Dark matter

From what I understand, basically physicists found that there is not enough mass (gravity) considering the rotational speeds of galaxies, so they came up with the idea that there must be invisible matter to account for the theorically missing mass, and called it dark matter.

Well, there might very well be such a thing as dark matter (It's a valid theory) But it's like it's just something that was invented to fill a gap to make everything conveniently fit our current mathematic model of the universe, and many people believe it as a fact, it just must be there...

Now why couldn't it be simply that we have incomplete understanding of large scale gravitation ? which would make the calculation obsolete.

And also, while we're still finding new planets and stars even in our own gallaxy, not to mention black holes which are believed to be the most massive objects in space and we have no idea how many are there even in our own galaxy as they are very hard to find since they absorb even light; how can we determine that there must be "invisible" matter, when we have no idea how much mass constitute the actual "visible" matter ?

Just some thoughts I had earlier when talking about dark matter with a friend, and was wondering what OT think about it as we have some very knowledgeable people in physics here (I'm looking at you, Frame_Dragger!)

Yeah I know what you mean, I feel the same about m-theory, string theory or the 11 dimensions needed for those theories.
Last week I was watching a docu about membrane theory, which in itself is still an unproven theory. And it needed a bunch of other unproven theories to make it work. In the documentary it was just assumed that it all made sense, but they never explained WHY they assumed that something like m-theory or 11 dimensions exist.

I'm not saying that these theories cannot possibly be true, because I'm obviously not very skilled in science. It was said that the big bang happened because 2 membranes in a higher dimension touched each other. How do they know that those membranes actually exist? How do they know that those higher dimensions actually exist? How do they know that if those membranes exist they can actually touch each other? There are so many gaps that weren't explained. That really frustrated me haha.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/aug/HQ_06297_CHANDRA_Dark_Matter.html

I agree completely with the original poster. Though dark matter and energy is certainly a reasonable theory, it seems very much like an ad-hoc solution. I think there might very well be some area of physics we haven't yet discovered. Much like we thought Newtonian physics was the be-all and end-all until Einstein came along, there might very well be another branch of physics we don't yet understand which explains immensely large interactions among galaxies and that sort of thing.

There are plenty of other theories out there besides dark matter, and they always seem to be finding things which don't fit at all with the currently held beliefs about dark matter.

From what I understand, basically physicists found that there is not enough mass (gravity) considering the rotational speeds of galaxies, so they came up with the idea that there must be invisible matter to account for the theorically missing mass, and called it dark matter.

Well, there might very well be such a thing as dark matter (It's a valid theory) But it's like it's just something that was invented to fill a gap to make everything conveniently fit our current mathematic model of the universe, and many people believe it as a fact, it just must be there...

Now why couldn't it be simply that we have incomplete understanding of large scale gravitation ? which would make the calculation obsolete.

And also, while we're still finding new planets and stars even in our own gallaxy, not to mention black holes which are believed to be the most massive objects in space and we have no idea how many are there even in our own galaxy as they are very hard to find since they absorb even light; how can we determine that there must be "invisible" matter, when we have no idea how much mass constitute the actual "visible" matter ?

Just some thoughts I had earlier when talking about dark matter with a friend, and was wondering what OT think about it as we have some very knowledgeable people in physics here (I'm looking at you, Frame_Dragger!)

Tykain

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/aug/HQ_06297_CHANDRA_Dark_Matter.html

dramaybaz

I have to ask what is the purpose of all this. What good will come out of such "science" I'm much happier just assuming that all of the stars in the sky are just christmas trees that are really far away and its gotten me through several grades of school just ifneRaptorPen

I have to ask what is the purpose of all this. What good will come out of such "science" I'm much happier just assuming that all of the stars in the sky are just christmas trees that are really far away and its gotten me through several grades of school just ifneRaptorPen

Edit: Knowledge is Power!

Why did scientists want to know about gravity, what good has it done for us?

[QUOTE="RaptorPen"]I have to ask what is the purpose of all this. What good will come out of such "science" I'm much happier just assuming that all of the stars in the sky are just christmas trees that are really far away and its gotten me through several grades of school just ifnedramaybaz

Edit: Knowledge is Power!

Why did scientists want to know about gravity, what good has it done for us?

[QUOTE="dramaybaz"]

[QUOTE="RaptorPen"]I have to ask what is the purpose of all this. What good will come out of such "science" I'm much happier just assuming that all of the stars in the sky are just christmas trees that are really far away and its gotten me through several grades of school just ifneRaptorPen

Edit: Knowledge is Power!

Why did scientists want to know about gravity, what good has it done for us?

And actually the understanding of gravity is the reason why you have satellite TV, internet, mobile phones and GPS, which you seem to take for granted.

[QUOTE="dramaybaz"]

[QUOTE="RaptorPen"]I have to ask what is the purpose of all this. What good will come out of such "science" I'm much happier just assuming that all of the stars in the sky are just christmas trees that are really far away and its gotten me through several grades of school just ifneRaptorPen

Edit: Knowledge is Power!

Why did scientists want to know about gravity, what good has it done for us?