Dark Matter constitutes 85% of the total matter in the universe

@DownTheStreet I find the alternative explanations far less convincing.

@QueenOfZaun well, I don’t have a PhD in physics but I do know support for the leading theory is not universal, and I know the power of the “institution” to crush dissenting voices. I mean, ask Galileo …

@DownTheStreet It’s interesting that you said dark matter has never been observed when we’ve seen it interact with the radiology of sub atomic particles.

Also it’s important to note that just because we can’t directly observe it doesn’t mean it does not exist. For example we actually discovered the existence of black holes simply using mathematical equations. We never physically observed a black hole until about a hundred years later.

@DownTheStreet As far as I know, the big evidence for dark matter is
(1) the velocity profile for rotating galaxies

(2) gravitational lensing by galaxies.
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/science/2015/03/27/the-dark-matter-of-gravitational-lensing/

There's also an inference, (2a) which says that if dark matter particles were moving really fast, they wouldn't be able to clump around galaxies, so dark matter must be relatively "cold."

(1) is based on Newtonian mechanics which has served us pretty well for the past 350 years, while (2) depends on general relativity, which has fixed problems with Newtonian predictions around intense gravity fields.

You can say yeah, time to abandon Newton & Einstein, but if so you need a replacement theory that makes all their predictions on the scales where they've been verified. I don't know of any substitutes for general relativity.