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Quote by: Isherwood  Nearly right, as I understand it, but you make it sound as though there was a theory to be proven and evidence was being manufactured to support it. That's not true. Science works from evidence to hypothesis. In some cases, the hypothesis can't account for every aspect of the evidence. In those cases, an explanation is inferred which might explain the rest of the evidence. What's inferred is always viewed with skepticism until more evidence is accumulated to strengthen the inference. Dark matter is inferred by other observations. It may or may not be acceptable as a part of cosmology once more evidence is obtained and examined. |
That's allright, but I feel the same for dark matter as I would have felt for Ether. They needed to fill space with a substance that allowed light to travel, so they concluded that something invisible (and rather unlikely) was there. (later disproved)
It's just a personal opinion, but I distrust theories that need to add an element that has no precedent in order to be valid. It makes the whole thing look as if they were adapting reality to their theory, when it should be the other way around. Then again, I'm no comsophysicist.