drew500 said:
Einstien's theory states the mass of an object increases as it nears light speed. Much mass therefore must be gained in supernovae events, super massive black holes, ect. Why could not this be offered a possible explanation for the extra mass?
Dark matter is a conclusion that flows primarily from the fact that in ordinary, sublight galaxies, thousands of examples of which exists, matter on the fringes of the galaxies is bound much more tightly to the core of the galaxy than the distribution of luminous matter in the galaxy and a simple GMm/r^2 theory of gravity would imply.
Gravitational lensing data from light bent in the vicinity of galaxies likewise shows more bending of light than the luminous matter in the galaxies and Newtonian gravity would imply.
In galaxies of low surface brightness, this discrepency is very high, in different kinds of galaxies, different discrepencies are visible.
The weighted average discrepency from this data is huge, with the data implying that 80%-90% of mass in this low v envrionment is missing, and the disceprencies tend to be greater in lower v environments, rather than higher v environments. It therefore follows the any impact on mass from relativity is ruled out as a cause. The problem is either that there is substantial missing mass or that the non-relativistic case of Newtonian gravity is wrong.
I personally am a strong proponent of the later approach (called MOND for Modified Newtonian Dynamics). The scientific community as a whole favors the dark matter resolution of this data, but respect that there is a difference of opinion on the issue which is respectable.