this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Astronomy
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I think it goes beyond not being able to "see" it and goes to we can't detect it at all. Doesn't dark matter just fill in the mathemagical holes with some numbers to make it all work?
We can detect its gravitational influence, as it interacts via gravity. The issue being that gravity is a weak force, and so there's a lot of room for speculation.
But there is a lot of evidence backing up dark matter existing. But it's not definitive yet.
I get that but it still sounds woo-woo since we can't directly detect it. I'm not naysaying since I realize it's the best we have and I'm not smart enough to come up with anything better.
Dark matter is matter that we infir to exist only on its gravitational effects. We've observed its existence by the fact that it seems to clump up in the middle of two massive super-solar structures following a collision.
We can indirectly detect dark matter thru gravitational lensing. That is how NASA created this map showing the actual locations of dark matter in tinted blue.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubbles-dark-matter-map/
That's a cool one!
you can also sort of directly see it with certain colliding galaxies