Keeping in mind that this is the part of the forum where we discuss ideas contrary to mainstream thought...

I just have a nasty feeling that future generations are going to laugh at the prevailing theories that involve Dark Matter (and Dark Energy). "Hey ya know what those idiots thought waaaaay back in the 21st Century..? There was this all-encompassing mysterious magical dark stuff that no one could see or detect that was responsible for the overwhelming majority of mass in our universe... what a bunch of maroons..!!"

In my (very) humble opinion, I just think there are things about gravity we just don't fully understand.

Dark Matter could be considered a "Place-holder" more than a theory.

Although I cannot (In my limited scope) deny the possibility that there is something about gravity we are currently not understanding, I think it's more likely that there is something about galaxies that we are not understanding.

But Dark Matter is like a place holder until we figure out what that is exactly. Currently, there isn't enough visible mass in a galaxy to hold it together, But- Dark Matter (And I agree, dark matter just bugs me too) is the least crazy possibility so far.

It's probably true that dark matter is a result of gravity not being constant. That is, gravity is stronger in some regions of space/time etc.

Dark matter, a force that isn't detectable, other than a few observations, makes me think of other things that we have absolutely little evidence of, but we all believe it.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

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Some people are jumping the gun and saying these things already. Jerry Jensen says these may some day be known as the "dark ages" of astronomy.

If someone actually can produce a consistent theory of gravity that accounts for the observations at least as well as dark matter, we'll be all over it. So far no one has, though quite a few smart folks are trying.

There are a whole slew of observations that any competing theory needs to account for: weak and strong gravitational lensing, galaxy rotation curves, cluster velocity dispersions, the bullet cluster (and the other recently observed systems with gas-mass and lensing-mass differing significantly), baryon acoustic oscillations, galaxy formation and dwarf galaxy properties, and the large scale structure of the universe. To name just a few. There are a few versions of MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) that can tackle some of these, but none that can consistently handle all of them.

And it will help the uptake of any new gravity theory if it can be used for computation as readily as the current one. This was a problem with some versions of MOND: they make for nice mathematics, but producing a testable prediction from them was very difficult.

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"What do you care what other people think?" -- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report

I doubt it. We don't laugh at Newton's limited understanding, do we?

We don't laugh at Newton, but I sometimes have a slight chuckle at those who thought Earth was the absolute center of the universe

I don't laugh at his limited understanding of physics; it represented a great advance over what was known before.

I do laugh at his alchemical "research", however.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

Well said.