Could dark matter not exist at all?
It’s said to be the majority of matter in the Universe, but how sure are we of that?
“For the moment we might very well call them DUNNOS (for Dark Unknown Nonreflective Nondetectable Objects Somewhere).” -Bill Bryson
Dark matter is described as making up the majority of matter in the Universe, and yet is very different from our every day experience. While our Sun is certainly the most massive thing in our Solar System, and is made of normal matter (i.e., protons, neutrons and electrons), there are plenty of other sources of matter that we know exist, including planets, gas, dust, plasma, and stellar remnants. But dark matter not only can’t be any of those things, it can’t even be made out of any of the particles in the Standard Model. Yet dark matter isn’t the only proposal for explaining the observed gravitational phenomena in the Universe. Another idea is to modify the theory of gravity itself, which many people have attempted to do. The idea of MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), as well as the other theories which have grown out of it, are by far the most popular alternatives to dark matter.
To understand what the big deal is, I want to go way back to the 1800s, and talk to you about a problem that existed long before the “missing mass” (or “missing light”) problem that…
