The stories which persist are useful. Calling them theorems or theory helps us rei-fy stories into propositions which can be used to do science. Science is about modelling things, understanding things, and testing things. It is a valid proposition to argue DM is defined by stories which remain untestable, but the proposition there are better alternatives ignores that to construct stories without DM which are better will demand addressing the problems DM has to exist, to define the blank spaces in other, testable stories. You think Absolute zero exists? It's just a story. We haven't got there, we got close, we observe what happens, but this mythical zero point.. What good is it, if we can't get there? I love temperature, the whole thing depends on a fantasy...
Do not confuse your projection of "what is reality" with reality. I love HN, where people make asserts which don't mean what they think they mean!
Nothing in astrophysics is like that, is there?
To me, thats a strong indication the fundamentals of mass, energy as modelled, were projected in advance of radio-telescopes confirming the theory. isn't that what Astrophysics does?
Perhaps there are better examples. Personally, I find the main sequence circular logic reasoning, but its a model for spectral colour, distance, age and size. I'd kind of like it if we flew a mission to hold a Pantone colour wheel up close, and measure the damn thing properly for size and colour but age is very hard. You're back in models of decay of mass/energy outcomes and how we believe half-life in C14 analysis.. except done as spectral lines at a distance based on one solar mass we have close by to model things on. Plus, we don't know how to make pantone colour stable across 20,000 years of flight time to measure a star up close and by then Humans will have 29 eyeballs seeing into the infrared like mantis shrimps.
Gravitational lensing is pretty cool. I think it was initially theoretical, and it was a long time being proved.
Gravity waves defy detectors. If we can get detectors working that will be immensely cool. I may have stepped off the scienting engine by wanting an outcome, which arguably is not aligned to null hypothesis testing. Maybe we can't detect gravity waves and they remain theory?
Look, its rude. I apologize in advance. I do kinda think you're trolling. Are you trolling? Maybe Dang will be upset at my asking. It's ok to ignore.
Different people have different priors. For some dark matter is more unlikely.
We really like to tell stories where 2+2=4, etc.
We know 2+2=4. We do not know that dark matter exists.
Which is why we really like telling stories about it.
My point is, we tell stories about literally everything, so i don't know what point you are trying to make.
If your criticism applies equally to basic facts, it is a bad criticism.
Pop science cosmology presentations never, ever mention these contradictions. But it is, exactly, embracing contradictions like these that would make it science, not religion. Presentations without them actively mislead the public as to what science is and is for.
Trotting out details found (or made) consistent with DM amounts to indulging confirmation bias. An honest presentation describes the current favored theory, which summarizes a collection of observations, and then whatever is inconsistent with it. Sweeping inconsistent facts under the rug is the opposite of science.
Every substantial advance has come from embracing contradictions of current favored theories. Young people are inspired not by sweeping, broad-brush stories of how the universe is, but by mysteries that remind us how much is left to be discovered.
Biologists understand this. It is very easy to get a biologist to say "nobody knows". Every non-moribund field revels in what is still wholly unknown. Only cosmology circles the wagons against contradictory evidence.
> Biologists understand this. It is very easy to get a biologist to say "nobody knows"
Depends on what you ask them about.
Given we can't observe reality directly, since we ourselves see it though a model, We can adapt the above list to everything.
The question isn't "is it a story" the question is "is it useful for prediction"
Much of astrophysics has been.
We do not know that dark matter exists
> * The current best theory of the structure formation and galaxy evolution involves dark matter and critically depend on it to reproduce observations.
The stories we like to tell require dark matter. Otherwise our stories are wrong
> * There is a broad variety of Dark matter models that are consistent with simulations.
We have a lot of stories using dark matter. We really like it
> * It is possible there is some theory that somehow explains everything without the need of dark matter, but it doesn't exist (now), and very likely it would work effectively like dark matter. Without such theory, claiming DM doesn't exist is simply stupid IMO.
Our stories are just stories but it is all we have
> * There are a few cases where you can find tensions with the existing DM based paradigm.
Our stories are not internally consistent.
> * A final point. Even Modified Newtonian Dynamics theories require DM, because without it you cannot form enough structure early in the universe (as dark matter start to collapse earlier) and is essential to reproduce the amount of structure we see in the cosmic microwave background.
We really like stories with dark matter
I love Astrophysics! Pure math with constraints. Do not confuse it with reality