DARK MATTER
Psalm 138:12
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)
Job 38:9
When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it,
Psalms 18:11 "He made darkness his secret place;
What Is Dark Matter?
Abell 2744: Pandora's Cluster Revealed
One of the most complicated and dramatic collisions between
galaxy clusters ever seen is captured in this new composite image of
Abell 2744. The blue shows a map of the total mass concentration (mostly
dark matter).By fitting a theoretical model of the composition of the Universe
to the combined set of cosmological observations, scientists have come
up with the composition that we described above, ~70% dark energy, ~25%
dark matter, ~5% normal matter. What is dark matter?
We are much more certain what dark matter is not than we are what
it is. First, it is dark, meaning that it is not in the form of stars
and planets that we see. Observations show that there is far too little
visible matter in the Universe to make up the 25% required by the
observations. Second, it is not in the form of dark clouds of normal
matter, matter made up of particles called baryons. We know this because
we would be able to detect baryonic clouds by their absorption of
radiation passing through them. Third, dark matter is not antimatter,
because we do not see the unique gamma rays that are produced when
antimatter annihilates with matter. Finally, we can rule out large
galaxy-sized black holes on the basis of how many gravitational lenses
we see. High concentrations of matter bend light passing near them from
objects further away, but we do not see enough lensing events to suggest
that such objects to make up the required 25% dark matter contribution.
Comments
Post a Comment