It was Fritz Zwicky who first coined the term "dark matter" in 1933. Since then, the term has morphed from a term that was originally synonymous with "unidentified matter" into a term that designates a special type of exotic matter. The term UFO is an appropriate topic which comes to mind here. It's clear that lots of things in the sky might be "unidentified flying objects" simply because the observer cannot identify them. On the other hand, the fact they are unidentified by the observer doesn't automatically mean that any of them necessarily come from another planet. Astronomers have jumped to the conclusion that their baryonic mass estimates are 100 percent accurate without a single shred of evidence to support that conclusion, therefore "aliens did it" (exotic matter did it). They've been stuck on that assumption and stuck on that term for 86 years now.
The term "inflation" was coined by Alan Guth in 1980, and it had no historic or scientific precedent whatsoever. It was literally "invented/imagined" from the mind of a single individual and became a scientific "meme" that eventually caught on and became popular. The mainstream has never demonstrated that it actually exists or ever existed in nature, and they've been 'stuck" on that term now for almost 40 years. They're are an almost infinite number of different flavors of metaphysical inflation now, my favorite being "fuzzy inflation".
No real scientific progress has taken place in forty years in terms of demonstrating the existence of inflation. It was an intellectually bankrupt concept from the day it was first proposed. Note that the original brand proposed by Guth was later demonstrated to be flat out wrong, but that hasn't deterred them from embracing the concept anyway.
The concept of "dark energy" can originally be traced to Einstein's introduction of a non zero constant into GR, but he and everyone else rejected that concept once Hubble's original work on the distance/redshift relationship suggested that the universe might simply be expanding. The concept of a non zero constant in GR, and the term "dark energy" was revived again about 15 years ago based on SN1A data sets which were inconsistent with the original assumption that if redshift is related to expansion the universe should be slowing down over time. In 1998 the term "dark energy" was coined to describe a type of unknown energy which might be capable of accelerating a whole universe. Over the next 20 years, the mainstream has yet to identify a single source of so called "dark energy" and they've been "stuck" on that question for over two decades now.
Nothing has changed in terms of actual "knowledge" on any of these metaphysical assertions even after spending tens of billions of dollars studying such claims, and even after failing miserably in tons of LHC experiments. Not a single advancement has occurred on any of these topics/claims since they were first proposed. In essence, they've all been scientific and intellectual dead ends since the day they were first proposed.
Compare and contrast the complete lack of scientific progress on any of these bogus claims to the scientific progress that we've seen in computer technology, or particle physics theory since 1998, or 1980, or 1933. It's just utterly ridiculous that astronomers have such an "ego" about their bogus claims considering how little progress they've made on any of these absurd metaphysical claims.
First programmable computer. affectionately called the Z1 was created by German Konrad Zuse between 1936 and 1938 just a few years after Fritz Zwicky introduced the term "dark matter" to astronomy. Look how much scientific progress we've experienced in programmable computer technology over the last 80+ years, and how little progress we've seen in "dark matter" theory. Astronomers should be utterly *ashamed* of themselves, not full of pride and arrogance about their beliefs.
The Apple 1 was first introduced in 1976, just a few years before Guth literally "made up' a now falsified math formula to describe inflation in 1980 which was later shown to be flat out wrong. ARPANET was adopted as a standard data transfer protocol in 1983 and the development of the internet followed shortly thereafter. While there has been no serious or significant progress in inflation claims over the past two decades, the personal computer has become thousands of times more powerful during that same period of time, and internet access has also become an integral part of human lives today. I can't even imagine living in a world without the internet and without my smart cell phone, both of which have been advancements in computer technology since the 1980's.
In 1998, Apple introduced the iMac in 'colors". Again, the personal computer of today is thousands of times more powerful and more advanced than the computers they were building in 1998, whereas the term "dark energy" has not improved one iota in all that time. Astronomers haven't even identified a single source of dark energy in the past two decades, let alone shown that it even exists!
Let's face it, astronomy as a field of science is hopelessly stuck and ridiculously stagnant. The terms which are used in astronomy today are intellectually and scientifically bankrupt. They are scientific dead ends. They have no useful or practical value in any other area of science, and they have no useful predictive value whatsoever.
Here's a brief history of particle physics discoveries since the 1930's when the neutron was first discovered:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_ ... iscoveries
On the other than computer science, particle physics research, and every other area of science has advanced *significantly* over the same periods of time, and other areas of science have useful and practical value outside of their original field of science It wouldn't even be possible for instance to build the satellites that we put into space today without computers and advancement in computer technologies and particle physics research. Meanwhile nothing useful runs on "dark energy", inflation or uses "dark matter".
Astronomy today, and specifically the LCDM model is the biggest embarrassment in the history of science. It's literally the "dark" sheep of physics.