[phkahler]

>> Why exactly is dark matter unintuitive to the layperson?

For me it's because the explanations don't actually make sense. The classic example to me is the galactic rotation "problem". It gets resolved by suggesting a spherical cloud of dark matter surrounding a galaxy. Great, but why would it affect the galaxy normally but take on such a distribution? The solution raises more questions than the problem. Not to mention it's a whole new kind of matter we can't detect. It's almost magical thinking.

[consilient]

> Great, but why would it affect the galaxy normally but take on such a distribution?

Electromagnetic interactions radiate off energy but not angular momentum, so a spinning sphere of gas will flatten over time. Dark matter doesn't interact electromagnetically and thus sheds energy much more slowly.