Dark Matter Search Is Getting Crazier

Unable to find what must
be there, cosmologists are
waltzing into bizarre guesses

What started as a scientific question—i.e., ‘to support our best theories, there must be a mysterious unknown substance with gravity but no light’—has turned into a circus. Cosmologists insist that 95% of our universe is composed of mysterious unknown stuff (MUST) that must be there. Everything we observe, therefore, is only 5% of what exists. It follows, therefore, that secular cosmologists know very little about the universe.

Yet they claim to know the breakdown of this 95% of MUST. It’s 23% dark matter and 62% dark energy—neither of which they know anything about. And after decades of searching, they keep coming up empty. Does this not sound crazy?

Our position at CEH is not to deny the possibility that they will find dark matter some day.* We just want to see the hard evidence. Where is the particle? And if they can’t find it, how much time do they get to keep looking? 10 more years? A century? A millennium? Forever? Science should not be an endless snipe hunt.

*We realize that some searches are difficult and time-consuming. For years, astronomers were baffled by missing solar neutrinos that stellar theory required. Eventually, they were discovered. That’s why no one can confidently claim that dark matter will never be found. In the case of dark matter, though, they’ve been looking for it for half a century now. The “evidence” for it is all indirect, such as motions of galaxies and galaxy clusters that don’t fit Newtonian mechanics. Keep in mind this twist, too: dark matter is tied at the hip to Big Bang theory (the “cold dark matter” model).

For years we have reported on failure after failure of dark matter detectors, some of them costing many millions of dollars. Most detectors are deep underground in tanks of expensive fluids, with sophisticated instruments requiring complex computers and manpower. Should taxpayers be paying for this?

The search has gone almost beyond desperation into mysticism, with unproveable ideas vying for acceptance. They give the stuff names, like axions, WIMPs and MACHOs, none of which are confirmed by any tangible evidence. Some samples in the news:

Search for dark matter intensifies as leading detector reaches milestone (Phys.org, 15 April 2026). The “milestone” of this new detector was not detecting dark matter— not even close. It was starting to get ready to begin to commence the search. “Even though it fills the universe, we don’t really understand dark matter,” said David Tomack from Texas A&M. Deep in a Canadian mine, scientists lowered the temperature of a new detector to just a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, a thousand times colder than outer space. All this in hope finding “light dark matter,” a “much lower-mass form of dark matter that’s even harder to detect,” in theory, that is.

Dark matter could explain earliest supermassive black holes (Univ. of California at Riverside, 15 April 2026). This press release uses the word “could” 8 times as it speculates about unobservable things: “Dark matter decays could be the missing ingredient explaining how giant black holes formed before the first stars.” If the eggheads at UCR don’t know something exists, or what it could be made of, they cannot speak about how it decays, and how it could explain black holes.

Could dark matter be made of black holes from a different universe?  (The Conversation, 14 April 2026). “Council, what evidence do you have to support your contention that the dark matter search is getting crazier?” “Your honor, may I present Exhibit A. Enrique Gaztanaga from the University of Portsmouth alleges that dark matter came from outside the universe. Such notions are outside the bounds of observation or evidence.”

Gravitational waves as possible candidates for the origin of dark matter (Swansea University, 1 April 2026). This article is all speculation by eggheads who say things like “gravitational waves may well have led to the formation of mass-free or nearly mass-free fermions.” Well, then, which possible candidates will win the election? They can talk then.

First direct evidence of Migdal effect opens new path for dark matter search (Chinese Academy of Sciences via Phys.org, 19 Jan 2026). Has Migdal affected you recently? Probably not. That’s because it refers to what a Soviet scientist, Arkady Migdal, predicted in 1939 that had never been observed. He speculated would would happen when “an atomic nucleus suddenly gains energy—for instance, from a collision with a neutral particle (like a neutron or a dark matter candidate)—and recoils, the rapid shift in the atom’s internal electric field can eject one of its orbiting electrons.” The Chinese did not find dark matter, mind you. They just say that some alleged evidence for the Migdal effect “opens [a] new path for [a] dark matter search.”

Dark matter may have begun much hotter than scientists thought (University of Minnesota, 13 Jan 2026). Subtitle: “Research challenges decades-old theory and sheds light on the early beginnings of the Universe.” Maybe the experts should delay talking about dark matter till they agree on a theory that predicts it. Science is supposed to rise above possibility thinking, like “the Universe’s most mysterious material could have been ‘incredibly hot’–moving at nearly the speed of light–when it was first born.” So if cold dark matter is out, have all the previous searches been in vain?

Students build a “cosmic radio” to listen for dark matter (SISSA Medialab via ScienceDaily, 27 April 2026). Acknowledging that dark matter is “one of physics’ biggest mysteries,” the press release says, “Working with limited resources but plenty of creativity, they designed a stripped-down experiment to hunt for axions — hypothetical particles that could make up dark matter.” They may not be able to read or do math, but students can be coaxed to look for something that may not exist. Maybe their radio should be called, “The Sound of Silence” instead of the sound of science.

Relevance

Actual photograph of dark matter. White background provided for contrast.

How does this relate to creation or evolution? Notice how the intellectual world is chasing a consensus with no evidence. In cosmology, they are spending many millions of dollars to search for something their theory requires, and coming up empty. In evolution, they devote years trying to find a mythical last universal common ancestor (LUCA) that their theory requires. In cosmology, the universe exploded into being from nothing by unguided natural processes. In evolution, life emerged from atoms by unguided natural processes and evolved into all its diversity by unguided natural processes. The former is called cosmic evolution. The latter is called Darwinian evolution. Both claim that everything came from nothing.

Both big bang cosmology with its endless search for dark matter and evolutionary biology with its endless search for LUCA pretend to be scientific quests. Science is good, but both quests for unguided natural processes from which answers emerge are mere grasping for wind, with nothing to offer real human beings who need purpose, comfort, and hope. Churches who preach the Creator’s word do better.