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Dark Energy and Matter
What is meant by Dark?
It refers to what we can't see. We know its there because it exerts a force on something but we just can't see it. Scientists used
the term Dark instead of Invisible because to some people the latter means it can be undetected and unaffect the surroundings. The
Universe that we know of is made up of 70% Dark Energy, 25% Dark Matter and only 5% Matter. The stars, planets, asteroids etc. are
classified as matter. Dark Matter is not Anti-Matter as the former exhibit the same characteristics as normal Matter. Anti-matter
operates completely opposite to the way matter operates which Dark Matter doesn't. There is
probably Dark Anti-Matter as well but lets not confuse things just now, plenty of time later for that. Dark Matter is grouped into
two. The first is WIMP (weakly interating massive particles) and MACHOS (massive compact halo objects). MACHOS is a very dim object
that exists within the HALO of another object. WIMPs are massive objects in space but are exceedingly dark and cannot be detected
through light radiation.
History of the Dark?
In 1933, Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky, of the California Institute of Technology first proposed the idea of Dark Matter when he
tried to calculate the mass of the Coma cluster of galaxies. He did this by calcualting the cluster's total mass based on the motion
of the galaxies on the edge. When he compared the results with other galaxies in the cluser, the result was that it was 400x's bigger
than what he was expecting. This led him to propose that there was some matter which he could not detect that was having an effect on
the mass of the cluster.
In 1998, Scientists discovered that after the Big Bang, the universe expansion
began slowing down but then something happened in around 6 Billion years ago that caused the rate of expansion to increase again. The
Scientists had been trying to find the rate in which the expansion was slowing down but the opposite was the case. Before then
Einstein had proposed that there was something out there that the universe could not be held static unless there was something
exerting a force into it.
How are they detected?
We have not yet been able to detect Dark Matter or Energy just yet. Scientists are building underground laboratories to capture the
particles but so far I have been unaware of any successes. Like Black Holes, the only proof that they exist is their effect on
other celestrial bodies.
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