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s1ngular1ty2 t1_jcm8i6e wrote

Reply to comment by YawnTractor_1756 in In defence of dark energy | Nobel Laureate and dark matter pioneer James Peebles answers critics of dark energy. by IAI_Admin

The names were invented for REAL observations. They observed things happening that could not be explained without extra mass or energy. The names are made up but the phenomena is real.

All names are made up by the way.

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YawnTractor_1756 t1_jcmg2tq wrote

>things happening that could not be explained without extra mass or energy

Of course there are ways to explain observations without extra exotic mass or energy, there are several of them including as simple ones as "we've just miscalculated the actual mass of the gas in the universe" to differences in constants through time and/or space. Possibility of different explanations is the whole point of this thread.

Sure, extra mass from exotic particles was the easiest knee-jerk explanation to additional gravitational pull, but it does not make it the right explanation, and decades later we still have no idea if that exotic matter/energy is even there, yet the name continues to confusingly assume it is, and articles that say "dark matter is real" are inherently confusing because they can mean "exotic unknown matter is real" or "observations discrepancies we labeled 'dark matter' are real". And authors know it but still do it for clicks.

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