Strange

Absolutely. And, if one is being pedantic, then all types of detection are indirect to some extent. How dare you, sir! *slaps face and throws glove on the floor*

I think that is a good point. We don't know what dark matter is (or even if it is matter). If it is some form of matter, it would seem that would have to be something outside the current standard model. And if it isn't some form of matter, then it is new physics by definition. On the other hand, it could be argued that nothing is ever "fully understood".

And, just to be clear, it is possible that the explanation for dark matter is that our equations for gravity are wrong - and many people are investigating this possibility. But the evidence now is overwhelmingly in favour of dark matter as some form of matter that we can’t currently detect.

True. But unless you were wealthy and healthy neither would be great! (Although the same could be said now...)

That doesn't make much sense. Pretty much anyone with a basic knowledge of physics understands the difference between these. And, obviously, the equation might be wrong. But, so far, there is no evidence for that. The equations work and that is the best you can ask for in science. You seem disappointed that we don't know about things we don't have any evidence for. Or something. I'm not sure what the point of your little rant is.

Or even the 19th, to be honest.

Nonsense. They are completely different things, intended to solve completely different problems and with completely different properties. You should perhaps find out what their definitions are before spouting off like this and making yourself look silly. Of course it is. Do you think scientists just got bored one day and said, "hey why don't we pretend the expansion is accelerating; that'll be a laugh". The Big Bang model is nothing like an explosion. That is not what the evidence shows. Three guys got a Nobel Prize for this. Did you miss it? That "spring" noise you heard was my irony meter breaking.

Good point. The fact that is is trivially easy to make people remember (in vivid detail) things that never happened (and could never happen) shows that it is created by the brain. An impossible experience cannot be something that came from outside. (Unless you believe in an evil and dishonest god.)

I could start buying lottery tickets to get into space. It might work. But it would still only be low-earth orbit or, maybe, a one way trip to Mars. No one is going outside the solar system or to another star any time soon.

That would be dark energy, not dark matter. And you seem to have it the wrong way round. The value of the variable is set based upon the evidence (such as the rate at which expansion is speeding up). The math is "proved" (ie the theory is confirmed) by the fact it matches the evidence. Correct. It was slowing initially but is now accelerating. Hence we can calculate the value of lambda in the equation.

I don't know what that means. People had imagined flying to the moon for millennia before we actually did it. Asking if something exists before it is created sounds like a year 1 philosophy debate. Maybe we never get to explore space apart from the nearby planets. Who knows. But in my lifetime, I will have to stick to SF to enjoy space travel!

Only because that was what everyone assumed at the time. This wasn't;t an idea Einstein invented. There was no reason (ie no evidence) to think otherwise. I'm not sure what you mean by "no math proving universal speeded expansion". The idea that the universe could be expanding came first from the math and then was confirmed by evidence. So the math worked in that case as well. And then further evidence showed that the expansion was accelerating and this was taken into account in the math. (This was not the first time this had been done; various values for the lambda had been suggested in the past to explain other observations.) As I have said several times, science is always "wrong" (in some sense). So you are really not saying anything insightful or clever here. That is not what was said. The general consensus was that the universe was static (and, as Newton had proved, infinite) because there was no evidence to the contrary. Maybe you could use some of your downtime to learn some basic physics?

No it doesn't. This shows a profound lack of knowledge of how the brain works. Pretty much everything you see is created by the brain, and largely created by the brain to fool you. For example, you think you can see everything around you in detail and in colour. But this is only because the brain creates that illusion. The eye can only see a tiny portion of the visual field in detail. And it can only see part of it in colour. So what happens is that your eyes constantly move around at random (saccades) and the bran stitches together all the little images to create a single high quality view that you see. But hang on! If the eyes are constantly moving, why don't we see that? Why isn't everything blurred or whizzing around? Well, maybe the brain "turns the eyes off" while they are moving and freezes the image so we can't tell it is moving? But then everything would look like a series of static images, so that can't be it. So basically, the brain fills in all the gaps and then tells us that we are seeing what is happening now. Of course, the brain is good at messing around with time to fool us. It has to be. After all, if you reach out to pick up your cup of coffee the image reaches your brain in milliseconds, while the motor signals to the muscles and the touch sensations back can take half a second or more to reach the brain. The brain has to make us think that these all arrive at the same time otherwise we would get very confused. You only have to look at a few optical illusions to realise how fragile the brain's visual system is. Did you really now know that the source for the imagery is the eyes? Wow. You can claim that. But you have no evidence, so we can just disregard it.

