I may not have made my point very well. What I was saying is the material that makes up most of the universe, being labeled dark matter and dark energy, is still a complete mystery to the Scientific Community™. They can't see it or measure it but they can apparently detect its GRAVITATIONAL effects. Since they aren't sure just how gravity works, it's an interesting conundrum and appears to this layman, a circular argument.
There are some researchers(mainstream or otherwise) out there attempting to determine if this so called dark matter and dark energy may in fact be plasma. One of the theories being we don't have the instruments yet capable of detecting it.
In any case, I don't hold out much hope for this bunch since they apparently haven't developed instruments yet capable of detecting a REALLY big flood in the not too distant past either.
No, they can detect plasma, and there is plenty of it all over the universe. The plasma universe theorists don’t think that the plasma IS the dark matter. What they think is that the dark matter isn’t necessary at all, once you figure in the electromagnetic effects into the equations.
You see, the dark matter is only necessary because a galaxy’s motion does not behave as it should if the motion is caused only by gravity. If gravity was causing it, then the outer parts of the galaxy would revolve more slowly than the inner parts, but instead we see that the outer parts of the galaxy keep the same angular velocity as the inner parts. So, the standard model theorists try to resolve this by proposing there is a whole lot more mass in the universe that we just can’t detect, and also by putting black holes in the center of galaxies to increase the mass as well.
The plasma theorists say that the galactic motion is entirely explainable if you understand the galaxies are made up mostly of plasma, and the plasma is moving mostly due to electromagnetic forces, and not due to gravity alone.