Does the Dark Really Matter?

Of course it does.

Word is getting out that there has been a breakthrough in the search for proof of Dark Matter. Here's the Press Release, and also more in depth commentary by Sean Carroll of the University of Chicago.

My friend Jake, who's a genius anyways, had this to say...

Okay. I can summarize the 'importance of the result.'

So: everyone knows dark matter is right. I mean, my opinion (and that of all my colleagues in high energy physics and cosmology) has been 'it is 99% likely that dark matter exists and it is composed of new matter particles.' I see no reason to suspect that demanding the existence of new particles as being 'hard to believe'---partly because such new particles are obviously predicted by theories without any reference to dark matter.

nonetheless…

The astro community (which I find hard to comprehend oftentimes) would rather believe that we don't understand anything (e.g. MOND=general relativity is wrong for no good reason) than believe that new particles exist beyond those in stars

Anyway, this result shows that dark matter does in fact exist, which everyone outside of astronomy has known since 1933.

(Note: Just as an FYI: "MOND" = Modified Newtonian Dynamics - a theory that explains the galaxy rotation problem without assuming the existence of dark matter.)