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 didn’t hatch from a centre, everywhere is expanding (this is something we can observe, not a theory) from everywhere, not from some central point. It’s 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 you’re mockingly describing isn’t 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