EDIT: Let’s cool it with the downvotes, dudes. We’re not out to cut funding to your black hole detection chamber or revoke the degrees of chiropractors just because a couple of us don’t believe in it, okay? Chill out, participate with the prompt and continue with having a nice day. I’m sure almost everybody has something to add.

  • @[email protected]OP
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    -711 months ago

    Yeah, it’s legitimate science being done, but some people treat it as sacred and would fight you to no end because they say Dark Matter is some certainty, rather than approaching it with the proper scientific skepticism or with a statistical outlook.

    For the most part believers in Dark Matter are cool, but a vocal minority practically worship it as the only possible truth.

    • @[email protected]
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      1211 months ago

      The certainty is that there is something there, we just don’t know what it is. The name “dark” anything is irrelevant.

      • @[email protected]OP
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        -1211 months ago

        If a new hypothetical model showed that either some far off unobserved mass(es) or the currently observable mass can have the gravitational effects that were previously explained by dark matter, or any other far off idea about the nature of gravity at large scale: then there would be evidence there is nothing there. Currently there is no evidence that something is there, just that there are forces and motions that are not understood.

        • @[email protected]
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          1311 months ago

          “just that there are forces and motions that are not understood.” - aka, there’s “something” there… Doesn’t have to be a physical something. You’re intentionally misunderstanding or misinterpreting just to try and win points on the Internet.

          • @[email protected]
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            211 months ago

            I mean, they are working on adjusting Newtonian dynamics for the situations where gravity between objects is low. This would fix the model for the strange galaxy spin and where 2 stars orbit eachother.
            The issue with this is there are too many unknowns as we have a (relatively) fixed point of perspective. But statistical analysis is working on reducing the impact of those unknowns, and there is likely a paper published in the next few months regarding this.

            Then, I guess it’s a matter of understanding why this applies. And maybe it applies because of dark matter, and it all wraps back round to an undiscovered thing.
            Or, perhaps Newtonian dynamics isn’t complete but has been accurate enough to withstand all our testing (like taking 9.8 as the value of G on earth, even though it varies across the globe, and the moon/sun/planets also have a miniscule impact. For everything we do on earth, 9.8 is accurate enough)

            Dark matter still has strong scientific support, although still undiscovered.
            Modifying Newtonian dynamics has so far been disproven.
            Both are worthy of pursuing

          • @[email protected]OP
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            111 months ago

            Okay I see what you mean, the meaning of your words missed me the first time, sorry. You’re saying something is happening, not necessarily that something else exists to cause it.

        • @[email protected]
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          311 months ago

          Modified gravity theories are a well explored alternative to dark matter, but they aren’t popular for the simple reason that dark matter fits the observational data far, far better. Because currently there is evidence that something is there, extensive evidence.