# Why the concept of dark matter?



## Adikshith Ojha (Feb 4, 2014)

Ok, the Idea behind dark matter has been bugging me for some days. From what I understand from wiki, dark matter is a hypothetical type of matter that exists in the universe, but has not been observed or it's existence experimentally verified. The concept of dark matter was introduced to account for anomalies in gravitational effects of bodies, I.e the observed effects were much larger than what was calculated. So instead of hypothesising a new type of matter, why not go for simpler explanations? Now having invoked dark matter, it just raises more questions than it answers. How is dark matter different from the matter we know? Why does it interact only with gravitational fields and not in, say electric or magnetic feilds? Is it made of the same fundamental particles as our matter? And so on and so forth. I can just as well invoke god to explain not only this but many other phenomena and not bother about the following questions. I'm not attacking the concept of dark matter, it is after all just another way to look at a problem to see if we can arrive at a solution. I'm just confused that why aren't we going for more simpler explanations? Of the 4 fundamental forces, I think we know the least about the gravitational force, we don't even know the force carriers of gravitational fields, so is it not more likely that we have not understood it completely? That there is something we have overlooked which when accounted for is a simpler explanation than dark matter? So why is dark matter such a widely accepted thing in the scientific community?


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

i haven't read anything on d.m in several years here's what i recall
all galaxies rotate at x speed, yet do not lose their shape nor is all matter dispersed resulting in destruction of the galaxy
the visible matter [macroscopic] only makes up between 2-6 % [at last count] of the force required to keep the galaxy intact

dark matter [microscopic] was thrown into the equation to account for the extra gravity
again if memory serves me correct d.m has been theoretically observed in certain parts of galaxies

my guess is dark matter is a general term until proved or disproved otherwise


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## Purrfessor (Jul 30, 2013)

Dark Matter was proposed because observations of gravity effects in certain areas of the universe do not make sense when only calculating the mass from our visible spectrum. It's not a farfetched idea and it's pretty simplistic - it's much like alternate wavelengths like X-Rays that we can't see but we know are there.. Except Dark Matter is not known to be there.. It's just thought to be there because it makes sense to be there. 

And no, it's not the only way of accounting for the behavior of certain celestial bodies in our universe. And Dark Matter, though widely accepted, is not by any means a definitive answer and there are many physicists who definitely try to solve the equations through other theories. One particular theory I admire is the multiple dimension theory that claims the existence of a multiverse, and the celestial bodies in our universe not only interact by way of gravity with matter in our universe but matter in a neighbor universe as well. However the multiverse theory would be far from complete and would never be widely accepted anytime soon regardless of being factual or not. 

Ive even come up with my own hypothesis explaining the behavior! It involves the belief of souls though, escaping from the body when you die and the dark matter is supposedly souls not alive but dormant instead. This explains the human urge to connect to the outside world and also would be the missing ingredient for the existence of life in the first place.

Now you tell me what is most simple. Dark Matter is widely accepted because of its simplicity.


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

lets not neglect d.m.'s twin dark energy
the universe [hubble constant] is expanding at a greater rate then previously thought
again the concept is thought to be chemical x
my theory is when professor plutonium was creating the power puff universe
he accidentally threw in chemical x creating the p.p.u.


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## s2theizay (Nov 12, 2014)

Like @Vinniebob said, d.m. is really just a placeholder. The Higgs boson is supposed to be the gravity force carrier, but I haven't kept up with the news about it. I've been enjoying reads that tear into the current methods/models for particle physics. Try Bankrupting Physics by Alexander Unzicker or The Problem with Physics by Lee Smolin if you haven't already.

You won't find answers, but personally, I find it more exciting to discover more questions.


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## Adikshith Ojha (Feb 4, 2014)

Vinniebob said:


> i haven't read anything on d.m in several years here's what i recall
> all galaxies rotate at x speed, yet do not lose their shape nor is all matter dispersed resulting in destruction of the galaxy
> the visible matter [macroscopic] only makes up between 2-6 % [at last count] of the force required to keep the galaxy intact
> 
> ...


So it is like what, repulsive gravity? To make sure the net force on the galaxies is zero therefore they are able to retain their shape? The idea sounds very similar to the cosmological constant, are they somehow interlinked?


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## Adikshith Ojha (Feb 4, 2014)

Stelliferous said:


> One particular theory I admire is the multiple dimension theory that claims the existence of a multiverse, and the celestial bodies in our universe not only interact by way of gravity with matter in our universe but matter in a neighbor universe as well.


That sounds even more farfetched and quite frankly, a little science fiction-y.


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

Well the intro section on the wikipedia entry for dark matter tells me enough to realise it's almost certainly 'a thing'.

Evidence seems to quite wildly point to the existence of 'something with mass' which is having quite obvious effects in many areas of astrophysical observation.


