Because it doesn’t exist. Dark matter is a fudge factor to prop-up a theory that astrophysics is too afraid to put to rest.
Do you mean we should switch to using another theory, which reproduces all existing results, also correctly predicts some currently-unexplained observation or experiment, and has also correctly predicted previously-unobserved results (i.e. isn't just a "fudge factor")? If so, I would love to know what that theory is, since I certainly didn't encounter any such thing in the dark matter module of my masters degree (the options were basically MOND or (various possible forms of) dark matter, and the former is certainly much more of a "fudge factor").
If by "put to rest" you mean we just throw away our current theories without having a better replacement, then I don't even understand what that would mean. Would we ground all rocket launches since we don't completely understand gravity?
I think the problem here is that maybe there is something else we don't understand. We also did not understand the propagation of light in a vacuum in the 19th century, and invented a hidden medium called the "aether" to explain it. I think there is some fundamental thing we are missing, and we're inventing dark matter to explain it.
In seriousness, we can observe the effect, and even map the distribution of the stuff.
But it's very very hard to come up with plausible models for such modified gravity. There are lots of people trying, and their ideas tend to break all sorts of other things we know. For example (IIRC) lots of candidates gave a slightly different speed for gravitational waves, and were ruled out by recent detections where we also saw X-rays from the same event.
It doesn't really work. Overwhelmingly the evidence points to mass, which is gravitationally affected by other mass, and nothing else.
I know the mind rebels against the notion of invisible matter, but is it really so much more implausible than the invisible spookiness of gravity to begin with? If the scientific evidence points that way, your monkey-brain intuitions do not provide a reliable veto.
Of course MOND can't really explain the third peak of the cosmic microwave background radiation, so it isn't perfect either. It is also phenomenological, with no underlying physical theory at the moment. Still, it's surprising that it does work at all.
I should also mention that the bullet cluster, which is touted as proving dark matter, causes issues for dark matter as well as MOND. The velocities involved in the collision are higher than can be explained by the current dark matter models. MOND kind of sucks at dealing with clusters, as well.
TL;DR MOND is a lot better than LCDM at explaining galaxy dynamics, LCDM is a lot better than MOND at explaining the cosmic background radiation. Both aren't that great at dealing with clusters (but you can also make dark matter work with enough fiddling).
https://tritonstation.wordpress.com/2018/09/04/dwarf-satelli...
No, we can measure the dissonance between our best theories and reality. And make a conjecture about 'stuff'.
Give me a recent and well supported study indicating that dark matter may be something other than matter, and I'll happily read it.
My understanding is that the existence of dark matter is uncontroversial among physicists, and that the best bet is some sort of WIMP.
But it feels very strange to accept something that:
- is a particle
- doesn't interact with other normal particles (except through gravitation)
- doesn't interact with particles of its own kind
Maybe dark matter interacts with things via the weak force, but even less than neutrinos- not quite zero, but just small enough that we can't measure it, or can't measure it yet. Hopefully, they do interact a little bit by some other mechanism otherwise they'll be very hard to detect- I believe this is what current attempts to find dark matter are relying on.
Some form of only-detectable-via-gravity matter fits the math. Coming up with provable alternative math would be the greatest scientific breakthrough of the past century...or possibly of all time.
I’m sure people are working on it (along with quantum gravity). So either it’s wrong or it’s dark matter.
Physics is wrong on many fundamental levels, but everytime physicists find fundamental errors, they propose another entirely theoretical layer of complexity, with the "benfit" that no one is able to practically refute it.
What's your alternative to the scientific method exactly?
Physics, when practiced according to the principles of the scientific method, is never wrong (or right). Physical laws try to explain the world around us using mathematical models. Those models can be tested over a certain domain of experimental parameters D. A physicist, when speaking accurately, would never say that a physical law L is correct. They would say that L correctly describes our experiments on domain D. New or more accurate measurements can expand or shrink D, and in the worst case D can become empty. This constant refining is the essence of physics and the scientific method.
Arguing that physics is wrong implies a lack of understanding of what physics actually is.
You can't disprove a philosophy though, you can only try to understand different philosophical models next to each other.
The Einsteinian philosophy represents materialism and a world without meaning. It was problematic right from the start when mental gymnastics was needed to explain how energy can move through nothing, or how nothing (space) can have properties.
Funny that you mention experimental evidence, as most of physics is basically theoretical nowadays. (That's why it's called theoretical physics, dark matter included)
It was disproven based on experimentation[0], no "philosophy" involved.
>The Einsteinian philosophy represents materialism and a world without meaning
There is no "Einsteinian philosophy," nor does anything in Einstein's theories relate to "meaning" or any lack thereof, in a philosophical sense. Whether you want to believe in aether, or God, or that the Machine Empire built the universe as a VR simulation, E=MC^2 remains true. It can be tested, has been tested has been proven true.
And its probably worth mentioning that the same is true for aether theory, because it also was not a philosophy, but a scientific theory (which was, as mentioned earlier, disproved by experimentation.) The universe is no more or less meaningful or materialistic either way.
>It was problematic right from the start when mental gymnastics was needed to explain how energy can move through nothing.
On the contrary, the mental gymnastics were needed to continue supporting aether theory after experiments and observations continually failed to produce any evidence of it, and the properties aether would need to have to conform to the current cutting edge of science started to become ludicrous.
[0]https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_e...
I still agree with Tesla that empty space can't have any properties though. Things that don't appear logical, probably aren't.
At the time that Galileo proved that objects fall at the same rate regardless of their mass[0], the prevailing and more intuitive theory was that heavier objects fell faster. Miasma theory[0] was far more intuitive and "logical" to people than "tiny invisible monsters."[1] Newton's theories of gravitation alone couldn't account for the orbit of Mercury... but the illogical theory of relativity could[2].
Tesla was an uncontested genius, but genius isn't omniscience. Empty space does have properties (notwithstanding that the aether would have been one of them) like warping under gravity and vacuum energy[0]. Relativity, quantum mechanics, dark matter and dark energy are counterintuitive, sometimes profoundly so, but the universe isn't obliged to conform to human intuition.
All that we can say is that, as far as we know, based on observation and experimentation, the universe is not only stranger than we suppose, but still stranger than we can suppose. And that the luminiferous aether isn't a thing (although the Higgs field is probably close enough...)
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease
[2]https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=31&doc_id=1328...