Seminar
Is Dark Matter the most valid explanation for the mass which is apparently missing in the Universe?

Resumen

Two main families of models explain that, at least in appearance, something like 90% of the mass of the Universe is still undetected. One (supported by an overwhelmingly large fraction of the community) is the dark matter model, in which the missing mass is postulated to be made of exotic non-baryonic particles. The other one, is modifying gravity (MOND, MOG, ...) in such a way that it compensates the apparent lack of mass. Both approaches are purely ad-hoc and so far not based in first principles of fundamental physics. Since I am not a specialist, in dark matter or modified gravities, the talk I am proposing is intended to be made purely from a philosophical/sociological/historical point of view. I expect the talk to be an open debate. The philosophical thesis I will defend is that the order in the discovery of some astronomical landmarks has led the community to favour dark matter model. In my opinion, this has caused darkmatter to receive a larger funding and become more successful at describing reality than alternative models. I will try to expose to the audience that, from a purely philosophical point of view, the dark matter model and the modified gravity models are equally speculative and equally (in)valid. I will make the point that dark matter has to be taken only as an extremely complex model which is useful for the description of reality and not as reality itself.