Dark Energy, Dark Matter and Antimatter Did anyone see the scientist who believes she has found something new in the universe which could prove it is a lot older than we think? She says she has been studying the center of the universe because she has found the stars there are very old but look much younger and she believes the cause of this is dark matter is flooding into there. She claims even though the old stars have burned up all their hydrogen, the dark matter has replaced it and is energizing these stars. If she is correct, maybe this could also be happening in other places. I remember scientists claiming some clusters of stars at the edge of our visual universe seemed to be too young to be there. I always wonder when I hear the words dark matter, because all the evidence for its existence seems to be indirect. While we can see something effects matter at times, we cannot actually see dark matter. This leads me to believe it could also be something else or a combination of unknown forces affecting matter. I want to make something crystal clear, I am not a scientist, so this is just my humble opinion. What is the suspected nature of dark matter? From what I can find it is said it is some sort of subatomic particle, but importantly there is another guess and that is dark matter is composed of very tiny black holes. It is believed dark matter interacts through gravity while antimatter particles are different and annihilate both themselves and matter when they come into contact. I am mentioning this because there are those who believe antimatter and dark matter are the same. We have actually seen antimatter and the Large Hadron Collider has created a little of it. The idea so far is dark energy exists through space and is not limited to a particular area or areas. One of the ideas that gives me pause is the idea dark energy does not directly affect most or all bodies in space but rather the area between. This is thought to be the reason space is expanding, or should I say one reason. It has been said dark energy supplies about 68 percent of all the energy in the universe and with that is a certain amount of repulsion. This repulsion is said to account for space expanding. New instruments are being built for the specific purpose of finding out more about dark energy. NASA launched the Euclid in 2023 and its purpose was to find out more about dark energy on its 6-year mission. One of the things bugging scientists the most is more than just why the universe is expanding; it is why this expansion is accelerating? Yes, the expansion is picking up speed. Here is the strange part of all this, the expansion is causing galaxies to move further apart from each other or even crash into each other, and yet this is not true for the bodies inside galaxies because they are bound by gravity. There is something called the Hubble constant and some people think it might be related to dark matter. It is completely different being the measurement of the expansion while dark energy is said to be the force behind the acceleration. Sometimes dark energy is defined as a hypothetical force. I think that says it all. I believe we will need to find a way to prove once and for all the existence of dark energy. Could dark energy exist inside black holes? One of the ideas about dark energy is it could potentially exist in black holes. Some scientists even went as far as to say these supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies might be sort of a reservoir of dark energy and this could be causing the universe’s expansion. Einstein never directly spoke of dark matter but did talk about unseen forces affecting gravity. It is said this is one of the reasons why his theory of general relativity is so important. The effects on gravity in the universe predicted by Einstein are being used by scientists today or are trying to map out the distribution of dark matter across the universe. I am a little stumped by this since dark matter is said to exist everywhere. I did some research on this and found that even though dark matter is said to be everywhere, it is more concentrated in some places than others. Astronomers have observed very large filamentary structures between galaxies and named them the cosmic web and found they seem to surround at least some galaxies and while they believe dark matter is everywhere, they believe it is more concentrated in these filamentary structures. Many galaxies are said to have a halo made of these filaments around them. One thing which some people find confusing is the difference between dark matter and dark energy. Neither one can be seen directly but the difference has been said to be dark matter is a gravitational force which pulls matter together and could be responsible for the formations of structures like galaxies. Dark energy is said to be a repulsive force which is accelerating expansion. Did you ever think about the forces in the universe and wonder which one between dark energy and dark matter was said to be the most powerful? Yes, I sometimes wonder about these things. The consensus among scientists seems to indicate they believe the answer is dark energy. Next, I have to ask the question which do they believe to be more powerful, dark energy or antimatter? This surprised me because the answer didn’t come out the way I expected. It was dark energy was even more powerful than antimatter. The simple reason behind this was it makes up so much more of the universe.
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