Any physicist, upon being asked about their take on the elusive Dark Matter, would probably call it a giant pain in the b*tt. Perhaps, rightly so -- after all, despite years of painstaking research on this mysterious matter that is believed to comprise approximately 27 percent of the universe's total mass and energy, dark matter still remains one of the biggest conundrums in the history of modern physics.
Such perplexing is the study of dark matter that some scientists have long wondered if it exists at all. And now, a new study by theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde of the University of Amsterdam is likely to embolden that school of thought (regarding a universe without dark matter) even more.
For the uninitiated, unlike normal matter, dark matter does not interact at all with the electromagnetic force, meaning it does not emit, absorb or reflect light, as noted by CERN. That, in turn, makes it incredibly hard to be detected. The only way scientists came to know about its alleged existence was because of its gravitational interactions with ordinary matter (which, by the way, happens to comprise only 6 percent of the known universe).
However, according to Verlinde's theory, our understanding of gravity could be fundamentally flawed in certain aspects which may have eventually misled the astrophysicist community worldwide to root for theories 'prophesying' the existence of dark matter.
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