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9 points

The scale probably just can’t measure the apples all together that way. Maybe it’s not calibrated to see all the different ways apples can interact. Maybe time to go back to the scale drawing board.

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29 points

That’s that funny thing, they’ve tried different scales. They’ve tried radically different ways of measuring it, and always come up with the same discrepancy.

If summing energy works differently on a large scale, why? Since we don’t know what we can do is start measuring the difference between observable energy and the “extra” that appears when we add it up. We could call that “unobservable energy” so we can see if there is a pattern, or if it’s actually something else. You know “unobservable energy” is a mouthful, why not just call it dark energy?

We don’t know what it is. We have tested lots of theories and dark energy doesn’t seem to fit any answer, hence the name. I get thinking that it can’t be that hard to reconcile and scientists must be missing an obvious conclusion, but it’s likely that your theory has already been tested. Maybe you have the solution and can resolve the discrepancy, but right now all data shows that dark energy is a large part of the universe.

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22 points
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I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Dark matter has been proven numerous times, is a predictive model, and is the only explanation that has held up to scrutiny and observations. It’s very clearly the right explanation and we know how dark matter generally behaves, we just don’t know specifically what it is.

See, for example, the behavior of the bullet cluster merger.

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1 point
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Sorry, but…aren’t modified gravity theories gaining some more traction recently? Not enough to say that modified gravity is the most likely explanation for observations, but at least enough to avoid saying that dark matter is “clearly the right explanation”?

edit: I’ve just realised that some people would describe modified gravity as a specific theory to describe the observational effect of dark matter. Is that what you were doing here?

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4 points

Maybe it’s all because of tiny strings.

Guys

Listen

It’s the strings

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2 points

Sorry for not responding earlier, I don’t seem to be getting notifications! My other reply further down in the thread hopefully answers all of your (wonderful) questions, though. Have a great day!

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-1 points

I was working on a machine last week that’s supposed to turn on when it’s plugged into a battery. And it did that, but the battery it was plugged into was faulty, so we changed it. And then it wouldn’t turn on when plugged in. We tried it with several different batteries, and it would only turn on when plugged into that first one. We couldn’t figure it out.

The next day, I came into work and told my coworker that battery is magic. Because it was the only explanation that could accurately predict the results we saw.

Then the battery stopped being magic.

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15 points

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of physics if you think that analogy is even remotely similar to dark matter.

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