Talk:Dark matter

Dark matter in fiction was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 11 December 2022 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Dark matter. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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Dark matter was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

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Date	Process	Result
April 4, 2006	Peer review	Reviewed
January 28, 2007	Good article nominee	Listed
July 11, 2009	Good article reassessment	Delisted

Current status: Delisted good article

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M87 paper seems to evidence of character not existence of dark matter.

In a recent edit @Paolosalucci added a section on M87. I don't understand how it fits in with the section "Observational evidence". Most or even all of the content in that section is about evidence for existence/ The added text ends with:

Remarkably, the dark matter halo shows a very large central region with an about constant density.

To me this is an analysis of the character of the dark matter halo, not observational evidence for existence. Similarly the cited reference is assumes dark matter from beginning to end. It seems to me that this content belongs in Dark matter halo. A bit more needs to be said about the significance of the 'remarkable' part. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:38, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed this section since the relevance is unclear. It's one of the many pieces of evidence that dark matter exists if GR/Newtonian mechanics is valid, but I don't see how this contributes evidence for dark matter that the Bullet Cluster doesn't already do (Bullet Cluster does it better too, since it is explicitly difficult for modified gravity theories to explain). Banedon (talk) 01:47, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dubious history

Kelvin's and Poincare's "dark matter" has no apparent connection to our present idea of dark matter as different from ordinary matter. Kelvin's idea is plainly about dark stars, which he thought of as ordinary matter. I don't see how it belongs here. The real origin of the dark matter problem is in the study of galactic rotation. I suggest Kelvin and Poincare be deleted as irrelevant. Is there any reason to think they have any connection to the dark matter needed to explain gravitational behavior? If so, it should be in the history. Zaslav (talk) 21:01, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but the reliable sources clearly show the current version is fine.

Bertone, Gianfranco, and Dan Hooper. "History of dark matter." Reviews of Modern Physics 90.4 (2018): 045002.

This is a top journal and the article has over a thousand citations. Johnjbarton (talk) 22:58, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to delete the table "Some dark matter hypotheses"

The table labeled "Some dark matter hypotheses" is puzzling and it's content is not reliably sourced. Rather the categories appear to be invented for the table. The entries are a mix of mainstream candidates and fringe theories. No text helps readers sort out the content. In effect is it an overly long See Also section stuck in the middle of the article. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]