The End of Dark Matter? – Dr. Jenny Wagner, DemystifySci +431

Physicist Jenny Wagner joins us, asking not whether dark matter is possible but whether it is necessary, whether the missing mass was ever missing or only misplaced inside the models we carried in before we looked up. She works the inverse problem of gravitational lensing the way a person works a locked door in the dark, feeling for what the data actually says against what the assumptions quietly whisper, until the cosmological constant, dark energy, and the whole dark sector start to look less like discoveries and more like scaffolding we forgot was scaffolding. From Zwicky and the Coma cluster to MOND and the Bullet cluster, she traces how a pragmatic guess hardened into orthodoxy, and how general relativity alone might carry more of the weight than anyone budgeted for. Cosmology as it should be done, grounded in what the sky gives us and honest about what it withholds.Jenny's blog: https://thegravitygrinch.blogspot.com/PATREON https://www.patreon.com/c/demystifysciPARADOX LOST PRE-SALE: https://buy.stripe.com/7sY7sKdoN5d29eUdYddEs0bHOMEBREW MUSIC - Check out our new album!Hard Copies (Vinyl): FREE SHIPPING https://demystifysci-shop.fourthwall.com/products/vinyl-lp-secretary-of-nature-everything-is-so-good-hereStreaming:https://secretaryofnature.bandcamp.com/album/everything-is-so-good-herePARADIGM DRIFThttps://demystifysci.com/paradigm-drift-show00:00 Go! Grounding Cosmology in What We Can Actually Observe00:01:57 Data First: Separating Physics from Statistical Assumptions00:09:32 How Dark Matter Falls Out of the Models We Choose00:14:38 Zwicky, Coma, and the Birth of the Missing Mass Problem00:20:58 Bound or Just Passing Through? The Cluster Stability Debate00:25:22 Two Missing Mass Problems Merge Into One Story00:33:40 Lambda: The Cosmological Constant and the Rise of Dark Energy00:45:09 Why Simple Models Stuck, and the Underdetermination Trap00:52:04 Average Density and the Roots of Statistical Cosmology01:01:05 Where Cosmology and Astrophysics Split01:09:12 Causality From Inside the Universe01:18:21 One Snapshot of the Cosmos, and What Webb Adds01:24:48 Where the Dark Matter Doubt Began: Lensing's Fine Print01:32:20 Meeting MOND and the Bullet Cluster Up Close01:39:24 Revisiting General Relativity at Galactic Scales01:44:49 Gravity as Geometry, and the Cause We Still Can't Name01:51:15 The Case for Cosmology Without a Dark Sector01:56:21 Why Equations Take Their Form: Higgs vs. Dark Matter02:03:52 Necessary or Merely Sufficient? Bias in the Field02:08:23 Storytelling, Awe, and the Pull of Exotic Explanations02:13:39 Determinism, Free Will, and the Limits of Reductionism02:20:07 What's Next: Curvature, and the Gravity Grinch#DarkMatter #Cosmology #GravitationalLensing #DarkEnergy #Astrophysics #GeneralRelativity #Physics #Spacetime #Gravity MERCH: Rock some DemystifySci gear : https://demystifysci-shop.fourthwall.com/AMAZON: Do your shopping through this link: https://amzn.to/3YyoT98DONATE: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaDSUBSTACK: https://substack.com/@UCqV4_7i9h1_V7hY48eZZSLw@demystifysci RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rssMAILING LIST: https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySciMUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671