it matter if it exists or not?

Dark matter particles would still interact with gravity, but not the other forces. Gravity by itself is too weak to detect individual particles, but the effects of large numbers of them could still be seen.

"Dark matter" is both the imputed matter our models tell us has to be there to match our stellar observations, and the locally-testable explanation that all this imputed matter is some freakish particle we have literally never encountered before.

The former is about as close to a scientific fact as anything gets in astronomy, while the latter is more of a "if flies hatch from eggs where are the shells" kind of thing. It'll be really significant if a "quasi local meta-particle" or whatever is found, so both excitement and skepticism are absolutely appropriate here.

I just wish pop science was a little clearer about the distinction between "this is what we see" and "this is why we think it's like that."

Emergent properties.

It could be there is another force or state or something we don't yet know about (or can measure directly), which itself doesn't interact, but its emergent properties do.

The subatomic levels of whatever it is may not cause anything on its own, but as a system it may have completely different properties and interactions.

I use light nanoseconds for measurement :)

1 (C)ns = 11.802in, which is basically a foot..... or, its 29.979cm

its an astoundingly easy way to measure things after all :)

I look at it as a placeholder theory. There’s something there that is either dark matter, or has the properties of what we believe dark matter to be. Either way- eventually, it’ll be discovered.

Link to videos?

Degrees aren't a metric unit, actually. Gradians were an attempt to make a metric unit for angles, but nobody uses those so it didn't really work.

The people who designed and will use this telescope will be using "steredians", which is square radians. That's the unit which astrophysicists use for describing an area of the sky

It is a placeholder name, not a placeholder theory. There's something there, there are a bunch of theories trying to explain what, in the meantime we call it dark matter.

More like it needs to exist for THE RESULTS OF YOUR EXPERIMENT to make sense. Not the universe.

Dark matter is what you call whatever is left over when your instruments are telling you there is more something there, but it's impossible to measure any of the something using the methods we have now.

Nobody is saying to you "dark matter must exist for the universe as I understand it to exist"

They are saying to you "if the universe exists as we understand it, there is something more here that we do not understand"

Convinced by what exactly?

Only if you haven't thought about either religion or science before for even 2 minutes

Might it just be possible that because we built everything around this one theory that we can’t get physical proof that we are missing multiple different reasons and even fields.

Sort of. Physical proof says our current theory about the universe is incomplete and everyone is trying to find out what we are missing. You could say we're in the dark about the missing parts, be it matter and/or energy.

Dark matter is not a theory, it is an observation.

How is the linked graphic relevant to this discussion?

Understandable reaction, but I think it's good to remember that most people are going to have fuzzy understandings of these things and will naturally ask somewhat naïve questions like this. Personally I think it's better to find ways not to be too hard (or hostile) when responding with better information, else they get the swift idea 'well, if they're going to treat me like an arse then me mind's made up,' and all that jazz. And nothing changes.

Just my tuppence of course.

My original comment / response appears at the top of the thread, so feel free to critique, TBF.

I feel a lot of science has bogged it’s self down with theory and maybes for decades and decades now with no proof.

Absolutely. DAE remember the "theory of everything? Where did that go? String theory? Super symmetry? All bullshit without scientific evidence.

It's a similar thing with "artificial intelligence" which does not exist at all. It's just computer programs.

There's is no "science" under capitalism. It's a grift to build weapons for the enforcement of capitalism. That's why all research in USA is funded by DOD.

I think the answer to that comes back around to “but the math we do have actually works really well; throwing that out is very hard to do”.

This is extremely subjective. It works well for whom? At what?

It works ok for certain things, especially things on our own scale. Not so much for the universe, etc.

Normal matter we’re familiar with doesn’t work.

There's nothing dysfunctional about "normal matter". It's the theory that doesn't work.

Dark matter is an unknown force or substance that is required to exist based on mathematical models of the universe

Matter does not exist simply because a model requires it.

Why should we assume that every particle in existence must be conveniently detectable?

Why should we assume that particles exist when nobody can detect them?

Dark matter might not be the theory, but it's the explanation without evidence for why the theory fails.