The End of the Dark Universe?

https://nautil.us/the-end-of-the-dark-universe-531983/

by jnord • 2 years ago

35 23 2 years ago

nautil.us

bradley13• 2 years ago

Excellent! Dark matter is a kludge, the modern "ether". It's clear that we are missing something - maybe this is it...

V-2• 2 years ago

Phlogiston, C-field... the list of such "placeholders" is pretty long.

eigenket2• 2 years ago

The list includes the neutrino (added to explain missing momentum in observed nuclear decays), the Higgs (added to explain mass which would otherwise not make sense in electro-weak theory) and arguably antimatter (added to fix incompatibility between special relativity and quantum mechanics).

Reality is more complicated than slogans would suggest. Sometimes adding new types of matter to our understanding of physics was the right choice, sometimes it wasn't.

analog31• 2 years ago

Another example might be anomalies in planetary orbits that could be explained by a missing planet.

sesm• 2 years ago

Dark matter is an observation, that several independent phenomena give the same estimation of baryonic matter mass, which is roughly 5 times higher than estimations of visible matter. Does the article explain or even enumerate all of them? At a glance, it is just a ‘quantum’ justification for MOND, which only deals with galaxy rotation curves.

jacobsimon• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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

jfengel• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

Let me suggest Lorem Ipsum Matter ;)

somenameforme• 2 years 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.

mtillman• 2 years ago

Worth noting the author disagrees with the theory and states as much a few times in the article.

empath-nirvana• 2 years ago

Dark matter is a proposed explanation for an observation, that's all. All these other theories (MOND, etc) are also kludges. Nobody has a satisfactory explanation for galaxy rotation speeds, yet.

SideburnsOfDoom• 2 years ago

12 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39721463

7 days ago: "Anomalous contribution to galactic rotation curves due to stochastic spacetime (arxiv.org)"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39650489

Also discusses Professor Oppenheim's paper.

IG_Semmelweiss• 2 years ago

This article makes this subject more accesible

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/09/controversia...

xk_id• 2 years ago

Gave up after reading a few paragraphs. On my phone at the top of the page there’s an annoying HTML component with related articles that keeps showing up and disappearing every single time I scroll. It’s torture experiencing constant visual distractions like that while reading.

The End of the Dark Universe?

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