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

[ivy]

[laughs at "umbratonium"] Not to mention that that sounds like a really heavy atom, which could lead to all kinds of unfortunate assumptions.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Well other candidates are Necronium, Occultonium, and Cryptonium--I thought Umbratonium was the least loaded of the shadowy names I could come up with.