this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
107 points (92.1% liked)

science

14995 readers
469 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.

2024-11-11

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

may

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] xkforce 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No. MOND will never be the explanation. Its just not capable of explaining what its supporters claim that it can.

[–] SuperJetShoes 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'm not a physicist (read "couldn't do the maths“) but MOND feels closer to an natural, organic explanation than Dark Matter. Are there planets formed from Dark Matter? Are there elements and dark molecular structures?

Please can I have a motorcycle made of it?

[–] ElectroNeutrino 5 points 1 year ago

There's a few other things that dark matter explains which MOND doesn't, such as the relative abundances of the light elements and galaxies with seemingly no dark matter present.

[–] cynar 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One of the things with dark matter (specifically WIMPs, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) is that they don't seem to interact with any force other than gravity. This means they can shed momentum, by interacting with each other, or normal matter. In order for a dense object to form from a cloud, the cloud, as a whole, must shed, or cancel out the momentum of the particles involved. WIMPs would not be able to do this via anything other than gravity. This limits their collapse to around galaxy scale.

In short WIMPs can't form anything more complex than an incredibly diffuse inert gas cloud. We can only detect those clouds on a galactic scale, via their gravity effect.

[–] SuperJetShoes 1 points 1 year ago

Damn. So no totally dark motorcycle then. Ah well

[–] SeabassDan 0 points 1 year ago

WIMP is such a great acronym for those lol

[–] brianorca 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One of the recent theories I've heard is that dark matter is made of particles with a wavelength measured in light-years. They can't be localized to something as small as a star system, much less a planet.

[–] GenesisJones 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a really cool idea I haven't heard before. I like it.

[–] brianorca 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] GenesisJones 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you I'll be watching that haha

[–] marcos 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are there planets formed from Dark Matter?

Last time I looked, planets didn't glow.

They are just not numerous enough to explain all the things dark matter is supposed to explain.

[–] SuperJetShoes 2 points 1 year ago