With the establishment of the big bang cosmological model, it had widely been expected that since the birth of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago, the cosmic expansion had been slowing down. But two independent research teams found in 1998 that the expansion was speeding up. If you consider that this expansion is the single most remarkable property of the universe as a whole, then the discovery of the acceleration is truly a breakthrough.
The acceleration is determined by measuring the relative sizes of the universe at different times. Specifically, astronomers measure the redshifted spectra of, and luminosity distances to, stellar explosions called type 1a supernovae. The time required for light from a supernova to reach our telescopes is encoded in the distance (the relation is slightly more complicated than distance = rate x time, due to the cosmic expansion), while the change in the size of the universe from explosion to observation stretches the wavelength of the emitted light, as characterized by the redshift. A comparison of these sizes at a sequence of times reveals that the universe is growing at an ever faster rate. Since this discovery measurements have improved and other cosmological phenomena, also sensitive to the rate of expansion, have been used to confirm these results. (One note: the expansion rate and the acceleration are not measured in meters per second and m/s2, respectively. Rather, they measure the rate of change in the dimensionless scale of the universe, and the second derivative thereof, so the units are 1/s and 1/s2.)
Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that the cosmic acceleration is determined by the average energy density and pressure of all forms of matter and energy in the universe. Yet no known forms of matter can account for acceleration. Thus, something other than dark matter, atoms, light, etc., must be responsible. One leading hypothesis is that the universe is filled by a uniform sea of quantum zero point energy, which exerts a negative pressure, like a tension, causing spacetime to gravitationally repel itself. This stuff, sometimes referred to as a cosmological constant, was first introduced by Einstein in another context (something he later referred to as his greatest blunder), but that's another story.
How is dark energy affecting the universe today? It is responsible for the cosmic speeding, and international teams of astronomers are working to refine measurements of that acceleration. At stake is judgment on Einstein's greatest blunder (the cosmological constant), possible insight into the fundamental theory of nature (quantum gravity and the quantum state of the universe), and the fate of the universe (a Big Chill or a Big Rip?).
It is tempting to try to combine the explanations for dark matter and dark energy, but there are great differences between the two. Dark matter pulls and dark energy pushes. That is, dark matter is invoked to explain greater-than-expected gravitational attraction. In contrast, dark energy is invoked to explain weaker-than-expected, and in fact negative, gravitational attraction. Furthermore, the effects of dark matter are manifest on length scales roughly 10 megaparsecs and smaller, whereas dark energy appears only to be relevant on scales of roughly 1,000 megaparsecs or greater. Finally, it is important to question whether the dark matter and dark energy phenomena may have gravitational explanations. Perhaps the laws of gravitation differ from Einstein's theory. This is certainly a possibility, but so far general relativity has not failed a single test. And striking new views of clusters have revealed behavior that is inconsistent with a gravitational cure--meaning that dark matter really is there. We are left looking for new particles and fields to fill in the missing matter and energy.



See what we're tweeting about





9 Comments
Add CommentCoud dark matter and or energy be compared to water under pressure? Maybe it passes through everything pulling heavy on dense objects towards a tearin the fabric that holds it.Possibly creating heat near the center where only it can pass. It might explain all the swirling and maybe more. What do you think?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGalaxy Clusters Evolved By Dispersion, Not By Conglomeration
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI. From "Cosmic heavyweight"
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/36050/title/Cosmic_heavyweight
"Astronomers discover the heftiest, most distant galaxy cluster, suggesting evidence for dark energy's existence."
"Dark energy is an unexplained force that accelerates the expansion of the universe. Without this force, Lamer says, nearby clusters should be much more massive than those that are billions of light-years away. Distant clusters, he says, should be less massive because they had less time to conglomerate."
II. Galaxy Clusters Evolved By Dispersion, Not By Accretion
A. Compact Galaxies In Early Universe Pack A Big Punch
http://www.physorg.com/news128692030.html
Again, repeating an old posting of mine:
"Singularity, max density, and D-Infinity, max expansion/ cosmic energy dilution, are the two cosmic stable states. Their in-between is a metastable state, which is an everyday commonsense observation. Likewise is the observation that the denser the compacting goal of material the more energy is required, and vice versa the more thorough the disintegration of material the higher the amount of energy released. It seems that E=mC^2 is a specific case of the cosmic (and universal) process
E=Total[m(1 + D)] where D is the Distance from Big Bang point and the sum is of all spatial values of D from D=0 to D=selected value.
