****** Is Dark Energy Evaporating Dark Matter? ********* NASAs Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) provided a true watershed moment in humanitys quest to understand the cosmos. Its findings calculated the age of the universe and plotted the curvature of space. It mapped the cosmic microwave background radiation and, in a shocking turn of events, revealed that atoms make up only 4.6 percent of the universe.Scientists attribute this accelerating expansion to dark energy, so called because its exact nature remains a mystery, but something must fill the vast reaches of space to account for the accelerating expansion.Dark matter, by comparison, is far better understood. It doesnt emit or reflect light, but scientists can estimate where it is based on its gravitational effects on surrounding matter. Scientists use a technique called gravitational lensing to accomplish this, observing the way dark matters gravitational pull bends and distorts light from distant galaxies.Dark matter is almost completely undetectable matter that astronomers and cosmologists have calculated to exist within our universe, hence the name “dark”. Whereas dark energy is an accepted model of energy that permeates all matter and space, and is responsible for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe and dark energy grows as it interacts with dark matter, which can help explain the mechanics of the expansion of the universe.If the dark energy is growing and dark matter is evaporating we will end up with a big, empty, boring universe with almost nothing in it,Professor Wands on his research “Dark matter provides a framework for structures to grow in the Universe. The galaxies we see are built on that scaffolding and what we are seeing here, in these findings, suggests that dark matter is evaporating, slowing that growth of structure,”.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 13:27:36 +0000
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