Dark Matter & Dark Energy

Dark Matter & Dark Energy Links:

Dark Energy - Introduction

This site is intended for students age 14 and up, and for anyone interested in learning about our universe. Dark Energy - The discovery in 1998 that the Universe is actually speeding up its expansion was a total shock to astronomers. It just seems so counter-intuitive, so against common sense. But the evidence has become convincing.

Dark Matter - Introduction

This site is intended for students age 14 and up, and for anyone interested in learning about our universe. Dark Matter - When the Universe was young, it was nearly smooth and featureless. As it grew older and developed, it became organized. We know that our solar system is organized into planets (including the Earth!) orbiting around the Sun. On a scale much larger than the solar system (about 100 million times larger!), stars collect themselves into galaxies.

Martin White: Dark Matter

DARK MATTER We believe that most of the matter in the universe is dark, i.e.
cannot be detected from the light which it emits (or fails to emit). This is "stuff" which cannot be seen directly -- so what makes us think that it exists at all? Its presence is inferred indirectly from the motions...

Dark Matter - Missing Mass Search

Cosmic Hide and Seek: the Search for the Missing Mass by Chris Miller

Cosmology - Dark Matter

There are many reasons to believe that the universe is full of "dark matter", matter that influences the evolution of the universe gravitationally, but is not seen directly in our present observations.

Dark energy - physicsworld.com

New evidence has confirmed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating under the influence of a gravitationally repulsive form of energy that makes up two-thirds of the cosmos.

Dark Energy, Dark Matter - NASA Science

Article on dark energy and dark matter

Dark Energy Fills the Cosmos

Dark energy is hardly science fiction, although no less intriguing and full of mystery for being real science.

ScienceDaily: Dark Matter and Dark Energy News

Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Read what astronomers are discovering about a gaping hole in the universe, how dark matter clumps contribute to galaxy formation and more. Space images.

Signs of dark matter found?

WORLD SCIENCE - Nov. 19, 2008 - Tell­tale signs may have turned up of a mys­te­ri­ous sub­stance that per­vades the uni­verse...

WMAP- Content of the Universe

NASA - Universe 101 - WMAP and Dark Matter / Dark energy - By making accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background fluctuations, WMAP is able to measure the basic parameters of the Big Bang model including the density and composition of the universe.

Dark Matter Dark Energy The Dark Side of the Universe - The Teaching Company Course

There's more to the universe than meets the eye-a lot more. In recent years scientists have discovered that 95 percent of the contents of the cosmos are invisible to all of our current methods of direct detection. Yet they are definitely there: Something is holding galaxies and galaxy clusters tog

File:DarkMatterPie.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NASA universe-as-pie pic on Wikimedia Commons - Caption: Estimated distribution of dark matter making up 22% of the mass of the universe and dark energy making up 74%, with 'normal' matter making up only 4% of the mass of the universe.

Detailed dark matter map yields clues to galaxy cluster growth

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took advantage of a giant cosmic magnifying glass to create one of the sharpest and most detailed maps of dark matter in the universe. Dark matter is an invisible and unknown substance that makes up the bulk of the universe's mass.

BBC News - Dark energy and flat Universe exposed by simple method

Researchers have developed a simple geometrical method to add weight to the idea that ours is a flat, dark-energy-rich Universe.

So you think you can solve a cosmology puzzle?

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cosmologists have come up with a new way to solve their problems. They are inviting scientists, including those from totally unrelated fields, to participate in a grand competition. The idea is to spur outside interest in one of cosmology's trickiest problems -- measuring the invisible dark matter and dark energy that permeate our universe.

Statistical modeling could help us understand cosmic acceleration

(PhysOrg.com) -- While it is generally accepted by scientists that the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, there are questions about why this should be so. For years, scientists have been trying to determine the cause of this behavior.

Physicists propose mechanism that explains the origins of both dark matter and 'normal' matter

(PhysOrg.com) -- Through precise cosmological measurements, scientists know that about 4.6% of the energy of the Universe is made of baryonic matter (normal atoms), about 23% is made of dark matter, and the remaining 72% or so is dark energy. Scientists also know that almost all the baryonic matter in the observable Universe is matter (with a positive baryon charge) rather than antimatter (with a negative baryon charge). But exactly why this matter and energy came to be this way is still an open question. In a recent study, physicists have proposed a new mechanism that can generate both the baryon asymmetry and the dark matter density of the Universe simultaneously.

Hubble rules out one alternative to dark energy

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have ruled out an alternate theory on the nature of dark energy after recalculating the expansion rate of the universe to unprecedented accuracy.