[resource0x]

Dark matter is a pseudo-scientific variant of the "God of the gaps". Rather of acknowledging an obvious (default) assumption that the laws of Universe (including all "constants") depend on local conditions, the community prefers spending inordinate amounts of money on nebulous ideas.

[vihren]

We do have a pretty substansive evidence that dark matter exists: from the cosmic background radiation, gravitational lensing, galaxy formation simulations, galaxy rotation curves, etc.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that there are some particles that are not interacting with electromagnetism that we haven't detected directly yet? It's not even a precedent, the neutrino is just like that.

I guess the name "dark" matter was a mistake because it implies something weird, when in fact it just means whatever this is, doesn't have electric (or chromo) charge.

[dventimi]

I agree with you. "Dark Matter" (and "Dark Energy") are colorful (colorless?) names that I think helped these theories diffuse into the popular consciousness at a time when popular interest in science was at a high-water mark (remember when "chaos theory" was fashionable?). As I mentioned in another comment recently (it feels like a "Dark Matter" or "Dark Energy" headline trends on HN almost every day), this coded these theories as "exotic" or "weird" as you say, and invited speculation about Dark Matter and even an urge to overturn it among laypeople who equated "exotic" with "tendentious." But, as you suggest, personally I don't regard Dark Matter as all that exotic. We already know about some species of "dark matter": the neutrino is one, and before that there was the neutron. Oh, well. I suppose there will be another episode on HN in a day or so.

[rhdunn]

We have concrete evidence that either a) a new type of matter and energy exists, or b) our theories need to be modified in some way.

The orbit of planets in our solar system have hinted at missing matter several times -- one time it lead to the discovery of a new planet (Uranus or Neptune, IIRC); one time it lead to the discovery of General Relativity.

Until we either detect dark matter/energy, or develop a theory that accurately predicts the behaviour we're attributing to dark matter we cannot say one way or the other which is the correct approach.

It could also be that we are not accurately modelling EM/SR/GR effects at a large scale, such as how they are warped by the different stars orbiting the arms of the galaxies. Or that when we extend QED/QCD to accelerating reference frames (general relativity) that dark matter won't be needed, just like how QED was formulated by extending electromagnetism/QM to special relativity (non-accelerating reference frames).

[DoneWithAllThat]

Not trying to be a mindless skeptic but your “why is it so hard” question seems bizarre to me. It seems quite understandable that it’s hard for people to believe there’s a particle responsible for a significant percentage of all matter in the universe that we have no direct evidence of and the only reason it’s believed to exist at all is because a lot of otherwise well-understood equations and observations require it to exist.