Dark Matter

http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/62843-dark-matter-theories-take-a-blow
Dark matter is the stupidest theory I've ever fucking heard of.

For those of you who don't know, here's a crash course on the current consensus of dark matter. A lot of the big questions we all have about the universe, how it will end, and when, can be answered if we knew exactly how much mass existed in the universe. With this knowledge, we can find the density of the universe so to speak, and determine if we should start learning from the penguins or if we will end up starring on the worst episode of House Hoarders yet.

Just you, the 1946 Chicago Cubs, and everyone else      -from wiki

The problem is there is a difference between the mass that we see around us, and how much mass these calculations tell us that there is. If the amount of matter around us is really the amount we can actually find and measure, there would not be the gravitational strength necessary to bind things together, be it galaxies or the prime minister of Italy.
There are a few prominent theories about what this means, as summarized below.

Now curiously, the amount of mass missing is the combined weight of lemming that jump off cliffs each year.
Stick with me guys, this is when we start going a bit more into theoretical physics.
You see every 16 years untold numbers of lemmings gather in Spermaceti Cove, NJ. Why New Jersey? We will have to delve into a bit of biology, but nobody said this was simple. Lemmings have a pack hive lifestyle, meaning they all live together in nests, forming large colonies around the queen.

ahh, science.      -from nypost

Every sixteen years as predicted by the LHC we find huge influxes of lemming populations. Quantum physicists think there may be some kind of hormone being synthesized inside lemming physiology that allows them to periodically grow so drastically in numbers. This 'Higg's Boson' is another hot topic currently being researched, but that's a whole new can of worms.

The Swiss, spinning more Lemming poop, faster.    -from boston.com

At the end of this period of sudden growth, the lemmings all collectively jump off the cliffs into the ocean, as we all collectively misconceptionally know. But what happens to them after? Following the gulf stream north, one would logically assume Maine's main export wouldn't be imitation crustacean meat to Chinese restaurants, but twice marinated lemming in a mushroom gravy for the South.
Furthermore, the lemmings interact with another animal not often seen in the wetlands of New Jersey except during these episodes of 'freaky lemming orgies that would make a quasar sploog electrorotic radiation all over its accretion disc, if you know what I mean,' to quote a passage from  Neil Degrasse Tyson's Discovery Adventures on PBS Kids.

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This animal is of course the spider monkey. Most of it's life is spent in it's native habitat of South America, being poached for zoos in decaying post industrial cities and doing other decidedly non spider-like things. However for a brief window the spider monkeys show us an incredible insight never before known. It uses the special material produced by its opposable thumbs to create a large ring that encircles all of the lemming, and constricts to a singularity that increases the gravitational field to many times more powerful then the densest neutron star. Studies involving the spidermonkey and the construction of this loop have led to many outlying theories as to its exact purpose and mechanics, with the most popular of these theories being the aptly named String theory. The substance produced in their thumbs has been identified as the top quark from the Standard Model. (Don't ask about the bottom quark, that's what interns are for) Since it is impossible to openly view this phenomena since not even light escapes the gravitational pull, we can only infer from the acceleration of the lemmings towards the center that they enter the singularity and disappear. From here, their fate is unknown, and their mass is unaccountable.

--from curezone

Of course, there is a small group of scientists that don't agree with the General Theory to Explain Relatively Large Amounts of Lemming, or just General Relativity as Einstein himself often shortened it to. These people instead believe there's a magical monster called Dark Matter that conveniently accounts for this mass, and that's its a solid thing that we are going to trip over some day heading over to the telescope.
These theories (which are arguably just as correct at this point) are necessary because of this problem with there 'not being enough mass.' But is it really that big a deal? So a couple suns are missing or whatever, big deal, its probably a rounding error or something. NOPE. 90% of the universe is supposedly dark matter. As in, 90% of the shit around us that lets us have gravity is just fucking missing.

Our top researcher     -from wiki

But of course, there's nothing wrong with that data. It makes perfect sense for our laws to predict we exist in a clusterfuck and we need to find some ridiculous compensating force to make up for it. The idea that, maybe, there is an issue with our laws describing these forces is flawed never crosses any one's mind.

somehow I doubt this passes the 5sigma test                  fromwikipedia.

Modern physics has been around for 250 years or so. For that many years, we have made inference after inference. Each time, what we 'know' becomes less and less based on actual fact and more based on what we 'knew' from the last thought experiment. And it certainly doesn't help that every time we do this it also includes increasingly grand oversimplifications and assumptions. You could make almost ANY law make sense if you have your parameters of assumptions a certain way you would expect.

Everything is a cow. An adorable one, but cows nonetheless.

Eventually you end with an idea that is applicable in most situations except a few anomalies. But what if one of those random little science farts was kind of fucking important? Or there were two equally relevant explanations and we headed in the wrong direction? These ideas become laws, which we use to define other laws, for 200 years and so every tool we have eventually becomes invalid and we end up with a world where we have to explain things away using the summations of lemming losses each year, otherwise known as a geometric series in calculus.

I'm ignostic, so I realize there are certain things we just flat out are never going to know.

"What do you mean you've always hated Coldstone?" --from glamour

There are things even now in theoretical physics that will never be verified because there is no way to verify them. The Planck time, 10^-43 seconds, is not a cruel joke categorizing how long your boyfriend can keep it up, but instead the point at which we don't know a single fuck about the universe. Just like a black hole has an event horizon, beyond which nothing is visible, during the Big Bang there was a brief moment until the Planck time characterized by straight up not giving a fuck. Inflationary expansion (really? This is slow pitch enough I'll let you get some reader participation points) pretty much erases all information from this time period.
To further drive the point home that the universe is actively holding things close to its chest is the fact that it stops working once we look at it. Apparently Dr.Who got something right, because the idea of the Weeping Angels, who were solid statues when viewed by someone, but capable of boning at, well Planck speeds quite frankly as long as no one's judging eyes were looking at their dirty, shameful fetishes was based on the very real Quantum Zeno effect.
Scientists at the University of Texas were watching some radioactive particles radiate, because they really don't know what to do with their time now that the Alamo is lost when they noticed something strange. More specifically, the lack of something, specifically the fact that their eyeballs weren't burning nor were they mutants, because the material wasn't decaying. As long as they observed the uranium, it froze up like the Alaskan Pipelines used by the Weeping Angels.

BBC permissions department

This matter with dark matter may very well be one of these things. There are a lot of simpler explanations then the grandiose explanation being latched onto by scientists and Fox news alike. For one, it could straight up be dust, or little particles of small elements dispersed throughout the universe in small enough concentrations that its not easily detected. The universe itself has an event horizon, it took several thousand years for light to really develop. And because light travels at the speed of light, we can only see the edge of the visible universe as how far the universe has expanded SINCE that time. That's again why its literally impossible to view the universe earlier. But it also serves to show even if there isn't enough mass where we are looking, the universe may be much bigger then we think, with a bunch of dead lemmings out there. It could be a simple issue that there is in fact more entropy then we realize.
My biggest issue with dark matter is how its portrayed. When talking about dark matter, scientists really mean some kind of new super heavy particle, which could actually be feasible and very much possible. But according to the media, and so to the general public, they make it sound like dark matter is a giant burrito made of space beans that is fucking with gravity.


Personally I lean towards modified gravity laws. One of those little calculations of an anomalies years ago is rearing its big ugly lemming head. But we probably won't know the answer ever ultimately, and I'm personally just going to stay as far away from Jersey as possible. I mean really, what's more ridiculous? Lemmings, or dark matter.
(Makes spooky hand motion)

Clarified here for our first time NJ readers.   -from newquacker