More Evidence Against Dark Matter? Opinions needed...

With all of the recent discoveries of planets outside of the solar system; I have started to develop an interest in space and in the physics of how it all works. I don't claim to know anything really but I am definitely interested in learning more...

So on to the topic. I found this article and I was hoping to get some insight from ATS members about their views on dark matter. This seems to be a tricky subject to me...

Thousands of physicists, astrophysicists, and astronomers are searching for dark matter, mysterious stuff whose gravity seems to hold the galaxies together. However, an old and highly controversial theory that simply changes the law of gravity can explain a key property of galaxies better than the standard dark-matter theory, one astronomer reports. That claim isn't likely to win over many skeptics, but even some theorists who favor the standard theory say the analysis hands them a homework problem they should solve.

link:news.sciencemag.org...

Just wondering what your thoughts were out there.

wouldn't it make sense of it if we think of dark matter as that one thread in our fabric of life that keeps us all together and not torn apart....plus i'm no expert but just speculation!!!!!!! Nice thread though something to think about and analyze thanks

There's a Wikipedia page that is fairly understandable (to laymen such as myself) ...
Modified Newtonian Dynamics

See also, this as it relates to the above significantly ...
Phenomenology (science)

There's also this alternative theory, which appears to be an enhancement of MOND (apparently, appends to MOND the way that Relativity appends to Newtonian Physics) ...
Tensor–vector–scalar gravity

That being said, that's a lot of big words that I might not be using right. :-)

I am no scientist, but I was just watching this series on youtube "Nassim Haramein 1/45". There are 45 of these 10 minute segments, and I think it's around 5 or 6, that he talks about this subject.

He explains the vacuum of space being the glue/dark matter. Really interesting talk about radiation into a vacuum, and the contraction of matter. When he gets into hyperphysics it really gets over my head, which is why I am stuck on segment 9, but he is fasinating.





Good luck in your quest.

reply to post by TheHistorian

Dark matter may or may not exist, it's just a placeholder for a future theory to explain observations that we can't explain today. Here's a good article about the observations and why we can't explain them:

Dark Matter

It's just a placeholder for a future discovery:

Insert [discovery] here: the role of placeholders in science

Physics has a long history of particles that were predicted based on the math and not detected for years, sometimes decades. But it's not simply physics. Other areas of science have produced evidence that suggests something must be present, but haven't hinted as to what that something must be. These situations, where scientists insert a placeholder for a something they don't understand yet, have sometimes led scientists down the wrong path—phlogiston and aether spring to mind.

But these erroneous placeholders carry the seeds of their own destruction, since they make predictions that the natural world can't fulfill. And, possibly more often, the placeholders turn out to be right, and an understanding of the phenomena behind them revolutionizes our knowledge of the natural world. In this feature, we'll take a look at some of the most successful placeholders in the history of science, and then consider how even a placeholder that has gone wrong can help advance a field anyway.

That's a good article about placeholders, worth a read.

There are at least 10 facilities on earth like old underground mines that have been converted to dark matter detectors trying to find things like WIMPs (one possible type of dark matter theorized but never found), and some have been operating for decades with no success in finding anything. The fact that these facilities have operated so long without finding anything leaves me little hope the answer will be found there.

We may find some clues in some LHC experiments?

It really is an interesting puzzle. Whoever solves it may get a place in history among Einstein, Newton, etc.

And it's funny to read some crackpot theories by people who claim they have already solved it when it's obvious from their writing that they don't even fully understand the problem and the observations!

For example, Marko Rodin claims he's solved it:

markorodin.com...

The number nine is the missing particle in the universe known as Dark Matter.

If you learn much about dark matter, you'll find that pretty funny! Actually it's pretty funny even if you don't know much about it.

Originally posted by windword
I am no scientist, but I was just watching this series on youtube "Nassim Haramein 1/45".

He's the guy that claims a proton is more massive than mount Everest. If you want to learn real science then stay away from him, he's a fraud.

Just to clarify, MOND is in the news again because an analysis of the rotation of 'gassy' galaxies seems to fit that hypothesis better than the dark matter one.

Dark matter theory challenged by gassy galaxies result on BBC News.

How does MOND explain the ever increasing expansion of the Universe? Is this where the MOND theory fails? Layman logic would preclude that expansion should gradually slow, by friction caused traveling through not so empty space.

Originally posted by Illustronic
How does MOND explain the ever increasing expansion of the Universe? Is this where the MOND theory fails? Layman logic would preclude that expansion should gradually slow, by friction caused traveling through not so empty space.

The "standard model" or consensus view hold that about 95-96% of the universe is "missing". The breakdown is roughly:

wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov...
~4.6% Atoms
~23% dark matter
~72% dark energy

Dark energy would explain the 72% related to the accelerating expansion of the universe, if we knew what it was. Some people think it's Einstein's cosmological constant but as long as we call it "dark" that's code for "we don't know".

MOND theory, even if true, fails to explain the 23% of dark matter, it only explains some fraction of it related to galaxy observations, and leaves the rest unexplained.

www.bbc.co.uk...

"Mond only explains galaxies - everything else it fails to do or simply can't address."

I've also read alternate theories that claim to explain the galaxy rotations without the use of MOND theory, but still the big problem seems to be, nobody can explain the dark matter related to large scales scales above galaxies, like galaxy clusters and groups of galaxy clusters.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Thanks for your input for this interested layman.
I also have myself, used in threads before the first quote of your signature. It too often is forced upon skeptics to furnish elaborate explanations to debunk extraordinary claims that when presented, furnish next to zero references besides a confused or uneducated observation.

Great thread. I love astro-physics and cosmology, and consider myself an educated layman on the topic.

DARK MATTER is still a theory and hasn’t been conclusively proven as of yet. It revolves around the incomplete theories of gravity, in which the observable mass [ in a galaxie for instance] should be more than what they see; therefore there must be some missing matter somewhere.

BTW there is a much more exotic theory they call DARK ENERGY that also hasn’t been proven yet.

This DARK ENERGY is theorized to exist because the bodies in the universe [stars and galaxies] they have found are moving away from each other faster then they had thought. Therefore there must be something called DARK ENERGY that is causing that.

This DARK ENERGY, according to the current theory, makes up 73 percent of the total matter in the universe. DARK MATTER makes up 23 percent, and ordinary matter in the universe makes up 4.6 percent of the matter in the universe.

en.wikipedia.org...

As important as dark matter is believed to be in the cosmos, direct evidence of its existence and a concrete understanding of its nature have remained elusive. Though the theory of dark matter remains the most widely accepted theory to explain the anomalies in observed galactic rotation, some alternative theoretical approaches have been developed which broadly fall into the categories of modified gravitational laws, and quantum gravitational law

So you see the physicist really don’t know for sure and these terms DARK MATTER and DARK ENERGY are really terms meaning: THEY DON’T KNOW