BTW, following Newton (1) gravity is decreased when mass is decreased and (2) acceleration of a body is given by dividing the force acting upon it by its mass. By plain common sense, best scientific approach, the combination of those two 'laws' may explain the accelerating cosmic expansion of galaxy clusters, based on the above E/ m/ D suggested relationship. "
Thus the young "condensed galaxies" are, in fact, what later evolved into galactic clusters.
B. Galaxy Clusters Evolved By Dispersion, Not By Buildup
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=14988&st=210entry337638
1. Genesis
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-P81pQcU1dLBbHgtjQjxG_Q--?cq=1&p=268
Extrapolation of the expansion of the universe backwards in time to the early hot dense "Big Bang" phase, using general relativity, yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past.
At age 10^-35 seconds the Universe begins with a cataclysm that generates space and time, as well as all the matter and energy the Universe will ever hold.
2. How have galaxy clusters evolved
http://herschel.jpl.nasa.gov/galaxies.shtml
"Among the stranger objects that appear to have populated the early universe are active galactic nuclei (AGNs)."
3. http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/clusters_group/evolution.html
"How did the Universe evolve after the Big Bang?" and "How did galaxies form?" These are big questions, and they are not easy to answer: after all, these things occurred billions of years ago. Galaxy clusters provide one window into the very early Universe. They are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe, and the properties of clusters can be used to place strong limits on cosmological theories of structure formation and evolution.
4. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080331122543.htm
The process of galaxy formation largely is a mystery. Current theory is that large galaxies formed over time from the interaction and merging of smaller galaxies. This process began more than 12 billion years ago, shortly after the Big Bang. Scientists have observed galaxies merging over a large range of distances and time, providing hard evidence to reinforce the theory. However, using current technology, it is difficult to detect this process at the most extreme distances, when galaxy formation was in its infancy.
Scientists believe galaxy clusters form in a similar manner. As galaxies congregate and interact in large, dense regions of space, the cluster grows with time. Witnessing this process first-hand helps scientists confirm their theory and deepen their understanding of the universe. Galaxy clusters can be detected at extreme distances with current technology because they are bright, but they are difficult to find.
C. I suggest: Galaxy Clusters Evolved By Dispersion Of "Condensed Packs",
not by accretion of smaller matter. The dispersion/breakdown of the "condensed packs"
followed the relationship E=Total[m(1 + D)] , i.e. it was accompanied by an overall decrease of mass. Accretion possibly and probably took place, too, in this and in other cosmic evolutions within and between clusters, but the primal GC evolved as D, dispersion, increased accompanied by m decreased.
Suggesting,
Dov Henis
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-P81pQcU1dLBbHgtjQjxG_Q--?cq=1
==========================
Dark Energy And Matter And The Emperor's New Clothes
A. From "Cosmic heavyweight"
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id...mic_heavyweight
"Astronomers discover the heftiest, most distant galaxy cluster, suggesting evidence for dark energy's existence."
"Dark energy is an unexplained force that accelerates the expansion of the universe. Without this force, Lamer says, nearby clusters should be much more massive than those that are billions of light-years away. Distant clusters, he says, should be less massive because they had less time to conglomerate."
B. Reflection of a commonsensible primitive mind
For a commonsensible primitive mind with a commonsensible universe E=Total[m(1 + D)] concept:
- The emperor does not have any clothes. There is no dark energy, and therefore there is no dark matter.
- The relationship between the physics of "Galaxy Clusters" and the physics of "Within Clusters" is like the relationship between classical physics and quantum physics. Galaxy Clusters are the universe's historical, and current, E-m conversion entities.
- In the standard model of cosmology dark energy currently accounts for 73% of the total mass-energy of the universe. However, bearing in the primitive commonsense mind that mass-energy is a single two-appearances entity, and that the value of E of the universe is constant, something is strange in the 73% clothing of the emperor. In the primitive commonsense mind cosmic energy is constant and there are no clothes on the emperor.
C. So what is the implication of D in the relationship between E and m ?
Ah! This, to the primitive mind, is the crux of the Dark Energy-Matter. The galaxy clusters, the "classical" universe mass units, keep moving at an ever accelerating rate, their motion "fueled" by m reverting to E in the process...and leaves behind it, and fills space, with yet undiscovered traces, a continuously strained matrix that will eventually overcome cosmic expansion and initiate its re-impansion...
Reflecting,
Dov Henis
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-P81pQcU1dLBbHgtjQjxG_Q--?cq=1
PS: And if we worry lest the expansion fuel runs out, let's bear in mind that eventually everything, including elementary particles in atoms, age and die, disintegrate and revert to energy... DH
Hi David Biello,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat if Dark Matter were the building material for Matter and Dark Energy was the building material for Energy. It could be like the Creation Soup that we can use to create things.
