[gjem97]

Ok, so my understanding is that the term "dark matter" refers to a difference between the theoretical and observed exapansion speeds (accelerations?) of the universe. Can someone summarize for me why this is a useful concept, and not just simplify it to "we have the theory of universe expansion wrong"? What is the evidence for there actually being something like matter involved?

[schindlabua]

You are thinking of dark energy, which is a completely different beast (also a lot more vague).

Dark energy is the "why is the universe expanding so fast"-stuff and dark matter is the "why are galaxies so heavy"-stuff of the universe.

Galaxies appear to be heavier than what you get by adding up all the visible mass (you can tell by how much a galaxy bends light coming from behind it), so it makes sense to talk about matter. It's dark because it doesn't seem to interact electromagnetically with ordinary matter.

Looking at just all the gravity (dark or not) in the universe you'd expect all the matter in the universe to slowly start clumping together, or at least slow down the expansion of the universe, but we find that things are flying apart, and increasingly quickly so. So there's some force at play, and that's dark energy.

edit: letters

[ouid]

The amount by which galaxies differ in their visible mass to their predicted mass varies on a per galaxy basis.