this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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[–] apolo399@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Dark matter is not a thing, it's an observation, a phenomenon that was poorly named. There's so much evidence under the name "[d]ark matter" that we can't discount it as a real phenomenon. We just don't have a strong evidence for a single dark matter theory (theory in the scientific sense of the word, not the colloquial one).

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Something dark matter like has to exist, because there's no other reasonable way to describe this behavior (shifted center of gravity matching presence of matter not influenced by friction)

https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/dark-matter-flies-ahead-of-normal-matter-in-mega-galaxy-cluster-collision

[–] apolo399@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Sure, but anything that tried to explain the observations would be a dark matter theory, and if that theory involved particles, it'd be a particle theory.

Dark matter isn't a theory, nor is it particles, it's just a body of observations that's poorly named. In that sense, dark matter definitely exists, we just don't know in what shape or form.