Perhaps Erik Verlinde is right after all--that gravity--including that caused by "dark matter"--is a result of the holographic universe that is pumped up by information that is stored (or at least reflected) on the surface surrounding any simply-connected volume. In fact, "dark energy" might also fall out of his theory, as well. If you believe in inflation and the holographic universe at the same time, you must agree that during inflation, something pumped gigantic amounts of information into the universe in such a way that its volume & therefore surface area had to expand enough so that there was enough surface area to represent all of that new information. If "dark energy" is responsible for the continued expansion of the universe, then that dark energy is associated with a source of additional information. Here's some paragraphs about Verlinde from the New York Times, July 12, 2010: "Its hard to imagine a more fundamental and ubiquitous aspect of life on the Earth than gravity, from the moment you first took a step and fell on your diapered bottom to the slow terminal sagging of flesh and dreams. "But what if its all an illusion, a sort of cosmic frill, or a side effect of something else going on at deeper levels of reality? "So says Erik Verlinde, 48, a respected string theorist and professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, whose contention that gravity is indeed an illusion has caused a continuing ruckus among physicists, or at least among those who profess to understand it. Reversing the logic of 300 years of science, he argued in a recent paper, titled On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton, that gravity is a consequence of the venerable laws of thermodynamics, which describe the behavior of heat and gases. "For me gravity doesnt exist, said Dr. Verlinde, who was recently in the United States to explain himself. Not that he cant fall down, but Dr. Verlinde is among a number of physicists who say that science has been looking at gravity the wrong way and that there is something more basic, from which gravity emerges, the way stock markets emerge from the collective behavior of individual investors or that elasticity emerges from the mechanics of atoms. "Looking at gravity from this angle, they say, could shed light on some of the vexing cosmic issues of the day, like the dark energy, a kind of anti-gravity that seems to be speeding up the expansion of the universe, or the dark matter that is supposedly needed to hold galaxies together." At 01:09 PM 12/14/2012, meekerdb wrote:
I think that is the reasoning, but it may leave sterile (right-handed) neutrinos as the viable candidate for dark matter.
Brent