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by NZGumboot 1706 days ago
You're right that there could be multiple things which separately explain the things that dark matter explains (not just the two you listed, but the others as well: gravitational lensing, galaxy cluster motion, etc). But the strength of the dark matter model is that it can explain all of these phenomena; which is why most physicists prefer dark matter over other theories. It's very easy to come up with a theory which explains a single phenomena, but very hard to come up with one that simultaneously explains multiple phenomena.
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To play devil's advocate, the strength of a model alone is not sufficient: I could say: Well, how can we be certain "gravitational waves" detected by LIGO aren't random dark matter density ripples and not GW from events we haven't correlated (n=1 on independent correlations). In other words, the dark matter model is too strong, because there is a arbitrarily parametrizable density field... Hell, there are people postulating Sagittarius A* is a very dense ball of DM and not a black hole. At that rate you can explain anything with dark matter. I have no logical or philosophical basis for this but in general when this sort of thing starts happening I start doubting the validity of a concept, not gaining confidence in it.