Catalog: Generally Accepted But Unproven

Frameworks the physics community broadly works within and builds on daily — but which contain specific components that haven’t been directly, experimentally confirmed. These aren’t fringe: they’re the field’s own best current working model, with the field’s own asterisks attached.

• ΛCDM: dark matter and dark energy as literal substances — the expansion/CMB framework is proven; no dark matter particle has ever been directly detected, and dark energy’s actual mechanism is unknown. See also the Hubble tension — a real, unresolved ~9% discrepancy between two independent measurement methods.
• Cosmic inflation — explains several real observations (flatness, horizon problem) elegantly, and is the majority view among cosmologists, but has no direct, independent confirmation of its own, distinct from the CMB observations it’s invoked to explain. (Dedicated page not yet written.)
• The Standard Model Higgs sector, beyond the discovered particle itself — the Higgs boson’s discovery (2012) is proven; questions about naturalness, the hierarchy problem, and whether the Higgs is fundamental or composite remain open theoretical territory, not experimentally settled. (Dedicated page not yet written.)

The distinction from Proven Systems matters: it’s accurate to say “the expanding universe is proven” and “dark matter’s specific particle identity is not” in the same breath, about the same overall model.