/sci/ - Science & Math

Before anything, I want to clarify that I'm not a physicist - I'm a dentist lol. But I've always had a genuine interest in physics and have read A LOT of books on the topic, so yeah - I have some basis for what I'm about to say.
Dark matter is a concept that came about when, while doing calculations, astronomers noticed that for the universe to work the way it does there should be at least 5x more matter than what has been observed, and therefore concluded that there should be some kind of invisible matter that makes up for all the extra gravity observed.
Meanwhile, virtual particles are a quantum phenomena where extremelly small particles pop in and out of existence. These particles have very little energy and mass, but they still have them.
My hypothesis is: the density of virtual particles in a given area is dependant on how much that space is bended by gravity, with large structures like galaxies having way more virtual particles than great voids.
Virtual particles have almost no mass, but remember that they are everywhere while baryonic matter occupies an infinitesimal ammount of space in the universe - therefore virtual particles could easily have more influence in the big picture than baryonic matter does.