ReinyDays
Gold Member
- Oct 5, 2019
- 14,632
- 6,997
I suspect dark matter is just the current iteration of the Ptolemaic epicycle...a hypotheses that fits observation but is likely erroneous due to processes that are not yet discovered or properly understood.
Not exactly ... epicycles programmed onto a dedicated modern computer will produce accurate results ... but epicycles don't explain any physics ... it's just a mathematical construction ...
Dark matter is a little above that as it does explain some physics ... the extra gravity holds galaxies together when they should be flying apart ... the nature of dark matter remains a mystery ... but it's still slightly better than just mathematical coincidence ...
Also, we do have an observation that seems to confirm some manner of "extra" material in the universe that we can't see ... as galaxies collide, the true center of gravity lags behind the apparent center of gravity ... "as though" light matter is more free to collect whereas dark matter being denser has less freedom to collect ... if we agree this evidence is weak (or very weak) ... we still have more evidence than epicycles ... alas, we have no evidence of any kind that epicycles exist ...
Modified General Relativity is a proposal that takes what we see in these galaxies and create a mathematical function to fit the data ... it's very compelling as it is a perfect predictor of the data we have ... i.e. If A, then A ... so we can dispense with this mythological dark matter nonsense ... i.e. If 0, then A ... because that second logical statement isn't even wrong ...