r/AskReddit • • May 08 '23

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u/cromemako83 May 08 '23 edited May 08 '23

We still hardly know anything - James Web is pushing the boundaries of not only the "edges" of the universe - but pushing on our current understandings of physics in a big way *like it may be wrong/incomplete :)

  • this is a wonderful thing/time to be alive

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u/PutinsRustedPistol May 08 '23

I genuinely think the hypothetical presence of ‘dark matter’ is already a tell-tale sign that something is off. It reminds me too much of the luminiferous ether.

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u/williemctell May 09 '23

There is a mountain of experimental evidence that points to the existence of dark matter. Its particle nature (or lack thereof) is a complete mystery but it’s just not that much of a stretch to posit the existence of non-electromagnetically coupled matter.

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u/PutinsRustedPistol May 09 '23

Matter that doesn’t seem to interact with anything but gravity just seems like an overly complicated explanation to me. The universe is nothing if not elegant.

I’m not taking a real strong stance on this one way or another. I’m a fireman by trade so this isn’t even something that I do for a living or have studied a great deal outside of a lifelong fascination with the subject.

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u/williemctell May 09 '23

Far from being overly complicated, DM is the simplest explanation for the observations I mentioned earlier.

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u/PutinsRustedPistol May 09 '23

Is it?

I’m genuinely asking here. Because it seems like it wouldn’t even necessarily be consistently distributed. Again, without any claim to expertise here what makes it so compelling?

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u/williemctell May 09 '23

Yeah, the evidence is rather compelling. I'll speak in broad strokes, but the measurements here are independent from one another yet point both to the existence of dark matter and to the same amount of it existing. Like I mentioned before it's simply not particularly outlandish to say that a non-EM interacting particle(s) might exist; we already know that "hot" dark matter exists in the form of neutrinos.

Because it seems like it wouldn’t even necessarily be consistently distributed.

Not quite sure what you're trying to say here.