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

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was one of the things that started me thinking about it recently (also this BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4679220.stm)). I was able to stumble through the lectures somewhat, and it certainly looks like a nice and elegant solution to a lot of little problems. But my relativity-fu is pretty weak, so I can't say much about the validity.