I've studied this a lot, and it really isn't a band-aid at all.
Everything aligns perfectly with matter that only interacts with gravity. This means it is invisible and nearly intangible. "That sounds crazy, nothing like that should ever exist" you might say. Except it already does - neutrinos. We just don't think neutrinos quite fit the bill.
Imagine if scientists were trying to identify some sort of sea monster, where cameras have gotten minor glimpses here and there. They aren't sure whether it is a giant squid, or octopus, or whale, or whatever and there's a lot of debate around it. And some non-scientist comes along and says "that's obviously a band-aid, we all know that animals can't exist in the ocean, so maybe you are wrong about what the ocean even is."
The problem here is two-fold. First, the non-scientist is misunderstanding the debate. The scientists actually have a pretty good idea of what's going on, they just lack the evidence to nail down the exact thing they are seeing. Meanwhile the non-scientist thinks that they are completely stumped and need an Einstein level change in direction in their thinking. Second, the non-scientist thinks that nothing acts like what the scientists are looking for. However, that's not true, the "weird" attributes aren't all that weird, they just aren't familiar to the non-scientist.
The irony is that while everyone thinks that dark matter is a band-aid solution and there's not much room for it to be, there is currently an idea that is likely to be a bandaid solution - dark energy. The main idea behind the acceleration of the expansion of the universe is that empty space contains energy, which we call dark energy. This makes logical sense and quantum physics agrees it does. However, any kind of actual measurement of the amount of energy per unit of space that we try just doesn't make sense. The theory doesn't align with our measurements to a vast degree (to where it's known as the worst prediction in the history of physics), and our measurements don't even align with each other. There is room here for a truly novel solution, such as varying amounts of energy per unit of space, or the cosmological principle being incorrect.
Everything aligns perfectly with matter that only interacts with gravity. This means it is invisible and nearly intangible. "That sounds crazy, nothing like that should ever exist" you might say. Except it already does - neutrinos. We just don't think neutrinos quite fit the bill.
Imagine if scientists were trying to identify some sort of sea monster, where cameras have gotten minor glimpses here and there. They aren't sure whether it is a giant squid, or octopus, or whale, or whatever and there's a lot of debate around it. And some non-scientist comes along and says "that's obviously a band-aid, we all know that animals can't exist in the ocean, so maybe you are wrong about what the ocean even is."
The problem here is two-fold. First, the non-scientist is misunderstanding the debate. The scientists actually have a pretty good idea of what's going on, they just lack the evidence to nail down the exact thing they are seeing. Meanwhile the non-scientist thinks that they are completely stumped and need an Einstein level change in direction in their thinking. Second, the non-scientist thinks that nothing acts like what the scientists are looking for. However, that's not true, the "weird" attributes aren't all that weird, they just aren't familiar to the non-scientist.
The irony is that while everyone thinks that dark matter is a band-aid solution and there's not much room for it to be, there is currently an idea that is likely to be a bandaid solution - dark energy. The main idea behind the acceleration of the expansion of the universe is that empty space contains energy, which we call dark energy. This makes logical sense and quantum physics agrees it does. However, any kind of actual measurement of the amount of energy per unit of space that we try just doesn't make sense. The theory doesn't align with our measurements to a vast degree (to where it's known as the worst prediction in the history of physics), and our measurements don't even align with each other. There is room here for a truly novel solution, such as varying amounts of energy per unit of space, or the cosmological principle being incorrect.