IS THERE DARK MATTER? Without, of course, understanding the science, I have marveled before, including in the first post on this blog, about how much scientists know about the Big Bang—despite the difficulties in obtaining evidence about events so distant in time and space. This article by Paul Kroupa on the Aeon website raises questions about much that is thought to be known about the universe. It begins: “According to mainstream researchers, the vast majority of the matter in the Universe is invisible: it consists of dark-matter particles that do not interact with radiation and cannot be seen through any telescope. The case for dark matter is regarded as so overwhelming that its existence is often reported as fact.”
Kroupa then questions whether dark matter and dark particles exist. He says that dark matter has not yet been found: “In July, the LUX experiment in South Dakota came up empty in its search for dark particles – the latest failure in a planet-wide, decades-long effort to find them.”
Kroupa says that the issues presented if dark matter does not exist are huge: “Acceptance of dark matter has influenced scientific thinking about the birth of the Universe, the evolution of galaxies and black holes, and the fundamental laws of physics.” As an example, Kroupa says that: “The first step is that we need to revisit the validity of Newton’s universal law of gravitation.”