Is it possible that dark matter and energy don't exist?

People have struggled to find ways to eliminate dark matter and dark energy and provide an alternative explanation for observations of the accelerating expansion of galaxies and also the excessive acceleration between galaxies in local groups and the too-high rates of galaxy rotation. That was the first thing people looked for. So far, no one has been able to derive a consistent theory that eliminates the need to introduce them. So they remain, and also remain mysterious. Of course, it's possible some explanation will be found that doesn't require them. Who can say what the future will bring? But so far, no one has found an answer that handles all the constraints set by observations by experimentalists and yet also doesn't admit their existence.

There is an interesting paper from this year that accepts them and then provides a novel and interesting gravitational field equation, replacing Einstein's. They suggest that the energy-momentum tensor of normal matter isn't conserved -- that conservation must instead incorporate dark matter and dark energy together with normal matter when applying the principles of equivalence, general relativity, and Lagrangian dynamics, just as Einstein did, in developing his gravitational field equations. But they now take into account what Einstein didn't know about and come up with a new term to add -- a second-order covariant derivative of a scalar potential field. See the first paper below for that. The second paper below has them following up with a new mechanism for spontaneously breaking gauge-symmetries (and for energy and mass generation) that unifies dark matter and dark energy. And they suggest some interesting thoughts about vacuum fluctuation and a way to deduce the eightfold way mesons from the eight scalar bosons that correspond to gluons. See links below.

But dark energy and dark matter remain subjects under intense examination. Just be patient and allow the folks focusing on these questions to keep plugging away at ideas and watch. For now, we have a mystery or two. Which is fine and isn't the first time, either.

No. for the reason that dark remember and dark power are actual phenomena, they do no longer "describe" something. i think of consistent with hazard you're asking no remember if cutting-ingredient astrophysical thought describes the religious universe. As for that... all of us understand a sprint approximately dark remember and dark power. yet what the heck is a "religious universe"? And if some thought "defined" it, how would all of us understand? i assume it extremely is accessible that some no longer-yet-understood phenomenon corresponds to some thing that hasn't even been defined yet. yet i'm unlikely to get excited with regard to the possibility. ___ Edit: i understand this is accessible to describe poorly-defined words with different poorly-defined words. accessible, yet no longer very sensible. with the intention to make a medical declare you prefer an "operational definition," a definition with measurable traits. with out an operational definition, you may no longer even declare that a phenomenon exists. So how do you operationalize "religious universe"?

General relativity works very well to describe how the universe we observe works. Dark Matter and Dark Energy fit very well with GR.

General relativity works too well at the macro scale to be badly wrong. It is like Newtonian Physics vs special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics, at speeds that are not a significant fraction of the speed of light, moderate acceleration fields, or scales atom size and larger, Newton is close enough to right that we don't bother with the heavier duty physics. ====>

Our understanding of how the universe works is much less complicated with dark matter and dark energy than without them. ====> Cannot be, at worst, far wrong.

Yes, of course! We know that the stars on the outer edges of galaxies are moving too quickly to be accounted for on the basis of the gravitational forces from the matter we can see in those galaxies. There are two possibilities we have to explain this:

1. Some other material is present that we can't observe but which does have mass and therefore exerts a gravitational force. This material would have to be 'weakly interacting' - in other words, it doesn't interact with electromagnetic fields (like light) otherwise it'd get hot and glow. We have theories that suggest particles that would have these properties (the neutralino is the prime candidate) but the problem is we've never detected these particles. And not for want of looking since we've been searching for nearly two decades! However, this is a 'scientific' theory since we can, in principle, determine if it's correct or not by looking for such particles.

2. If this turns out to be wrong, or we continue not to find evidence of the necessary particles, the alternative theory is that our laws of gravity need a tweak. It could be that the laws of gravitation we currently use simply don't describe gravity on scales the size of galaxies. Again, there might be predictions based on such 'Modified Gravity' theories we can scientifically test.

If both those don't work ... we'll have to think harder.

As for Dark Energy, it's pretty clear that we haven't a clue what this actually is. The idea is that the vacuum of space contains energy, as predicted by Paul Dirac. The problem is the mismatch between what theory says this energy is, and what we need it to be to explain the rate of acceleration of the universe expansion, differ by a factor of 10^120. That's 1 followed by 120 zeros. It's the biggest mismatch between theory and experiment in the history of our species. This difference suggests we're barking up the wrong tree, in my opinion. What the solution is, no one knows, but people will continue to search for an answer. We considered the idea of negative mass for a while ... who knows ... we might go back to it eventually!

YES these are SWAGs ( Scientific Wild A88 Guesses) but based on want we do know

motion of stars implies large gravity ==> very large mass

unless there is another reason

Dark energy is just a guess about the guess about expansion rates of the universe

Of course, we have made mistakes all the time that sound silly now. In a hundred years dark matter might be a joke.

energy definently exists! it's what causes everything in our world to work, without energy our world wouldn't exist.

It is very very possible. Remember most of science is just a theory.

No.