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Comment by pclmulqdq | Hacker News Reader

There is an overton window of acceptable dark matter theories which really should be a lot bigger. Many of the current big frameworks agree on too many details that essentially just arise from curve fitting.

And no, I am not referring to the various MOND theories. They still belong on the same edge of that overton window that it currently occupies.

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well the correct theory will have to explain what we actually observe, which is going to limit the nature of what these theories can be. I'm not sure if you have an example of something that should be accepted when it's currently not, but usually that's the case when something is clearly broken with regards to basic facts we already know to be true.

My problem with how the physics community is having this discussion is actually the converse of what you are suggesting: None of the existing theories explain every observation we have, and yet we are sticking to the same general frameworks that don't work.

> an overton window of acceptable dark matter theories which really should be a lot bigger

Overton windows pertain to mainstream opinions [1]. Particle physics shouldn’t be subject to mainstream opinion.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Something can still be mainstream in the particle physics community

Who in the particle physics community claims dark matter or energy are solved?

You are taking this too literally. I’m not GP, but I can guarantee they were not claiming any position like what you’re insinuating.

> You are taking this too literally

They’re calling out a “the pretense of a theory” of dark matter that we “pretended we resolved” unlike the “different but similarly unexplained phenomena were called in the past.” Where do you see the figurative gap?

In reality, we have General Relativity and the Standard Model. Both theories which have defied falsification to the limits of our instruments. Their unification, unfortunately, demands certain discrepancies be resolved. Dark matter and dark energy being possible solutions to those discrepancies. There is no “theory” of dark matter or dark energy, just a compendium of hypotheses.

OP is wrong. Literally, not figuratively.

In the past, unresolved questions were aptly named, like "UV-catastrophe" etc. as opposed to "dark energy" etc.

One clearly indicates scientists being baffled (a catastrophic conclusion), versus a linguistically tangible substance "dark energy", unnecessarily specific in quantity (energy vs position vs momentum vs ...).

For unexplained phenomena, doesn't it sound alarmingly specific?

Wouldn't specific issues getting their own names not have been more desirable? like "anomalous rotation curves", ...

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