I’ve never been a fan of dark matter.
That probably sounds odd coming from someone who writes science fiction, but my objection has never been to speculative ideas. It’s been to inelegant ones.
The observations that led astronomers to propose dark matter are real enough. Galaxies rotate faster than our models predict. Galaxy clusters exhibit stronger gravitational effects than visible matter alone appears capable of producing. Those are genuine scientific puzzles.
What I’ve always questioned is the leap from “our theory doesn’t explain the observations” to “85% of the universe must consist of an invisible form of matter we’ve never detected.”
To me, that has always felt less like a discovery and more like a placeholder.
Recently, another piece of evidence supporting one of the leading dark matter candidates quietly disappeared.
The Experiment That Wouldn’t Go Away
For nearly three decades, the DAMA/LIBRA experiment in Italy occupied a strange place in cosmology.
Buried deep beneath Gran Sasso mountain, the experiment reported an annual signal that appeared exactly as physicists expected if the Earth were passing through a “wind” of dark matter particles while orbiting the Sun. The statistical significance was enormous—far beyond the five-sigma threshold that normally marks a discovery.
If the result was correct, it would have been one of the strongest direct pieces of evidence for WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particle) dark matter.
The problem was that nobody else could reproduce it.
Other experiments using different detector materials consistently came up empty. Supporters of DAMA argued that perhaps dark matter interacted differently with sodium iodide crystals than with xenon, making the Italian detector uniquely sensitive.
It was an interesting idea.
It was also testable.
Science Does What Science Is Supposed to Do
Two independent collaborations built nearly identical experiments using the same sodium iodide crystals—ANAIS-112 in Spain and COSINE-100 in South Korea. They spent years collecting data under essentially the same conditions.
The result?
Nothing.
The seasonal modulation reported by DAMA simply wasn’t there.
That doesn’t prove dark matter doesn’t exist, and it certainly doesn’t settle the broader question of what’s causing the gravitational anomalies we observe throughout the universe. What it does mean is that one of the strongest experimental claims for WIMP dark matter has become very difficult to defend.
Researchers are now moving on to other possibilities, including axions, primordial black holes, and other more exotic ideas.
Science marches on.
Why This Reminded Me of Infernum
One of the themes I explored in Infernum is skepticism—not skepticism of science, but skepticism of scientific assumptions.
Early in the novel, Commander Stephens dismisses dark matter as an idea invented to preserve an incomplete understanding of gravity. He argues that generations of physicists accepted an invisible substance because it allowed them to avoid asking a more uncomfortable question: what if their theory itself was incomplete?
The novel imagines a future where observations eventually force cosmology to abandon dark matter altogether.
To be clear, these new experiments don’t prove that future.
They don’t even argue for it.
What they do represent is another reminder that scientific consensus is provisional. For years, the DAMA/LIBRA result stood as one of the most intriguing pieces of evidence supporting WIMP dark matter. After two independent attempts to reproduce it, that evidence has largely evaporated.
That’s significant.
Simplicity Matters
History is full of scientific ideas that solved real problems while ultimately pointing in the wrong direction.
The epicycles of Ptolemaic astronomy explained planetary motion remarkably well—until a simpler model explained it better. The luminiferous ether seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to explain how light propagated through space—until it wasn’t.
After decades of increasingly sensitive detectors failing to find WIMPs, shrinking parameter spaces, and now the collapse of one of the strongest experimental hints, I think it’s fair to say that dark matter has accumulated another nail in its coffin.
Maybe dark matter will ultimately be discovered in some completely different form.
Or maybe future physicists will look back on it the way we now look back on epicycles: as an ingenious attempt to preserve an incomplete model.
Either way, that’s what makes science exciting.
It isn’t about defending our favorite ideas.
It’s about following the evidence—even when it leads somewhere we never expected.
Jayson L. Adams is a technology entrepreneur, artist, and the award-winning author of The Quantum Mirror, Ares, and Infernum.
His novels blend high-stakes science fiction, psychological tension, and character-driven suspense. Explore the books at www.jaysonadams.com.