Submitted by jmite t3_10am6y2 in askscience
Otherwise-Way-1176 t1_j498odh wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in How do we know that dark matter isn't just ordinary matter our instruments can't detect? by jmite
You haven’t answered the OP’s question at all.
> Then consider that flight alone was thought of as impossible less than 150 years ago.
No, flight was not thought of as impossible 150 years ago. It was very obviously possible, because birds, insects, and bats all fly. People knew that flight was possible.
150 years ago, we didn’t know how to build a machine that could carry humans into the air. We simply didn’t yet know how to engineer the solution - doesn’t mean we thought it was impossible.
DumbNBANephew t1_j4hufa8 wrote
Come on you know exactly what I meant when I said flight was thought of as impossible. You know I didn't mean any flight, I meant human flight using machines.
I used flight as an example that many good ideas that improve our understanding of the world do not come from scientists who spend their lives studying the subjects. While there was a part of the scientific community helping flight, it was their (Orvilles) ideas that truly broke the ground on flight, and they weren't researchers who spent their entire lives only working on aeronautics. It's also well known that many people simply didn't believe it could be done.
And that's for a field of physics which has been researched for hundreds of years if not more.
Everything astrophysics touches is so new. Add to it that historically, people who research a certain subject are very averse to new ideas within the subject (because it threatens their standing in the field), and yet many advancements are made by people from outside the field who thought outside the little box those researchers drew.
I only used flight as an example of someone not following traditional or well-accepted knowledge to make a breakthrough.
It is very VERY likely that dark matter is just part of our equations being incorrect. I wouldn't be surprised if someone came up with better theories and equations that challenge our current understanding and result in doing away of dark matter altogether.
Many astrophysics researchers will call blasphemy if you doubt dark matter or go against what's currently accepted to be true. But I think that's only because they are territorial about their work and don't want to be proven wrong.
As a whole, the entire field and all concepts, including dark matter, are in it's infancy. It's very likely that we are wrong about a lot of it and need to keep an open mind.
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