How does the universe work? Where does it come from? And what is it made of?
In trying to find answers to these fundamental questions, cosmology came up with fascinating concepts, including inflation, dark energy and dark matter. While certainly seen as the best-understood idea of the three, even the nature of dark matter is still unknown. Dark matter has not been detected directly, and the indirect hints at it’s existence are not unambiguous.
Nevertheless, (cold) dark matter is a central pillar of the ‘standard model of cosmology’, which is often said to be an excellent fit to the observed data. However, when you start looking at the model’s predictions in detail, cracks and gaps become obvious. The predictions of the standard model are not fulfilled by the observations on small scales (cosmologically speaking, meaning dwarf galaxies, galaxies and groups of these). Numerous challenges, problems and outright failures are known today, most lacking satisfactory solutions. The dark matter paradigm is in a deep crisis.
This blog is devoted to pointing out the challenges faced by the dark-matter-based standard model of cosmology, their potential solutions and their implications. As active scientists in this field of research, we can present cutting-edge results, discuss recent publications and provide overviews of the discrepancies that appear when comparing the standard model predictions with observations. We do not leave it at that, but also highlight in detail the serious alternative approaches, based on scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals. All posts provide links to published works. We also raise sociological aspects of the currently on-going cosmological debate.
Please be aware of our guidelines on commenting on this blog.
The Dark Matter Crisis 
So it has been several years since I left comments here following a flurry of youtube lectures and published papers by Kroupa and company. I have been following the dark matter vs. MOND debate since then and I observe that neither hypothesis is faring very well. For that reason, and also because I am a true skeptic who really only cares about the evidence, I am going to broach the subject of what is historically known as plasma cosmology and, for most scientists, disparagingly but poorly known as the electric universe set of ideas. From my reading of almost daily papers and articles, it would seem that the realuzation is gradually developing in some scientific circles that large scale magnetic fields and therefore large scale electrical currents are spread across the universe, characterized by Birkeland filaments, twisted ropes of plasma that connect everything from planets to their stars, stars to stars, galaxies to galaxies, etc. I am afraid that scientists have unfortunately proven Kuhn correct in his analysis of how they cling to their established paradigms while ridiculing and attacking the new ones that are destined to take hold. A reliable sign of this psuedo skeptical syndrome is when accepted theories require that numerous new hypotheses be put forth to address anomalies, with increasingly complex models and a multiplicity of new forces and entities needing to be entertained. When it looks like epucycles and sounds like epicycles……. Pavel and Marcel, you both strike me as not being afraid to follow the evidence, and so I encourage you to look at the ele tric universe set of ideas with an open and of course critical mind, and resist any kind of knee-jerk reactions or quick dismissals. If you would like me to share links to interesting places I would be happy to do so, and wish you good hunring.
LikeLike
Good hunting that is!
LikeLike
Hello, I am new to this dark matter thing but I have made my own theory about it (take it with a grain of salt). I think that Dark Matter is something in the 4th dimension. Einstein stated that the 4th dimension was time but I beg to differ, as time is something that we can access. Think about it, if there was a 2D world, us 3D men can interact with the 2D world and they will not have a clue about what it is nor cannot they interact with us, a 2D men would not be even able to conceive a 3D world. Time is something we can conceive, test, and interact with it. Dark matter can interact with us, but we can’t interact with it. I also don’t quite understand Einstein’s Equation of e=mc2, as c representing the speed of light should just be speed.
LikeLike