Why it’s time to take alternatives to dark matter seriously

Why it’s time to take alternatives to dark matter seriously

Dark matter is the most ubiquitous thing physicists have never found: it’s time to consider alternative explanations.

Over and over again, dark matter has resisted being pinned down, like a fleeting shadow in the woods. Every time physicists have searched for dark matter particles with powerful and sensitive experiments in abandoned mines and in Antarctica, and whenever they’ve tried to produce them in particle accelerators, they’ve come back empty-handed. For a while, physicists hoped to find a theoretical type of matter called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), but searches for them have repeatedly turned up nothing.

With the WIMP candidacy all but dead, dark matter is apparently the most ubiquitous thing physicists have never found. And as long as it’s not found, it’s still possible that there is no dark matter at all. An alternative remains: instead of huge amounts of hidden matter, some mysterious aspect of gravity could be warping the cosmos instead.

The notion that gravity behaves differently on large scales has been relegated to the fringe since Rubin’s and White’s heyday in the 1970s. But now it’s time to consider the possibility. Scientists and research teams should be encouraged to pursue alternatives to dark matter. Conferences and grant committees should allow physicists to hash out these theories and design new experiments. Regardless of who turns out to be right, such research on alternatives ultimately helps to crystallise the demarcation between what we don’t know and what we do. It will encourage challenging questions, spur reproducibility studies, poke holes in weak spots of the theories, and inspire new thinking about the way forward. And it will force us to decide what kinds of evidence we need to believe in something we cannot see.

Why it’s time to take alternatives to dark matter seriously

Dark matter is the most ubiquitous thing physicists have never found: it’s time to consider alternative explanations.

What if modern cosmology is a house of cards built around models of the big bang, black holes, dark matter and energy, CMBR, inflation and so on? What if there's no such thing as dark matter/energy, and modern "science" is ignoring the elephant in the room, namely plasma, which physicists agree makes up at least 99% of the universe?

Electric Universe (EU) theory doesn't ignore this fact, or that electric forces are around 39 orders of magnitude greater than gravitational ones. And yet physicists continue to insist on keeping gravity at the centre of cosmogony. Rather than jettison the notion, they'll go to any length before even considering the possibility that their currently fashionable, gravitation-centred models might be built on sand.

Excepting EU theorists, they're all on the same page about gravity. It's pivotal in their understanding, no matter how little empirical evidence for dark matter/energy there might be. One can keep on looking indefinitely for, and theorising about, something that doesn't exist, and I suspect subconsciously that's one of the main factors behind the obduracy: it's quite fun to speculate and build a consensus to back up and bolster one's own views. It creates and maintains the illusion of authoritative mystique that "scientists" can bask in.

Cosmologists have fallen in love with their models, and there's no amount of sophistry they won't employ to keep them alive. Today, it's consideration of ideas from MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics), but if that doesn't pan out, tomorrow it'll likely be something else. But at some point, if you can find nothing that empirically supports your theory, you have to let go of your main assumptions; which in this case is that gravity plays a key role -- and that we can largely ignore the effects of plasmas in helping to create and maintain order in what could turn out to be a steady state universe.

Think how much egg there would be on cosmologists' faces were they ever to be forced to abandon current ideas; people would be much more sceptical about the authority of "science" than they are now. It's unthinkable to admit error on this scale, so they have to keep on with essentially the same narrative however unlikely ad-hoc plot twists and turns might make it seem.

I'm not saying that EU theory is necessarily correct; but to me it seems a lot more plausible than the Alice-in-wonderland mess that cosmologists have created for themselves. EU seems to have a fair amount of empirical evidence to support it, and a degree of predictive power, both of which cosmologists generally turn a blind eye to; not to mention their tendency to ostracise, marginalise and prevent funding for, EU research.

Maybe it's not that MOND applies more on the large scale, but that plasma physics does; maybe gravity only tends to dominate on the much more local scale -- of, say, solar systems.

Electric Universe (EU) theory doesn't ignore this fact, or that electric forces are around 39 orders of magnitude greater than gravitational ones.

... at a distance of 0.053 nm, the electrostatic force between a positively-charged proton and a negatively charged electron are indeed stronger than the gravitational forces.

Did you also do the calculation for a pair of neutrons at astronomical distances? Or even a pair of neutrons at a separation of 0.053 nm? What sort of ratio between electrostatic and gravitational forces do you arrive at in those cases?

... at a distance of 0.053 nm, the electrostatic force between a positively-charged proton and a negatively charged electron are indeed stronger than the gravitational forces.

Did you also do the calculation for a pair of neutrons at astronomical distances? Or even a pair of neutrons at a separation of 0.053 nm? What sort of ratio between electrostatic and gravitational forces do you arrive at in those cases?

Not sure what you're getting at. Plasma comprises charged particles, not neutrons, and makes up at least 99% of the matter in the universe. So why do you mention neutrons? Perhaps you can make your point in a different way that might make more sense to me? BTW, I didn't make any calculations (nor would I be able to) -- I simply mentioned a figure that's generally quoted.

More on alternative views on gravity,

A new study reports conclusive evidence for the breakdown of standard gravity in the low acceleration limit from a verifiable analysis of the orbital motions of long-period, widely separated, binary stars, usually referred to as wide binaries in astronomy and astrophysics.

The study carried out by Kyu-Hyun Chae, professor of physics and astronomy at Sejong University in Seoul, used up to 26,500 wide binaries within 650 light years (LY) observed by European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope. The study was published in the 1 August 2023 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Smoking-gun evidence for modified gravity at low acceleration from Gaia observations of wide binary stars

Unlike galactic rotation curves in which the observed boosted accelerations can, in principle, be attributed to dark matter in the Newton-Einstein standard gravity, wide binary dynamics cannot be affected by it even if it existed. The standard gravity simply breaks down in the weak acceleration limit in accordance with the MOND framework.

Wide binary anomalies are a disaster to the standard gravity and cosmology that rely on dark matter and dark energy concepts. Because gravity follows MOND, a large amount of dark matter in galaxies (and even in the universe) are no longer needed. This is also a big surprise to Chae who, like typical scientists, "believed in" dark matter until a few years ago.