The Dark Matter Puzzle

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We know dark matter is cold, but that's a new thing. We didn't back in my day when I started out, hot dark matter and warm dark matter were both very popular. The kinds of interactions that have been imagined for dark matter particles that would be of astrophysical interest have mostly been elastic collisions. So again, on the basis of data, we have excellent reason to believe the dark matter iscold, as well as dark.

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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