And they don't conform because our knowledge of the forces of nature is extraordinarily limited. We don't know nearly as much as scientists say we do.
Agreed. It is a term used to describe the fact that classic cosmological models don't conform to the observable data. (same with "dark energy")
And they don't conform because our knowledge of the forces of nature is extraordinarily limited. We don't know nearly as much as scientists say we do.
That’s not really true. Scientists have actually considered that our current understanding of gravity is faulty. It’s done via a model known as MOND, which stands for Modified Newtonian Dynamics. MOND works pretty well for explaining the rotation curves of galaxies. In fact is does so a bit better than dark matter does. However, nobody has worked out a MOND model that works even approximately for a whole host of other observations that dark matter accounts for quite well. Some of these are fairly complex and esoteric, but one example is that dark matter can account for the observed irregularities in the cosmic microwave background, whereas all the MOND models fail disastrously at predicting what these irregularities should look like. Another fairly easily understood example is that dark matter theories can account for the initial isotope ratios in the universe whereas MOND models cannot.
That is why current scientific understanding is that MOND is not the preferred model and that dark matter is. It’s not that scientists refused to consider that the current understanding of gravity is incorrect. Rather, it is that they did consider that possibility, but even modifying our models of gravity does not account for the observations.