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Physicists are famously not so great at naming stuff.

You got your hadrons, your muons, your fermions, it's a mess.

Then if you zoom out to the big categories of the universe, you have matter, dark matter,

and dark energy.

What's the connection between dark matter and dark energy?

What does dark really mean?

It gives you the impression that dark matter is somehow like, well, dark. But the truth is

that dark matter is invisible matter. So in the end, the name dark matter is probably more

misleading than helpful. And more broadly, I think physics has not done a great job in PR for

dark matter. Online, you see lots of people arguing that

dark matter is a scam, it's a placeholder, it's a fudge factor, it's not actually science.

What does that mean and do those criticisms have any merit? So on today's episode, we're going to

dive into the question of fudge factors. What is a fudge factor actually?

Does it have to have peanut butter in it?

Is it so bad?

Does dark matter qualify as a fudge factor?

Since we haven't identified what particle it's made out of?

Is that a fair criticism of modern physics?

Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinarily fudgy universe.

Hello, I'm Kelly Wintersmith. I study parasites and space. And today we're talking about fudge factors, but not the kind of fudge that I like.

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