Illuminating Dark Matter Theories

"... the lamp of history ... destroyeth the darkness of ignorance, the whole mansion of nature is properly and completely illuminated." -- Ugrasrava Sauti, Mahabharata, 8th century B.C.

Steve Smith: Illuminating Dark Matter Theories.

More doubts are surfacing about the existence of this undetectable phantasm.

In previous Picture of the Day articles about the existence of “dark matter” we noted that it is primarily an add-on to "Big Bang Cosmology.” The Big Bang is supposed to be what brought all matter and energy, including gravity, into existence. All modern cosmologists, with few exceptions, accept the theory without question.

NASA launched the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) on June 30, 2001. The instruments onboard the satellite were designed to measure temperature fluctuations theorized to exist in lower mass density regions of the Universe. Since the Big Bang theory does not account for such regions—matter and energy should be evenly distributed—WMAP was sent to confirm their existence.

According to conventional physics, dark matter is a necessary addition to their models since there is not enough gravity in the Universe to account for galaxy formation, or those galaxies assembling themselves into clusters. Galaxy clusters should have slowed down considerably over the last few billion years and not maintained such wild recessional velocities, some of which are said to approach the speed of light.

Astronomers came up with a dark (or undetectable) form of matter when they noticed stars on the edge of a spiral galaxy orbiting its nucleus with the same angular speed as stars closer to its center. As Newtonian mechanics insists, stars farther away from the center should be moving more slowly, so astronomers assumed dark matter was imparting extra velocity to them.Investigators have also tried for years to reconcile the amount of mass in the Universe with how fast it is expanding. Their only recourse has been to invent the existence of another undetectable force, “dark energy.”

As long ago as 2007, for example, serious reconsideration of dark matter theory was already published. Consensus astronomy presupposes dark matter organizing galactic structure. Dark matter (as well as dark energy) are thought to be necessary mathematical constructs in the astronomical community, because in their minds gravity is the sine qua non of all forces that govern galactic motion.