Quote:
Originally Posted by byronm
This doesn't compute  ... Isn't the foundation of dark matter/dark energy simply matter/energy that "should be there" but we couldn't see/explain? |
No, it's not that simple. As
briefly explained in Wiki....
...all of the light element abundances depend on the amount of ordinary matter (baryons) relative to radiation (photons).
So, if I understand it correctly, the observed proportions of the primordial elements indicate how many baryons there should be. Apparently we didn't see that many. Now what we see is closer to what is expected.
For a classic exposition on this and other topics, check out
The First Three Minutes by Weinberg.