~Ray
An Aethereal Medium was introduced as far back as 1704 by Isaac Newton, and later assumed by Augustin Fresnel in 1818 when he introduced his wave theory of light, which led to British physicist James Clerk Maxwells supposition that there was a luminiferous aether (ether) permeating all of space and matter, hypothesized as an all-pervading, infinitely elastic, massless medium for the propagation of EM radiation. One of the earliest ether research efforts was the famous Michelson-Morley experiment which was performed in an attempt to validate the postulated properties of such a substance as being universally at rest and having a static energy level. The results of that experiment were commonly held to disprove the existence of such a substance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBased upon an in-depth analysis using all proven data of now known properties of radiated EM energy, I propose the composition and functionality of the elusive ether is now defined and is consistent with all experiments testing the phenomena of special relativity, general relativity, and relativistic quantum mechanics.
I suggest that geodesic paths of gravitational motion assumed to be caused by a curvature of space; paths of light observed as being bent in a gravitational field; the red shift in a light spectrum as it traverses outward in the gravitational field of its source; an expanding universe thats based on the red shift in distant galaxies light spectrum assumed to be primarily due to the Doppler Effect; the quantum mechanics of gravity; dark energy; dark matter; and the relativity of time and energy; are all unified in the substance of an accurately defined universal ether.
As defined in an available paper the universal ether is the dark energy glue that ties all four interaction forces in Nature together, bonding all atomic components in atomic masses together in a quantum entropy pattern of motion required to sustain their interdependent coexistence; facilitates the propagation of EM radiation through space, and accounts for the eternal creation of new matter to maintain an eternal steady state existence of the universe. The atomic components thus created constitute the substance of dark matter.
A full disclosure 5 page paper is available upon request for all interested.
Dov Henis seems to have the expertise going, but I do want to dispute the idea that running General Relativity formulas backwards prove that things had to be really "hot and dense" at the start.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRemember the inflation period. During this time spacetime itself expanded. Space in fact expanded. So to reason backwards you have to shrink all your unit measures and all your unit volumes. Objects like quarks and leptons are probably so small already they don't have to shrink, but to the extent they formed atoms the atoms would have to be much smaller.
The question of heat is also up for grabs. The idea of entropy works best in assuming that the micron-size early universe had to be low entropy, which conventionally means low energy. It was very high in potential energy because the quark and lepton soup was jammed together in somewhat smaller volumes, but not as great as some people think because remember spacetime itself shrunk down.
It is still the same "size" universe on the inside because it has uniformly shrunk down by the inflation factor. It need not seem to itself like it is extraordinarily hot.
And of course some people suggest that the electron diffraction grating constant and the speed of light itself may have been different in the extreme conditions of the early times. I am not sure we have to go there, we just have to remember that because space itself expands or shrinks, you can not automatically compare earlier volumes to later ones and say the earlier must have been "hot and dense". No, maybe if you shrink the observer down into a tiny universe it really "looks" more like the very low-entropy at the end of a runaway Dard Energy expanded universe. You can't "see" anything in the latter situation and your loneliness suggests a very ordered, low-entropy situation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeyond Einstein-Hubble And Beyond Darwin
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn The Origin Of Origins
Dark Matter-Energy And Higgs?
Energy-Mass Superposition
The Fractal Oneness Of The Universe
All Earth Life Creates and Maintains Genes
A. On Energy, Mass, Gravity, Galaxies Clusters AND Life, A Commonsensible Recapitulation
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/184.page#2125
The universe is the archetype of quantum within classical physics, which is the fractal oneness of the universe.
Astronomically there are two physics. A classical physics behaviour of and between galactic clusters, and a quantum physics behaviour WITHIN the galactic clusters.
The onset of big-bang's inflation, the cataclysmic resolution of the Original Superposition, started gravity, with formation - BY DISPERSION - of galactic clusters that behave as classical Newtonian bodies and continuously reconvert their original pre-inflation masses back to energy, thus fueling the galactic clusters expansion, and with endless quantum-within-classical intertwined evolutions WITHIN the clusters in attempt to delay-resist this reconversion.
B. Updated Life's Manifest May 2009
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=14988&st=480&#entry412704
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/140/122.page#2321
All Earth life creates and maintains Genes. Genes, genomes, cellular organisms - All create and maintain genes.
For Nature, Earth's biosphere is one of the many ways of temporarily constraining an amount of ENERGY within a galaxy within a galactic cluster, for thus avoiding, as long as possible, spending this particularly constrained amount as part of the fuel that maintains the clusters expansion.
