• FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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    1 day ago

    Listen, power to women, and Vera Rubin’s work was amazing and she deserves every praise.

    But nobody has ever proven the existence of Dark Matter. What’s proven is that our current mathematical models do not accurately represent the universe due to the way things move and effects of gravity, under our current understanding, requiring a large amount of mass that we have not observed.

    Does that make sense? It could be that our models or understandings are just wrong, or it could be that there is some magical unobservable matter, but we don’t know. We haven’t proven anything.

    The reason I think this is important is because we keep throwing money at bigger and bigger dark matter detection chambers, and we keep operating on the possibly incorrect assumption of dark matter while we create new theories.

    • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      What’s proven is that our current mathematical models do not accurately represent the universe due to the way things move and effects of gravity

      This is actually the bit that Vera Rubin discovered. The summary of her discovery in the quote is the issue :)

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The reason I think this is important is because we keep throwing money at bigger and bigger dark matter detection chambers, and we keep operating on the possibly incorrect assumption of dark matter while we create new theories.

      Okay, Sabine, whatever you say. I’m sure bubble chambers and TPCs (I assume since you’re targeting “chambers” that other experiments like DEAP are fine) for direct detection are a catastrophic money sink that you’re totally not exaggerating even a little.


      Edit: Wait, are you specifically targeting the funding for the search for WIMPs? Since you’re just joining us from your 15-year coma, I’m afraid to inform you that problems have gotten much worse for science than bubble chamber and TPC costs.

                • FishFace@piefed.social
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                  9 hours ago

                  The only matter you’ve proven to exist is your own consciousness, so that’s not saying much.

                  Since you’ve defined matter to be everything that exists, you must believe that whatever is the explanation for dark matter is matter, since it exists.

                  • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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                    9 hours ago

                    There are no observations of dark matter and few to none theories on how and why it exists. The only indication that it might exist is that our math doesn’t accurately predict or simulate how celestial bodies are moving, there are other theoretical explanations such as a better understanding of gravity or a larger celestial mechanism just outside of the observable universe supplying an external force.

                    If you stipulate we must accept Dark Matter as the one true answer then you must also accept any hypothesis regardless of evidence, which is stupid.

                    TLDR: You’re stupid.

    • bloubz@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 day ago

      A theory from a famous SF book I just read (not gonna say the title, not to spoil): dark matter is the matter that has collapsed into a smaller spatial dimension (2 or 1)