Dark matter could be gently wobbling space-time around us — and scientists may finally know how to detect it

[Admin]

A new paper suggests we may finally be able to uncover the identity of dark matter using the same technology that detects ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves.

Dark matter could be gently wobbling space-time around us — and scientists may finally know how to detect it : Read more

 

[Questioner]

It isn't clear to me that any fluctuations of space-time would necessarily be attributable to some hypothetical matter.
Other explanations for the observed 'DM effect' might also cause some perturbations of space-time.

Matter that has no direct interaction with light is hard to fathom.

Matter that nowhere responds to gravity including its own proposed gravity really sounds dodgy.
It creates mass/time-dilation but has no apparent mass of its own?

Matter the hypothesized quantity of which unexpectedly tightly correlates with the size of the central black hole of each galaxy suggest something else is going on.

Matter that configures its 'halo' neatly centered on the central black hole of each galaxy?
And that concentric formation remains intact when galaxies orbit one another?

To me all the relations with black holes and the bizarre properties required of DM indicate this is some kind of influence generated by black holes that possibly is not even gravity derived.

While some recent studies have reduced the proposed DM for the Milky Way i believe it is still supposed to be present.

If planetary orbits around affected stars (in the Milky Way) demonstrate the planet responding to a DM gravity gradient then the DM case has some support.
If not, DM will be conclusively proven an erroneous hypothesis.

 

[Zdepthcharge]

The place to look for particulate dark matter (PDM) is around a black hole. Supposedly PDM is distributed roughly evenly throughout the volume of the halo (despite PDM having no observable effect within a galaxy). Given that, PDM should be falling into black holes like baryonic matter, Therefore the place to search for signs of PDM would be in the accretion disk and jets of a black hole. I suggest M87 be the candidate black hole as we have detailed observations going back decades and there is plenty of infalling material to study. I leave it up to the adherents of PDM to explain what exactly we should expect to observe, but I suggest a wider search team that includes astrophysicists with a broader mindset to scour the data.