http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14948730Research on dwarf galaxies suggests they cannot form in the way they do if dark matter exists in the form that the most common model requires it to.
That may mean that the Large Hadron Collider will not be able to spot it.
Leading cosmologist Carlos Frenk spoke of the "disturbing" developments at the British Science Festival in Bradford.
The current theory holds that around 4% of the Universe is made up of normal matter - the stuff of stars, planets and people - and around 21% of it is dark matter.
The remainder is made up of what is known as dark energy, an even less understood hypothetical component of the Universe that would explain its ever-increasing expansion.