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

Adikshith Ojha said:


> So it is like what, repulsive gravity? To make sure the net force on the galaxies is zero therefore they are able to retain their shape? i believe so, it's been years since i've done heavy reading on it


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

HAL said:


> Well the intro section on the wikipedia entry for dark matter tells me enough to realise it's almost certainly 'a thing'.
> 
> Evidence seems to quite wildly point to the existence of 'something with mass' which is having quite obvious effects in many areas of astrophysical observation.


minus black holes which do account for extra mass
i do believe the % of visible gravity in previous theories was low due to the ability at that time
of not detecting planets
with new techniques they are finding more at a increasing rate
i doubt this will account for the extra gravity


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

Vinniebob said:


> minus black holes which do account for extra mass
> i do believe the % of visible gravity in previous theories was low due to the ability at that time
> of not detecting planets
> with new techniques they are finding more at a increasing rate
> i doubt this will account for the extra gravity


You don't need to detect planets to detect the mass.

It's not like they find a new planet and just say, "Ah, great stuff, the universe is now 1 Planet heavier!"

There are loads of ways of figuring out the mass of a system like a galaxy without needing to know its exact constituents. For example you can consider things like the speed of rotation of the galaxy, combined with its radius, or even the amount of redshift coming from it in various directions. There are loads of ways.

Anyway I don't think you actually had a look at the opening section of the wikipedia entry on dark matter. It mentions gravitational lensing around random areas of apparent non-mass. Gravitational lensing is caused when light passes a large body of mass, and the light bends around it, just like any orbiting object might do if it comes into proximity of a body of mass with a large gravitational field.

The light in this image was warped by an unknown, invisible gravitational source. Dark matter..?


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

could unknown massive black holes account for that as well?
i'm not denying the existence of dark matter
i'm saying w/o full knowledge of % of visible matter
and uncounted singularity's in space/time we will not know the known % of gravitational force


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## Purrfessor (Jul 30, 2013)

Adikshith Ojha said:


> That sounds even more farfetched and quite frankly, a little science fiction-y.


I believe Einstein pioneered the multiverse theory.


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## s2theizay (Nov 12, 2014)

Stelliferous said:


> I believe Einstein pioneered the multiverse theory.


The multiverse idea fascinates me. Although, I believe that if it turns out to be true, it would still be a "universe" just encompassing far more than we could have imagined. I think it would still be a "system."


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## Razare (Apr 21, 2009)

Dark matter & dark energy are likely caused by flaws in cosmological viewpoints including bad physics perspectives.

When a paradigm gets so ingrained it can't be abandoned, that paradigm has to be bootstrapped to fit the data.

When the paradigm changes, though, they'll never tell you that. They'll pretend like they knew all along and everything proceeded as normal. But 50 years from now, these concepts will likely be replaced... much as how biogenesis was replaced by abiogenesis.

Academic and researching careers can't absorb being wrong and getting canned, so they do this shell game where they bait and switch terms on us. Biogenesis had to be wrong, so when they found out they required biogenesis as a theory to keep evolution alive, they had to invent a new term.

Adding an "A" to a word turns something absurd into perfectly acceptable science.

Then they do this and present it to us as scientific advancement as opposed to a 50+ year regression in science where the last 50 years were wrong and they had to revert to a concept which was abandoned.

Likely "ether" will return but with a new name, and modifications to general relativity and all that. General relativity can never be wrong, but certainly it will be "modified" so to fit the data, using new terminology which resurrects old concepts believed to be absurd.


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## Purrfessor (Jul 30, 2013)

s2theizay said:


> The multiverse idea fascinates me. Although, I believe that if it turns out to be true, it would still be a "universe" just encompassing far more than we could have imagined. I think it would still be a "system."


Yes technically it would still be one ultimate system, however the name of that ultimate system would be "multiverse" and not "universe" because "universe" will grow to be one of many instead of the everything. 

When i I personally ponder the multiverse theory, I look to the creation of our universe. Apparently our universe is expanding and according to Big Bang or Inflation, the origin of the expansion was some sort of explosion. Some theorize that eventually the universe will stop expanding and begin collapsing in on itself (again) until it causes basically a supernova of the universe and a different Big Bang occurs to start the cycle over again. But... What if the universe is expanding not because of itself but rather from some sort of collision with another universe? What if one universe was antimatter and the other was matter and upon collision they mixed, canceling each other out leaving only the matter that wasn't affected by the antimatter. The origin of the universe gets called into question when considering outside variables such as alternate universes.


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

Vinniebob said:


> could unknown massive black holes account for that as well?


Black holes are pretty easy to detect. They have things orbiting them. From those orbits you can work out the mass of the black hole. No need to see it. Newton's gravitational law FTW.

Even if a black hole has nothing orbiting it (unlikely), gravitational lensing still gives evidence of its existence.


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## SherlockHolmes (Sep 10, 2015)

Im guessing we are trying to find dark matter so it can be gang banged?


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

TonyStark said:


> Im guessing we are trying to find dark matter so it can be gang banged?


it's true
some black holes have no hair:laughing:


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## SherlockHolmes (Sep 10, 2015)

So, I while drunk decided to research no hair. This landeded a vid on wilfred brimley.
He wants to tell you how he eats people with diabetes. My thoughts after coughing up a lung was that I found a black hole.
This wilfred brimley video must be a black hole.


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