Genes are THE Earth's organisms and ALL other organisms are their temporary take-offs.
For Nature genes are genes are genes. None are more or less important than the others. Genes and their take-offs, all Earth organisms, are temporary energy packages and the more of them there are the more enhanced is the biosphere, Earth's life, Earth's temporary storage of constrained energy. This is the origin, the archetype, of selected modes of survival.
The early genes came into being by solar energy and lived a very long period solely on direct solar energy. Metabolic energy, the indirect exploitation of solar energy, evolved at a much later phase in the evolution of Earth's biosphere.
However, essentially it is indeed so. All Earth life, all organisms, create and maintain the genes. Genes, genomes, cellular organisms - all create and maintain genes.
Dov Henis
(Comments from 22nd century)
http://profiles.yahoo.com/blog/2SF3CJJM5OU6T27OC4MFQSDYEU
The Big Bang is a myth. Dark Matter and Dark Energy are just an attempt to keep holding on to that ridiculous theory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl3Uj2UJjPA
I believe we should look into ourselfs for the answer to explain the observed behaviour that we now explain using Dark Matter and Dark Energy: our own mind.
The first thing we will need to investigate is why we live, and what is required to live.
You can use the following thinking trick for it:
"You can't see the seeing while you see".
Life strives to more then what already is: survival. Our human mind is a direct exponent of that 'force' so we can learn a lot about life by looking into our own mind.
It shows us there is a will for stability in eternity, because otherwise everything would fall appart.
When you look at everything else in the universe, you can actually discover the exact same thing. From the smallest building blocks to larger structures, it is all holding together.
It is almost sertain that the exact same force that gives us 'life' is behind that.
It would all make sense if the force is striving for stability in 'eternity'.
Seeing this and taking Gravity into account, it is almost sertain that what we can see is an effect of an interaction between two infinite forces, Gravity on one end (the force into nothing and an oposite force, the force of existence.
Albert Einstein called this the Cosmological Constant, but later caved for the Big Bang theory of his friend, a catholic priest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant
However, recently there is new evidence being discovered that his Cosmological Constant actually is a fact.
So this would of course explain the behaviour we see, and also very important: why we can't see it.
The cosmological constant is in my opinion only named that way because it must be an infinity that can't be measured. (to better understand it: it is a neverbeganity, it never began and never ended). So seen from the measurable it seems the same state, always the same as presumed.
Infinity can't be measured, it is uncountable.
So imaginary Dark Matter is just the same force as Gravity, acting as opponent of the force of existence that we imagine als Dark Energy.
The source of life and our existence however, can't be measured. This is why we need to learn again why it is so important to respect life and with that, the human mind, which we are forgetting more and more by the scam psychiatry. The human mind is more then a product of the building blocks (chemical processes in the brain).
I am not a scientist and my explanation is ouside scientific norm so that I don't blame you for censuring me for intruding. But after some time on youtube convinced me that I know what scientists are looking for. I can explain dark matters, dark energy, gravity, the causes of big bang and black hole, atomic vibration and much of everything that Science has difficulty finding answer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Big bang – I agree to what science assert that the universe started as just a dot. But how did it reach its present size? That dot was made of a single substance. The explosion of that single-substance dot resulted in countless fragmentations. As those fragmentations were propelled, they collected their other elemental substances that would compose each body until they reach their life cycle.
2. Dark Matter - These are elemental substances that the fragmentations would collect. As the fragmentations spin they would collect the kind of dark matters that would define their structure. In the process of collection, they also eject elements that are structurally different to them. These would become drk matter.
3. Black hole, gravity, dark energy and atomic vibration - Where did the dark matters come from? One atomic vibration is one life-cycle, and each matter that comes into existence also has its life span. The only difference of an atomic vibration to that of the universe is time, as reflected by size.
As each body reaches the end of its life-cycle they would seek the center of their mass. That is gravity, which is the process of seeking the center of the mass. In seeking the center of the mass, or, on their way to re-form a single body that they once were is what science call black hole. In the process each body releases the elements that use to constitute them. Those elements once more become dark matters awaiting for the next body to arise.
Where is dark energy? Understanding atomic vibration and the fact that size is a matter of number answer this question. The energy and the mechanism motivating the atom to oscillate on its own is same the energy and mechanism holding the universe together. The same mechanism holds true for big bangs and black holes.
Global warming falls under the same process. The same apply to fruits and flowers that emit smell just before rotting. It’s the same explanation to dead skin; on why humans become sickly with age.
What Science refer to as “Particle Zoo” are the dark matters of an atom. And the mysterious force that holds that atom together is dark energy―in atomic magnitude― of atom.