Dark energy & Dark matter ?

"Do you not find it hard to believe in something unseen and unproven ?"

None addressed your actual question, (and it's a tough but fair one) so the truth is all these theories from evolution to dark matter, were all suppose to just believe them and and have FAITH that someday, they'll just be proven right.

Scientific theories are nothing more than faith/religion of their own.

Personally, I don't really believe in a substantive form of dark matter - I never have. I think it's the best answer we have today, but I think given time and a lot more investigation, we're going to find that it's the current calculations which are a bit off and tweaking them will account for all of the properties now being explained by dark matter and dark energy.

You see, the great thing about science is that it's always working to improve itself. It's always looking to prove the answers that we have are the best answers.

Edit:

More direct to your question. There is no faith involved here. It's a matter of observation, calculation, 'hypothization', 'theorization', rinse and repeat.

Edit2:

compendious, no it's not faith. I'm not trying to be insulting here, but don't you know what faith is? Believing that something has a high probability of being correct due to *all of the supporting EVIDENCE* is not faith.

Believing in something in spite of (and sometimes *because* of) having NO evidence, that's faith. That's not an insult, that's the definition.

Dark matter is simply mass that isn't doing anything that causes it to glow. I certainly have no problem believing in such things as cold dust. I see no reason why the all the mass in the universe has to be in the form of things that glow so we can see them on our telescopes. I have a harder problem with dark energy, and I'm really hoping that somebody actually successfully revises general relativity to cope with it. I think it would be really exciting to live through such a significant revolution in physics. Keep in mind that GR is an incredibly successful theory, so the next theory would still make all the same predictions that GR does in places where it's been successful (as GR does with Newtonian mechanics). The new theory, whenever it appears will identify limits on the domain of applicability of GR.

Day one god a made a little light, said it was good and then separated it from the darkness. How then can it be that faith has something to do with the energy and matter of darkness. I thought faith was something seen in the light.

We can track objects motion, and based on that motion determine gravitational effects on those objects and predict "dark matter". Telescopes sensitive enough to detect gravity waves, such as NASA's future LISA gravity wave detector, are already in the works, and once constructed would be able to verify the existence of dark matter. Since the existance of dark matter is a testable hypothesis, unlike the existence of God, and already has evidence of it's existence in the form of stellar motion, it does not require faith to believe in, though it does remain a theory, as you've noted.

there is evidence, (direct and indirect) that supports the existence of dark matter. it fits in with the best of our knowledge at present, as did religion centuries ago. but knowledge moves on. either way, dark matter will be proven or disproven to exist, but religion seems to want to stay forever, despite all the evidence against what is written in the bible and other religious texts.

science doesn't know everything, but it certainly doesn't know nothing. if the religious had their way, we'd still be in the dark ages, but then that's what they want. a populace easy to manipulate and fool.

The 'dark matter' theory is based on (among other things) the observations of the rotational velocities of stars around their galactic centre.

A simplification ..centripal force on star mass m =m*V^2/R

Grav Force due to galaxy mass M =G*M*m/R^2

>V^2=G*M/R ..or V varies as inverse root of radial distance (kepler)

Actual observation ..V is practically linear with distance

Conclusion unless G varies (absolutely no evidence) then the galaxy must contain extraneous but as yet unobserved extra matter to account for the discrepancy..no faith just logic!

It's been inferred by looking at gravitational effects of stars and galaxies, so it's not purely faith. Though who knows it might be something completely different, not being a scientist I have to go on their say so.

Even if science now found a way of detecting dark energy and dark matter at one point you all still had to go on faith although you don't call it that.

Actually they have managed to figure out how to detect dark matter now. http://www.physics.ucla.edu/hep/dm06/dm06.htm

Testable predictions are a great indication that you got it right.

That paper is more than two years old to. Perhaps you should really update your argument.

Added: Here are some more

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/12/01120...

http://cdms.berkeley.edu/Education/DMpages/science...

Notice they are even dividing it into types