Caption: an interview dialogue
- Are dark matter models unsuited to explain observations? [the “dark matter models” and “to explain observations” parts are poorly edited onto the image, overlaying the original text]
- In my view, they are unsuited.
- Why?
- That’s my opinion, don’t ask me why.
End of caption
Dark matter is the mainstream among physicists, but internet commentators keep saying it can’t be right because it “feels off”.
Of course, skepticism is good for science! You just need to justify it more than saying the mainstream “feels off”.
For people who prefer alternative explanations over dark matter for non-vibe-based reasons, I would love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment!
Anakin: In my view, it’s the observations that are wrong!
Dark matter (WIMPs) has a lot of known issues, the largest one being that we should probably already have seen it (but not certainly, we just excluded almost all of it, not all). None of those is strong enough to really kill the theory, it is still the best one we have, but to firmly believe in it is something else.
But yeah, AFAIK the judge is still out on whether this is even a change from the previous model or we just calculated things wrong.
WIMP is only one model of dark matter. A favorite of particle physicists. But from a purely astrophysics point of view there is little reason to believe dark matter to have any interaction beyond gravity.