[Pxtl]

Dark Matter is the opposite of String Theory imho.

String Theory was about desperately seeking a Grand Unifying Theory that everybody wants and mashing math together until you figured out something that matched the evidence but was so overcomplicated it was completely untestable.

Dark Matter is about having evidence that something is terribly wrong with the math, and the evidence pointing to something goddamned absurd that everybody hates, and reluctantly finding more and more evidence that this thing everybody hates might be true.

The main thing they have in common is that they're both incredibly ugly solutions to problems in physics, but one is invented to reconcile a an inconsistency in theory, and the other is invented to reconcile an inconsistency in evidence.

And honestly, that's why I'm comfy thinking dark matter is probably real: I'm a pessimist. The ugly solution that everybody finds kinda gross is probably the truth.