Dark matter nightmare: What if we are just using the wrong equations?
I very much wish no one had used the terms "dark matter" and "dark energy", as those imply far more knowledge than we have.  It implies to those unfamiliar that there is in fact some form of energy or matter that has been "sort of" identified, but whose properties are unknown.<p>That isn't the case at all.  We have equations we use to predict observations, and in certain cases, those observations are not quite matching what we predicted.  There are a lot of reasons why this can happen, and using the equations poorly is but one of them.<p>I really wish they'd just said we've found an <i>inconsistency</i>, between theory and observation, which is the actual case. It would, I think, better inform the public about the actual process of science, rather than making it sound like a new discovery has been made, which has not happened, clearly.  Or perhaps the real discovery <i>was</i> the inconsistency, and that should be the framing of the problem.  Describing it using sort of known words like 'energy' and 'matter' makes the general public think a new type of matter has been found, rather than what has actually been found which is a hole in our understanding.