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"Dark matter" got its name for two reasons:

1) It doesn't interact with baryonic matter (ie, the stuff we understand) via the electromagnetic force, and thus doesn't give off light. In that sense, it's most likely all around us and yet we can never see it.

2) Our understanding of it is almost nil -- in other words, we're "in the dark" about its nature. In this sense, it got its name the same way "x-rays" did -- we don't understand dark matter anymore than William Roentgen understood the rays he found.

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11y ago

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