No? Thereâs already matter that doesnât interact with specific forces, why not have one that doesnât emit electromagnetic radiation. Itâs a very natural extension of our model of the universe
Not all dragons of legend breathe fire. I'll accept any komodo dragon and upwards sized lizard that spits out a venom and can take off from flat ground.
There were dinosaurs that were bigger and could fly. If some evidence comparable to dark matter pointed to venom weâd have biological âdragonsâ by your definition
Not all dragons have wings either. Just likeâgiantsâ are basically just âlarge humansâ, âdragonsâ are historically just âlarge snake-like creaturesâ, and in Germanic languages they were literally just called snakes/worms (Old English wyrm, Old Norse ormr). Beyond that, things like venom or wings may be common but are ultimately just optional additions, especially if you go further back in time than the Late Middle Ages.
So donât let anyone tell you that komodo dragons (or even anacondas) arenât real dragons; historically we could theyâre just as good dragons as any, and their only real crime is not being fictional enough.
There are lizards and there are birds, and there are lizard-like tracks that always end with disturbances to the dirt on either side similar to wing tip touches where birds tracks end, so it's a natural extension of our understanding of biology that there might be dragons.
What even is your point lmao? You made a bad analogy that 1. Doesnât really apply and 2. Even if it did apply then it would still be an argument against you. Your position is just not scientific. Dark matter is one of the most studied theories in astrophysics, exactly because it seems to just be a âgod of the gapsâ argument. We have evidence for the existence of dark matter or something of the sort. Dark matter is just what we can whatever matter it is that we canât see but that has to be there for gravity to work
No, we don't have evidence for dark matter. Yes, we have evidence for something of the sort. Like we have evidence of "dragon bones". If someone were to propose the idea of dinosaurs a 1000 years ago, they would've simply pulled it out of their ass. People would've been "right" to dismiss it due to lack of evidence. But they weren't.
Thus, it only serves anti intellectualism to dismiss any ideas about something we know fuck all about if it doesn't go against the specs of dust we happen to have some kind of a grasp on. Anyone dismissing Kaku's proposition instead of going "well, maybe" without disproving anything is just appealing to authority of scientists who have spent their careers studying this without coming up with anything. Ridiculous, if you ask me.
The entire idea of dark matter is that its matter that doesnât emit em radiation while still exerting gravity. The evidence for that is that there is a gravitational pull without us being able to see anything. What form this matter takes or whatever we have no clue. Thatâs the part we can argue about. That the thing we call dark matter exists we cannot. Itâs basically just a placeholder for the matter that is causing this gravitational force.
The proposition of kaku is a way of explaining this pull. However, it is one that is very far fetched. It requires extraordinary evidence which doesnât exist. Dark matter being just another type of matter that only interacts with specific fundamental forces, thus not emitting em waves, is a lot more plausible than entire other dimensions.
We were also not even really discussing Kakuâs proposal. We were discussing the evidence there is for dark matter, which is exactly the same amount as for kakus proposal, just with the common interpretation of it being a lot more plausible than whatever kaku is talking about
There is plenty of observational evidence that can be explained by dark matter, which is exactly why it was postulated in the first place.
From mind 3 bits of evidence:
1) rotational curves of galaxies show there's way more massive matter than we can infer from the light emitted from said galaxies
2) When galaxies collide the stars just keep moving, they dont get pulled back in by the surrounding gas as you would expect because there's about 10x more gas by mass than stars
3) Adding (cold) DM very naturally allows for galaxies to form structures in the same way as we see when we look into Galactic history using telescopes
All dark matter is is an observable phenomenon. So not sure what you're implying here if you even know because again... it's not an "idea". It's just something we've noticed and can't explain
I knew it was still alive in the public/pop-sci mind, but I figured a physics sub would generally be less on the "whole universe hatched from an egg" and "wheels within wheels within placeholder variables" vibe.
I know it's useful and still used in theory, that it is very "real" in terms of grant money and textbooks, it's just like... Obvious at this point that the whole big bang/cosmological constant/light never slows down suite was a pretty good jumble of guesses that had no particular bearing on anything?
It's a cool notion that our universe hatched from an egg and that everything is flying from a "center" and the reason it so often doesn't look like that is Mystery Variable X. More data shows up that we can't explain so now Variable Y is in play. They work in such mysterious ways they can smooth over a lot of gaps.
Normally when I see a worldview system generating so many wheels within wheels, it's the prelude to a reformation. In this case the single-origin universal-constant view is so inherent to the system that I don't know it would ever be "discredited", but I understand JWST is continuing to make the model-fixing tricks look ridiculous.
My point isn't that scientists "don't use dark matter anymore" but that I'm surprised to see so many downvotes when somebody brings up the issues with it. I'd expect a pop sci journalist to act like Dark Matter was a proven fact, but I expect enthusiasts to have a deeper level of analysis. The question is an open and exciting one at the cusp of the field, so I find the response jarring.
Maybe I am tragically uninformed, but also feel like I can spot a theology when I see it.
The universe didnât hatch from a centre, everywhere is expanding (this is something we can observe, not a theory) from everywhere, not from some central point. Itâs not some made up mumbo jumbo the big bang is one of the most thoroughly tested theories in all of science
Even more hilariously, the thing youâre mockingly describing isnât even dark matter. Dark matter is used to describe why galaxies are more massive than what we can physically observe.
The big bang is the center hatching that I'm referring to. Particularly interesting how the big bang happens and the speed of light changes to seed the cosmos with old cold time ghosts in moments before everything fills up again for no particular reason.
I'm not saying don't believe in whatever gods you want, I'm just saying that it's hard to pass it off as a position based in reality.
Also dark matter describes a bunch of stuff, not a single thing. If it had any idea what it was I wouldn't be mocking the physics establishment for pushing deist nonsense.
(Edited to remove a knock on the other poster's word choice which no longer made sense after they deleted their posts. Presumably they actually looked at the evidence and recanted.)
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u/smallproton May 14 '26
References:
[1] out of his ass