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Dark matter is a case of giving a phenomenon a name and then thinking that because it has a name you’ve explained it. Dark matter isn’t really an explanation, it’s essentially just a placeholder to say, “Our equations suggest there should be matter here but there isn’t, so maybe there’s some kind of matter we can’t observe? Or something?” It’s not an answer or an explanation, it’s just a term for an unexplained phenomenon that guesses vaguely about it what might be, and until we can verify the existence of dark matter through other means and explain why it defies other observations, it’s little more than a placeholder and cannot be treated as settled science. This isn’t really out of line with the mainstream view, the mainstream view is just that there aren’t any better explanations (yet) so that’s what we’re stuck with (for now).

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BB84@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Yeah it’s not settled by any means. Far from it.

But the hypothesis that it exists and is some kind of matter is pretty well supported through observing gravitational effects.

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- Zuzak@hexbear.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  But isn’t that the whole reason that the concept was developed in the first place? It’s not very sound to come up with a hypothesis to explain an observation and then rely on that same observation to support the hypothesis. The concept needs to be able to predict and explain new observations, or else it has no utility and is still essentially just a placeholder.
  
  You talked about, like, “vibes-based reasons,” but is there a reason to accept the explanation of dark matter aside from vibes? If it’s just about feeling satisfied that you have an explanation for the phenomenon, that’s vibes. Like, relativity, you have to accept and account for or GPS wouldn’t work nearly as accurately as they do. But everyone could reject the hypothesis of dark matter and it wouldn’t really change anything.
  
  Explanations for things are a dime a dozen. There’s no real value in having an explanation (other than personal satisfaction, i.e. vibes) for something unless that explanation helps you to make predictions or manipulate objective reality in some way. That’s not to say that it couldn’t, at some later date, meet those requirements, but at this point dark matter is barely anymore useful than saying a wizard did it - a hypothesis that also explains the observations perfectly well while being only slightly less congruous with the rest of our understanding of physics.
  
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  - BB84@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    The concept needs to be able to predict and explain new observations, or else it has no utility and is still essentially just a placeholder. They first came up with it to explain galactic rotation curves. After that, many new observations came in and the model successfully explained them. To name a few: bullet cluster dynamics, gravitational lensing around galaxies, baryon acoustic oscillation.
    
    Like, relativity, you have to accept and account for or GPS wouldn’t work nearly as accurately as they do. It is neat that general relativity is used in GNSS, but I’d bet that GNSS could still be invented even if we don’t know general relativity. Engineers would probably have came up with a scheme to empirically calibrate the time dilation effect. It would be harder, but compared to the complexity of GNSS as a whole not that much harder.
    
    There’s no real value in having an explanation (other than personal satisfaction, i.e. vibes) for something unless that explanation helps you to make predictions or manipulate objective reality in some way. Are you saying there is no value in like >95% of math, astronomy, and probably many other fields of research? That’s a harsh take, but perhaps you’re right.
    
    At least let me say this: finding explanations to satisfy personal curiosity (doing it for vibes, as you put it) is different from projecting personal feelings onto objective understanding of reality (the vibes-based astrophysics I was referring to in the meme).
    
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Honytawk@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
So its is kind of like the term UFO?

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