Dark Matter or Cosmic Nonsense? An Entropic Idea About How Time Messes With Us

I don’t know about you, but lately I’ve been having some pretty weird thoughts about the universe. Blame it on the books I’ve been reading (or maybe just too many sleepless nights). One of the sparks was “Paradox. The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Science” — a book that feels like Asimov and Schrödinger had a drink together and started telling stories intense enough to make even Interstellar fans blush. From there, it’s been a nonstop spiral of mental gymnastics — or as I like to call them, “cosmic nonsense” — about time, space, entropy, and all that stuff we usually keep under control with coffee and a stronger grip on reality.

But one question really stuck with me — like glitter you can’t get off your fingers:

What if dark matter doesn’t actually exist?

No, this isn’t barstool philosophy. It’s a serious theoretical possibility. And there are actual physicists (unlike me — I can barely read equations without crying) who are taking it seriously. Let me explain.

🕳️ Dark Matter: A Mystery That Doesn’t Sit Right

For years, scientists have observed that galaxies rotate too fast. According to classical physics, with only visible matter (stars, gas, planets), they should be flying apart like an unbalanced washing machine. But they don’t. They stay together — neat and tidy.

The most accepted solution? Dark matter: a mysterious, invisible, and embarrassingly abundant substance that supposedly makes up about 85% of the matter in the universe. But no one’s ever seen it. No one’s ever touched it. Kind of like New Year’s resolutions.

⏳ What If Time Is the Real Trick?

And this is where my cosmic nonsense kicks in.

According to relativity, time doesn’t tick the same everywhere. Near a black hole, for example, time slows down. That’s not sci-fi — that’s hardcore physics.

Now, imagine if time could slow down even in quieter regions of the universe, where gravity is weak but space is being warped by... something else. Like entropy — the rising chaos that governs every closed system (kind of like my desk, but with equations).

♻️ Entropy = The Universe’s Clock?

Here’s the idea: entropy is the real clock of the universe.

Where entropy increases quickly, time runs fast. Where entropy increases slowly, time slows down.

So in some galactic regions, if entropy grows more slowly, time might be flowing more slowly too. And what happens then?Everything seems more stable, heavier, more gravitationally effective. As if there were more mass there. As if there were... dark matter.But there’s not.There’s just a temporal illusion.

🌌 Is the Universe Trolling Us?

Naturally, I checked to see if anyone had already come up with this theory and... yep!

According to some modern approaches — like Erik Verlinde’s entropic gravity — gravity itself isn’t a fundamental force, but an emergent effect of entropy changing across space-time. In other words: space curves not because there’s mass, but because there’s information in motion.(Please hold your nerdgasms.)

If that’s true, then dark matter isn’t a “thing” — it’s a consequence of time geometry and thermodynamic confusion. A mirage caused by the fact that we still don’t understand how the universe keeps time.

🎬 Barstool Conclusion... or Big Bang Revelation

So no, I haven’t figured out the secrets of the cosmos — if anything, I’ve figured out that reading certain physics books can turn your brain into pudding.

But if someone ever proves that dark matter is just a cosmic side effect of entropy, we might not be so far from understanding why we exist at all.

And maybe I’d finally stop waking up at 3 a.m. thinking:

“What if the universe is just a massive optical illusion caused by the sluggishness of entropy?”

But then again... maybe not.