Julien Pacaud

ASK most cosmologists and they’ll tell you the majority of matter in the universe is invisible. The case for dark matter is considered so overwhelming that all that is left to do is find it. Hence the multibillion-dollar industry to build ever more sensitive particle detectors, which in 30 years have turned up… nothing.

Could the search be an expensive wild goose chase, sustained more by heavy intellectual and financial investment than scientific merit?

It is too soon to write dark matter off. But there is a sense that we are at a tipping point, where heretical ideas about how gravity works are receiving a more considered hearing (see “Rules of attraction: Why it’s time to rethink how gravity works” and “How dark matter lost its shine for me“). That is a welcome development. The standard model of cosmology has been extremely successful but, like all grand scientific theories, it needs shaking up from time to time to prevent it from solidifying into dogma.


Proposals for how to rethink gravity are sketchy and may lead nowhere. But they represent exactly the sort of exciting new avenues physicists dream of exploring. So why not divert more of the billions we spend on dark matter to the hunt for its nemesis? If dark matter exists, it will withstand the challenge and emerge vindicated. Win, win.

This article appeared in print under the headline “A matter of some gravity”