Gravity, Dark Matter and why we're wrong.

As I "understand" it, we really do not "understand" gravity. We can describe its effect, but we do not "understand" it. However, we believe we understand the 3 other fundamental forces. So it isn't that out of line to question whether or not dark matter is an excuse for unexplained behavior of matter. With that said, mathematically we have models that can accurately depict the behavior of matter and gravity. We also have methods that can accurately conclude the composition of distant objects in the universe (stars, dust clouds, etc.). When things don't work the way we believe they should based on what we know about gravity, its effects, and the mass and composition of a system, we can only make attempts to describe the problem (I am pretty sure that sentence was running on). That is what we do with dark matter and dark energy. Science will get it right eventually..... either way.

Experimental evidence. General Relativity (which includes gravity) has withstood countless and varied experimental tests which support it to the nth decimal place. No. Some of those experiments involve interstellar distances. Ok... If so, none of the satellites sent up to capture the gases and particles coming from CMEs has managed to capture dark matter.

Just as a side note on something the OP said: Dark Matter is not intended to explain anything- Rather, it acts as a placeholder until a theory can provide a better model. As it is, all the evidence we have strongly supports that the mass of our own galaxy and other galaxies we can observe all exceed the amount of luminous material we can approximate as within them. Some, by as much as ninety percent. Dark Matter is the name given to hold the place of whatever that is- until we do know what it is. At which time, maybe we'll call it "enlightened matter."

Last week I was reading an article involving a team that ran a bunch of computations which revealed that most of the Milky Way's "dark matter" can be explained by ordinary matter. I'll look for it, but if anyone else can provide a link, post away.

I'd be interested to read that as everything I've ever read up til now has said that astronomers estimate that as much as 90% of the Milky Way's mass is composed of Dark Matter.

One recent experiment corroborates data gleaned from a decade-old Italian experiment, and suggests that dark matter may simply be a WIMP , that is, a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. Yet other recent experiments seem to counter these findings. The problem is all experiments are using the same substance for interaction: a simple atomic nucleus. Both the Xenon100 and CDMS experiments use the same substance as the earlier experiments, CoGeNT and DAMA, yet the statistical variances place the results at a 2.8 sigma (a measure of the distance from the mean). According to standard practices, "a 2.8 sigma result doesn’t even rise to the level of “intriguing”; you need three sigma to count as “evidence,” and five sigma for “discovery." - Source As a fairly savvy observer, what this smells like is a typical "we're not sure what's out there so we need more research dollars," much of the way all the global warming hoopla smelled like through the late 90's and well into the 2000's. Bottom line, even if it turns out that global warming is 100% anthropogenic, we cannot halt it within 100 years, and we would barely be able to slow it down, unless we discover and widely distribute a new, cheap, portable (for air, land, and sea transportation), and clean source of energy. By comparison, dark matter doesn't seem to be any threat to us at all, and even if it were, there's absolutely nothing we can do given current technology to do anything about it. In the meantime, WIMPs remain a hypothetical particle, with many characteristics similar to neutrinos, except for the fact they're far more massive. The most likely candidate of the class of WIMPs is the neutralino, the lightest of the WIMPs and inherently stable. Since the neutralino is its own antiparticle, when it encounters itself, the pair self-annihilates, releasing both energy and a neutrino. - Source ETA: Nev, I'm still searching online for that article. It may have been a paper article, one of many I recently read at the library. I just recall it was recent, as within the last two months.

Eh, don't sweat it. I gots me some google, too.