BeAChooser wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 5:14 am“As the cosmic web dictates the motion of all matter in galaxies and inter-galactic media through gravity, knowing the distribution of dark matter is essential for studying the large-scale structure.”
“However, the cosmic web’s detailed structure is unknown because it is dominated by dark matter and warm-hot inter-galactic media, both of which are hard to trace.”
I'm reminded of the famous quote attributed to Jean Jacques Rousseau, “God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.” (Wherein G-d, being inherently unknown, may not rationally comprise a factor in anything except as an image in the mind.)
And note the disconnect in the quoted portion: 1) There is a web of cosmos that somehow dictates its own motion, 2) surely gravity is that sole motivation but gravity is not a willing partner, however, therefore 3) let's create one for it.
QED, gravity has been repaired post hoc ergo propter hoc and technically we have zero evidence of how. Science!
I'd like to see an even-handed and exhaustive exploration of the phenomena that produces a conjecture and then back-extrapolates a theory from which is derived a set of mathematics, the whole thing then becoming "science". Just as the Big Bang was invented from a need to explain Genesis - although not without various supporting snippets from Einstein, Darwin, et al - the DM apparition can't be separated from its own obvious structure in order to explain either it: It was a conjecture that grew into a theory and then into a relatively simple mathematical framework.
What's that called, that reverse-proof of the ad hoc explanation? Seems we'd be a little more circumspect when we can't even explain what a particle is, why it's eternally faithful to its so-called laws, and how it interacts. Where it came from and by what motive is a fool's errand.
So naturally, just like DM, we leap to it, even building entire industries around it.