OK then, thanks.

Ten percent seems to me a rather large variance. The difference between Mercurys predicted and actual orbit that provided experimental proof of Relativity was smaller than that. That's a big improvement over a hundred orders of magnitude worth of variance, but not airtight, and a variance that large to begin with doesn't inspire confidence. Even if that great a correction is valid on that basis though it (and the vague but exotic nature of dark energy in general) is more than just a trivial fine tuning, it's a fundamental revision. Again, if the best evidence warrants that, well and good, but if that's the case there's no reason not to call what it is and cite the evidence as justification.

How valid is the particle zoo as such though? Its prolific particle creation is what led to the theory and then discovery of quarks in the first place (which is why I started this line of analogy), and how different from a neutron or proton is a delta baryon that exists for 10^-24 seconds before becoming one of them anyway? I could see it for the one with the +2 charge, because it DOES have a different property, but otherwise it's a group of baryons made of the same components as protons and neutrons but slightly heavier because those components are arranged differently for a fraction of a second before rearranging to their more natural states as normal stable baryons. That seems more of a "meaningless distinction" than anything I've said.

I'm not so sure. I asserted my confidence in an explanation through familiar matter rather than exotic, and referenced as an example of why the multitudinous particles in the zoo regarded as fundamental until they grew to a number that made that contention absurd and led to the discovery of quarks. That the men who made that discovery are still alive indicates persistent errors remain quite possible; it also shows they'll ultimately be corrected, but is definitely a recent caution against overconfidence in current models. You've largely convinced me that normal dark matter isn't viable, and that does leave exotic dark matter as the best available explanation by default; it does NOT make it the CORRECT explanation by default, nor do two nebulae prove it so. You seem to agree in principle that it could be disproven and/or a better alternative found, and ultimately that's all I'm asking; I was fairly confident normal dark matter was sufficient, but don't mind being wrong. Scientific laymen need as much convincing as any other kind that the catechism isn't just smoke and mirrors though, or the Higgs bosons nickname may prove ironic.

The key word being "traditional"; Wikipedia still claims GUTs to be an intermediate step to a ToE, which indicates more than a few physicists are still pursuing them. I get the impression of the field as a solid monolith because of phrases like "the Standard Model". In many ways it's a good thing, because theories usually aren't widely accepted without a significant amount of reproducable experimental observation (I say, "usually" because, again admitting I'm not well versed on the subject, speciation seems difficult to reproduce in a lab, even if I do happen to believe it's happened countless times). It does, however, lend itself to group think, and in areas (of which this is one) where reproducable experimental evidence will be hard to obtain even if the theory is valid, acceptance can get ahead of the evidence as people get impatient for the latter. Cruising through the Wikipedia articles on quarks again I noticed that long before the charm was actually FOUND the top and bottom quarks were theorized based on the theory that predicted it. If you're hard at work on a new model, knowing that someone else could announce it tomorrow, how long will you wait for the theory on which it depends to be proven before bulling ahead with yours? In the referenced case (which occurred about the time I was born, not in the days of Galileo), apparently not long.

If I overstated my skepticism, my apologies, but it's easier to deal with overstated skepticism than understated, because where the former is vulnerable to facts the latter selectively seeks favorable ones.