Science Memes

11148 readers

2542 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

206

Dark Matter (mander.xyz)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Dark matter isn't based on simulations, it's entirely observational.

We observe here that matter generates a gravitational force proportional to the amount of matter present, and we know that to an extreme degree of precision, but when we look at big things like galaxies the force required to shape and move them in the ways we observe would require more matter than we observe within them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

To expand on this, we also have mapped it out and know that the amount of dark matter varies wildly between galaxies, with some having basically none while others have far more dark matter than observable matter in them. There’s also a lot of stuff with the early universe that only works if you have something with gravity that doesn’t otherwise interact significantly with matter.

As Angela Collier puts it, dark matter is not a theory, it is a set of observations.