• FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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    8 hours ago

    Listen, power to women, and Vera Rubin’s work was amazing and she deserves every praise.

    But nobody has ever proven the existence of Dark Matter. What’s proven is that our current mathematical models do not accurately represent the universe due to the way things move and effects of gravity, under our current understanding, requiring a large amount of mass that we have not observed.

    Does that make sense? It could be that our models or understandings are just wrong, or it could be that there is some magical unobservable matter, but we don’t know. We haven’t proven anything.

    The reason I think this is important is because we keep throwing money at bigger and bigger dark matter detection chambers, and we keep operating on the possibly incorrect assumption of dark matter while we create new theories.

    • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      8 hours ago

      What’s proven is that our current mathematical models do not accurately represent the universe due to the way things move and effects of gravity

      This is actually the bit that Vera Rubin discovered. The summary of her discovery in the quote is the issue :)

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      The reason I think this is important is because we keep throwing money at bigger and bigger dark matter detection chambers, and we keep operating on the possibly incorrect assumption of dark matter while we create new theories.

      Okay, Sabine, whatever you say. I’m sure bubble chambers and TPCs (I assume since you’re targeting “chambers” that other experiments like DEAP are fine) for direct detection are a catastrophic money sink that you’re totally not exaggerating even a little.


      Edit: Wait, are you specifically targeting the funding for the search for WIMPs? Since you’re just joining us from your 15-year coma, I’m afraid to inform you that problems have gotten much worse for science than bubble chamber and TPC costs.