[user-the-name]

No, there are not. Pretty much all the popular contenders are less plausible, and most still need dark matter to explain all observations, so they only add more complexity.

Dark matter is a simple theory that explain a wide variety of unrelated observations.

[aisengard]

I mean, until we actually prove that dark matter is "something", we need to stop calling it that. All it is, is some constant that we apply to make sense of the motion of galactic-scale objects. And we use "dark energy" as a constant to explain why the universe keeps apparently accelerating its expanse beyond what we would have predicted given what we know about the universe. There is no reason to believe that these phenomena are caused by some singular thing. These latest development only strengthens that conclusion.

In any case, until we actually are able to test that this is one "thing" rather than a bunch of things we still have no idea about, we should stop calling it "dark <foo>". Because I think that a lot of people are under the impression that there is some discrete substance out there causing this discrepancy, and there really is no reason to believe that's the case.

[LocalPCGuy]

I think it helps to give a name to the concept, and then do a better job of educating people that this is basically a placeholder name until it's better understood. (and yes, I realize that is not an easy task, might be easier to find the solutions and figure out the best name)

[aisengard]

Right, I'm not sure there's one unifying theory that you could bundle it under, not sure what the right term is for a general concept rather than a hard testable theory. But that just further proves the need to stop calling it one thing in particular, because it leads the vast majority of people (including scientists!) to think that "dark matter" is some big unifying theory, when there is no such thing as some singular substance called "dark matter".

[russdill]

You've described the search for dark matter as it is performed. There's already a percentage that's been filled in and most theories try to fill in additional chunks rather than as you say "some singular thing".