Again you are confusing "not knowing everything" with "knowing nothing". The first time could have been an honest error. Repeating it after it has been explained appears to be deliberately dishonest. Would you really refuse to see a doctor if you are seriously ill because he doesn't know absolutely everything? Citation needed. (But in a different thread, please.) No one knows, or claims to know that (apart from some religions). It is not even known if the universe did begin. Your arguments seem to impaired by the fact you don't know very much about the subjects you are discussing. (Which, by your logic, would mean you know nothing about them.)

They are not usually detailed mathematical models of the entire universe. Models that allow us to find out that the majority of the universe consists of things we cannot (yet) detect directly. If it weren't for these models, you wouldn't have been able to open this thread to whinge about this!

Would it help to consider that you have a mirror above the light source that reflects the light straight back down again. This is then like the example of throwing a ball up and catching it. If you are stationary, the ball goes straight up and come straight back down to your hand. The photon does the same. If you are moving (at a steady rate; ie inertially) then the ball will still go up and come back to your hand. And the photon does the same. Someone watching you cycle past will see the ball/photon go up at an angle, and come back down at an angel to reach your hand (which as moved while they were up in the air). Light has momentum because it has energy.

After all, we still don't know what that 97% of "junk DNA" does, therefore we don't know anything about biology or medicine.

As you have no better ideas (except to complain) I will leave it to the highly imaginative and knowledgable scientists to come up with a solution. And, almost certainly, more questions. Because that is what is so great about science!

If you could remove the mass, then the object would move at light speed. However, mass appears to be a fundamental property of things so there certainly isn't any way, currently, to remove mass without destroying the object in the process - e.g. turning it into photons. But, of course, being able to manipulate mass and inertia is a fundamental trope in SF.

It was a joke made 100 years ago. It wasn’t true then and certainly isn’t true now. It is taught in every university. It is used in many areas of science and technology. What!? It is constantly being studied and developed. One of the challenges is understanding more complex situations where GR applies. There are only analytical solutions for a few simple cases like symmetrical spheres in an empty universe (which is a good enough approximation for many real world applications). Another area of work is understanding the relationship between GR and quantum theory. There has been (and continues to be) a lot of new ideas coming from that - from Hawking radiation to ideas to explain dark matter or dark energy. It is relativity (and evidence) that tells us that 85% is unknown! LRelativistic mass is just a measure of increased energy (mass and energy are related, remember: e=mc2). A lot of people say the concept should not be used because it causes too much confusion (as in your question).

Your point is not very logical. You only know that we don’t know what 85% of the universe is because the scientists you despise told you so. Not really. We know a lot about dark matter (less about dark energy). And a lot about what it cannot be. Also, none of the equation is missing. We just don’t know exactly what makes up some of the values. It may be frustrating but science is always incomplete.

Nonsense. Thousands of postgraduate students (and even a few dedicated amateurs) understand it. And it is not accepted because “Einstein is on a pedestal” but because of the evidence.

I have no idea why that should amaze you. For a long time people didn’t know exactly what the sun was, but they still knew where it was. That isn’t a logical argument (surprising, from someone who pretends to be a philosopher). There are both quantitative and qualitative differences. It is a bit like saying that diamonds, water and the sun are all made of atoms and so should behave the same. But of course they might all have some level of consciousness. We have no way of knowing. And it depends how you define consciousness.

Correct. That is the nature of science. Nothing is proved. Everything is subject to change. Not sure what that means. “Theory” is the best it gets in science. It is a hypothesis with little credible evidence (and solid theoretical arguments against). Definitely not a theory. Originally, the universe was thought to be static and infinite (Newton) based on the best evidence available. When more evidence became available the hypothesis of an expanding universe was confirmed and became a theory (currently the only viable theory of cosmology). That is the good thing about science, it adapts to fit the evidence. Not a theory. Not even a hypothesis (because it is not based on evidence and is inherently untestable and therefore unscientific). The “facts” that they teach is the evidence we have. They also teach past and current theories, and any hypotheses and speculations that might be relevant. You seem to be confusing “not knowing everything” with “knowing nothing”. Rookie mistake. Hopefully you won’t do it again.

Detecting exoplanets and calculations using Newtonian gravity are much simpler than estimating the source of gravitational waves.