The Hopeless Search for the Dark Matter

Abstract

This article critically examines the ongoing scientific quest to identify dark matter, arguing that the search is fundamentally misguided due to a mis understanding of the nature of mass. The author contends that what is sought as “dark matter” is not a conventional, invisible mass, but rather the “transverse mass” which is always associated with a mass in motion— which is described mathematically as a complex magnitude with both real and imaginary components. Drawing on the works of Lorentz and Einstein, the article explores how relativistic effects change the stationary observer’s perception of a mass in motion, which is seen as composed by an inertial mass [called longitudinal] responsible for the gravitational field and a mass transverse to the motion that generates a gravito-magnetic field and that is identified with the kinetic energy. The discussion extends to the implications for galactic dynamics, sug gesting that the effects attributed to dark matter may instead arise from the gravito-magnetic fields generated by the transverse mass associated with the longitudinal mass of the stars in motion. The article concludes that the elusive nature of dark matter stems from a conceptual oversight: the missing mass in the universe may already be accounted for as energy associated with motion, rather than as an undiscovered form of matter.