Dark Matter

[gfish]

I'm not a astrophysicist or anything, but am I the only one who finds the whole dark matter thing rather dubious? It just smells of hand-waving kludge to me. Our observations don't match our calculations, so 95% of the universe must be made of invisible matter that only interacts with the rest of us through gravity? The universe is certainly a very odd place, but I just can't get over the feeling that this is the luminiferous aether all over again.

Comments

[jeffreycornish.livejournal.com]

Well, the problem is that you need dark matter to hold the whole thing (galaxies, clusters of galaxies) together, and to explain the flat rotation curve of most galaxies (the starts orbiting on the out fringes orbit just as fast as the stars near the core).

I consider it a wonderful mystery.

Now, quantum mechanics, that's spooky

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Oh, there's certainly something weird going on. I'm just not convinced by this explanation.