• paddirn@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I think it’s more a matter of, “We know there’s something that’s causing an effect, but we can’t see it or fully explain it… yet.” There’s something in the science and observations that’s just not lining up the way it should. There are some ideas that have floated around that say that dark matter isn’t necessary, it’s just a misunderstanding of one factor or another, but nobody has really been able to nail the question yet, so it persists.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      It’s more than that. There’s something that doesn’t add up, but if we assume the answer is “dark matter”, we can make predictions about it, that can guide us toward proving or disproving. Similarly, if we assume it’s one of the other theories, we can make predictions on what it must be like.

      Dark matter is most straightforward because we understand best how matter acts. How much more matter do we need for the observations to make sense, based on current understanding? Ok, what could that matter be that acts gravitationally but we can’t see? How can we detect that?