gravity - Is there any evidence for dark matter besides gravitational effects?

1. 
   

   Is there any evidence for dark matter besides just its gravitational effects?

   
   


2. 
   

   What I’m getting at is...why are we so quick to assume it’s any kind of “matter” at all rather than just some unexplained fluke of gravity?

   
   

Answer

There is substantial evidence (e.g. from measurement of the cosmic microwave background) that the universe is almost flat - that the energy densities in the universe sum up to be almost equal to the critical density.

The contributions due to neutrinos and photons are almost negligble at the present epoch. Dark energy appears to contribute about 70% (which is in concordance with observations of high redshift supernovae). That leaves 30% to be supplied by matter. But when we add up all the contributions of matter that can be detected, we only get to around 1-2% of the critical density. There appears to be lots of matter that we cannot see. Furthermore, we know from big-bang nucleosynthesis calculations and measurements from which the primordial He, D and Li abundances are inferred, that "normal", baryonic matter contributes at most about 5%. Therefore we are left with accounting for 25% of the energy density of the universe by something which cannot be seen and is non-baryonic.

I believe this line of argument is quite separate from the dynamical/gravitational arguments for dark matter, based on the rotation of galaxies, the motion of galaxies within clusters and the formation of structure.