What's the matter?

Seriously, Dark Matter? A mysterious substance that fills much of the universe but no one can find? C.mon, who are you tryin' to kid?

Allow me to establish my credentials in astrophysics: I have undergraduate and graduate degrees, neither of them in mathematics or a physical science. So I'm just spitballin' here.

As I understand it, "Dark Matter" was originally proposed over a century ago as a hypothetical explanation for certain cosmological phenomena that appeared to lack other known causes. And we've been looking for Dark Matter ever since.

But I think the search for Dark Matter may simply represent a failure of imagination. Dark Matter may not exist at all. We need to be looking for something else entirely. It's just that so many scientists are hung up on the laws of physics, as if laws aren't meant to be broken.

Consider seaweed on a beach. A obvious hypothesis for the accumulation of marine plants on sandy stretches of shoreline is that the plants are attracted to the sand, itself. They may be drawn to its comforting warmth, its reassuring stillness, or even its cozy dryness. But how to prove which? One means of encouraging research might be through a cash prize offered by some beach resort's Chamber of Commerce to the first scientist who can provide evidence. And so the stampede begins. However, in reality, we all know that seaweed is actually dragged ashore by crabs for their nests. But see how things can become confused by predetermined parameters?

Dark Matter may simply be a distraction, a metaphor that has taken on a life of its own. There is, in its very name, an allure for the human psyche, which is likely how the term was first established. To my thinking, there is the same element of unscientific science that has made string theory so attractive. In that vein, recent research out of Hawaii suggests that the very inability to discover Dark Matter is further evidence of its existence.

Now consider these possibilities as a first step outside the Dark Matter box:  Perhaps the phenomena under question have multiple causes. Perhaps our Dark Matter exists in a parallel universe. Perhaps we should actually be searching for Dark Antimatter. Or not.

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