Tornado and Azy I'm not sure whether you understand what Dark Matter actually is (or is not):
Dark Matter -- an introduction
First, dark matter is not something that physicists have (or even) actually detected with instrumentation. Rather it something whose existence is inferred from observing gravitational effects on visible matter. One of the problems with "detecting" dark matter is that it doesn't interact with the electromagnetic force in the visible world that we can observe.
Light travels in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force such as gravity which then sucks it in toward the source of that gravitational pull. But because of the high speed of light, with the exception of black holes light generally continues on, just altered from its original path. These shifts in light are one of the means used by astrophysicists to calculate the size and distance of objects in the universe. The only problem is that they were noticing that the effects of gravity were larger than the total mass of what is observable. Hence there must be another source for this gravity that exists, but cannot be seen. And the name for this unobservable matter is dark matter. It certainly isn't ionized oxygen for that would be observable matter.
Quote:
from Wikipedia
At present, the most common view is that dark matter is primarily non-baryonic, made of one or more elementary particles other than the usual electrons, protons, neutrons, and known neutrinos. The most commonly proposed particles are axions, sterile neutrinos, and WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, including neutralinos). None of these are part of the standard model of particle physics, but they can arise in extensions to the standard model. Many supersymmetric models naturally give rise to stable WIMPs in the form of neutralinos. Heavy, sterile neutrinos exist in extensions to the standard model that explain the small neutrino mass through the seesaw mechanism.
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