A decade ago, LHC was about to start it's series of experiments, and many other "dark matter" experiments were either in the works, or diligently looking for evidence of exotic matter. The Planck Satellite was about to presumably confirm the homogeneous nature of the universe. Lots of big money projects were in the works. I would describe the mood as pretty confident and quite "hopeful" within the mainstream astronomy community in 2007. Their beliefs were virtually unchallenged in public. Those of us that dared to question their statements on the internet were typically silenced in short order, and most people simply never questioned their dogma in public.
The past decade however has been more than a tad 'disappointing' in terms of lab results and in terms of observational revelations for LCDM proponents. Not only were the mainstream's galaxy mass estimation techniques of 2006 shown to be tremendously flawed, all their lab tests came back negative over that same decade. DM experimentation has been done now at a serious financial cost, and many previously 'popular' DM concepts have been falsified outright in those big budget experiments. Nothing much is left standing in terms of mathematical models, and nothing supports their claim of exotic forms of matter in the lab today. Meanwhile the standard particle physics model has shown that it can and has stood the test of time and it has produced very useful predictions that have all worked out well in the lab.
Planck data wasn't particularly kind to mainstream beliefs either. It showed hemispheric variations in the background data which defy Guth's claims of homogeneity. The "hot' and "cold" spots appear to be nothing more than galaxy clusters, and or a lack thereof. Whatever claims to fame that inflation theory had left, pretty much went up in smoke during the BICEP2 fiasco, and the revelations of hemispheric variations and 'cold spots' that tend to defy inflation predictions.
More and more people are also beginning to realize that an "average" temperature of spacetime is a typical prediction of *every* cosmology model that one might dream up, particularly since Eddington himself nailed the background temperature of space to within 1/2 of degree of the correct number, *before* even knowing about distant galaxies. It took big bangers 3 or 4 tries to get any closer than Eddington did in his napkin calculations based on the concept of the scattering of starlilght on "dust".
Dark energy theory has taken two hits recently. Larger SN1A studies tend to put the whole concept of acceleration at sigma 3, far short of a real 'discovery". Expansion models that allow for threading tend to do away with any need for dark energy entirely too. Even based on their own observations and models, "dark energy" theory is shaky at best.
Inflation, dark energy and particularly exotic matter theory have taken a tremendous hits over the past decade.
Of course the mainstream hasn't given up *all* hope just yet. LUX-LZ has been funded in spite of previous null results, and they're still holding out some hope that LHC will find some anomaly in the data that defies the standard model. LUX-LZ however is a long way off from producing any useful data, leaving dark matter theory in limbo at the moment. There is a pregnant pause taking place until at least 2020 before the mainstream even has much hope of continuing to search the gaps for any bread crumbs related to exotic matter. Even more scary for them, they're running out of gaps in that particular experiment. Soon they'll reach the neutrino interaction energy states, and they'll have no hope of finding anything but background noise. Hope is definitely fading fast on DM theory, and the gaps are becoming uncomfortably small in terms of big budget dark matter projects.
The only real "bight spot' in astronomy recently has come from LIGO and gravitational wave theory. If you read my thread on that topic and my PDF however, you'll see that there's also a 'pregnant pause" going on there too. It's getting more and more uncomfortable that there is no visual support for a celestial origin of these signals. So far we've only seen two "events" that were published and categorized as gravitational wave events, but neither of them enjoys any sort of external visual or neutrino detector support. That trend seems likely to continue, otherwise we would have seen far more published "events" by now. LIGO India is under development, and its full speed ahead in terms of spending on construction, but it will be at least 2019-2020 before LIGO India starts returning useful data. VIRGO is of course an asset in terms of triangulating any observed signals. Will LIGO/VIRGO be able to triangulate a signal to a specific region of the sky and pick out a celestial event in the near future? Inquiring minds want to know, but so far it hasn't happened. How many 'naked black hole" merger events can they sell to the public before their claims start to look fishy?
It seems to me that the confidence level of astronomy community has dropped off dramatically over the past decade. They seem almost desperate to find a "victory" on any front. The LIGO discovery could be a life preserver for awhile, but it could also end up sinking them entirely if that gravitational wave 'discovery' starts to look shaky too.
I'd have to describe the current time period in astronomy as a "pregnant pause" of truly epic proportions. We all know that something has to give soon, but nobody really wants to go there yet. There seems to still be some 'hope' within astronomy today. but that hope is fading fast and it's nothing like it used to be.
The next decade could make or break LCDM theory IMO. I'm frankly not seeing how they can continue this charade much longer. The technological improvements have thus far been rather unkind to LCDM proponents, and I suspect that trend will continue far into the future.
