this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The name was too cool. If they called it something super long like Non-electromagnetic interacting granular happening (NEIGH) we would all say it's too confusing and I don't understand, as opposed to "I get it and it must be wrong for reasons so simple a layman has thougnt of them."

[–] Riven@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago

Actually that does have a confusing name: Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. WIMPs. Yes, really.

It’s a common misconception that Dark Matter = WIMPs because it’s the leading theory right now. Dark Matter really just means “whatever happens to be the cause of certain cosmological measurement discrepancies” even if that cause isn’t in any way “matter” at all. It’s a very misleading name.