this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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Dark matter isn't something that was randomly invented and is believed for no good reason. We observe something going on, and the best way to describe the effect is through dark matter, as in matter that doesn't interact with electromagnetic waves, but does affect gravity. There have been many alternative explanations for the effects (e.g. MOND), but none line up as well as dark matter.
So it's something that is measurable, insofar that we even came up with the idea due to measurements. We don't know how to detect it directly, but we can detect its influence.
Isn't it judging a book by its cover that something so unknown to us is seen as so applicable as a go-to before we know what applies to it? It would be like seeing fire for the first time and thinking "we only know one thing about fire, that it's hot, therefore anything that's hot must be heated by internal fire".
All the models happen to fit perfectly when we describe the interactions as dark matter, and no better model has been proposed so far. Mind you, nobody is saying "dark matter must be this or that" - until we know more, it's pretty much a placeholder. But unless someone comes up with a better model (and many, many people are trying to) the only alternative is to throw our hands in the air and say "god did it, we can't describe it physically". As soon as you start describing it physically, you'd arrive back at dark matter.
That's kind of what I mean, it's a cop-out, especially considering that we know so little about it. For all we know, it could be tiny microscopic black holes, and right now, we wouldn't know the difference, yet we assume it's something we "just know about". Typically in science (or at least it used to be this way), you don't resort to going with the placeholder hypothesis until the more specific ones are absolutely ruled out, so that we don't draw a conclusion in a way that seals the deal on other possibilities.
That's where your understanding is wrong - nobody is saying that dark matter can't be microscopic black holes. There are reasons to assume this to be untrue (e.g. microscopic black holes evaporating incredibly fast), but "dark matter" is a placeholder for whatever the underlying physical phenomenon is, be it microscopic black holes, or WIMPs, or whatever else. You yourself are asking for your explanation not to be considered.
How so? I was always taught/told (in the context of science and science class) that it's better to not have an explanation than to not know how to explain something is and just go with something out of pressure. This is that in practice as I'd rather wait, for example, to have better instruments to see if Planet 9 (which there's a demand to identify with clarity since we suspect it to keep hurling small bodies into the inner solar system) is really dark matter (however we might identify it) or if it's an obscure planet, a small black hole, or a phenomenon we don't even know about yet.
Who is doing that? Your comments all seem to imply that you think dark matter is something scientists just randomly assume to be true, and I don't know how to explain that you're misunderstanding this beyond what I already wrote.
But what do you want to wait for? Unless people think about what could be causing the gravitational anomalies we're seeing, we won't come up with better instruments. But you don't want people to think about that, because they can't fully explain it. So how do you get to better instruments?
Science works by observing phenomena, formulating a hypothesis to explain them, making predictions with that hypothesis, and finally testing (and refining) it. Scientists have observed gravitational anomalies, they've formulated many hypotheses (of which dark matter fits the best so far), and now they're trying to make predictions and test them. This is really difficult, because we're far away from the gravitational anomalies that we're seeing, and they aren't interacting with the electromagnetic spectrum. What exactly is your issue with this process? You keep saying that scientists assume things, but I see no violation of the normal process, and no better theories.
Isn't that what a placeholder theory is? They definitely treat it as a go-to, not just with my example, and it's not like I'm the only one who questions it.
People can think of anomalies without taking a leap on it. Dark matter as a hypothesis should not be treated as objective, because that's what a conclusion does, nor should it be, to use a pun, what we gravitate to. We make the instruments to learn, not confirm what we already believe.
Then come up with a better theory that fits the available data - many others have tried and failed.
No. We usually make instruments to confirm hypotheses, and then use them to learn new things. That's why people are trying to build dark matte detectors. You don't just randomly build stuff without thinking about the use.
As opposed to randomly building stuff without fully knowing what it's designed for? How do you build a detector for something you know so little about you wouldn't recognize it if it ever were detected? I'm aware an attempt to make them was made, but even the criteria these apparatus' go by can lead us in other places, and often seem to. That's a sign it's premature. They haven't detected. Which is the basis for the findings I showed. It's natural to float around many hypotheses, what goes against critical thinking is to scapegoat it.
We've been over this - you build a detector for something you don't know much about by making hypotheses about the thing you don't know about, and checking if they are true. How else could you ever build a new kind of detector? This is how pretty much all scientific discoveries happened - people saw phenomena, tried to explain them, and tried to experimentally verify their explanations.
Many different attempts have been made, because many people have different hypotheses about what dark matter could be.
How are you ever going to detect something without looking for it? Please, explain how you can ever detect something new without building instruments to detect it.
Again: then propose a better theory. People would love to find an alternative explanation for dark matter, if it would fit the data. Make a hypothesis and test it. But you can literally never do that, because according to you, you shouldn't attempt to verify a theory that you don't know to be true. So how will you ever learn even a shred about new things? Before you learn about them, you can't know about them, but you don't want people learning about them because they might be wrong.