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bigjeff5 comments on The Futility of Emergence - Less Wrong
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Neutrinos are included in the broad consideration of dark matter because they don't interact electromagnetically. "Baryonic" and "baryon" aren't quite the same; baryonic matter only needs to be composed mostly of baryons.
Yes. There's "dark matter" simply defined as matter that doesn't participate in the electromagnetic interaction, and then there's the hypothesis that a significant portion of matter in the universe can be classified as such.
Ah, OK. Wasn't aware of that distinction. I also failed to notice that the important consideration here is interacts electromagnetically vs. doesn't. Thanks.
Yes, there are a number of hypothetical non-atomic particles that would need to exist as well, since by their very nature neutrinos have almost no mass. These additional particles have not been discovered, and discovering them would be extremely difficult.
I'd agree that it has the potential to be another phlogiston, but you've got to at least give the Dark Matter theorists a chance to falsify their theory. If it becomes a situation where new evidence comes out that DM can't predict, yet is adapted to describe DM, then you know DM is utter poppycock. There are, however, a number of avenues for experimentation, so it's certainly not the case that you can call Dark Matter a modern-day phlogiston yet.
At the same time, if DM is poppycock, then GR is necessarily very, very broken (we already know it's broken, just not for big stuff).
I should note, I was not claiming it to be unfalsifiable, I was just picking nits (incorrectly). :P