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

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Einstein certainly seemed to feel it was conscious hand-waving, from what I've read. It smells like string 'theory': while it could explain some things we see, I'm really hoping for a cleaner explanation.