The "Dark" Universe

Dhihan Ahmed

    There is something that makes up 95% of the universe but physics will never be able to see or touch it. Physics will never get the chance at making a direct measurement of it. It’s present around every form of matter that ever exists, and yet it remains hidden, almost as if the universe is teasing us. Something so substantial to our existence is shrouded in endless mystery. What might this ominous presence be? It is none other than the collection of 2 things: dark matter and dark energy. These postulated forms of matter and energy are considered to be major governors in the way our universe functions. 

    To start off, approximately 27% of the 95% is the aforementioned dark matter. According to Dark Energy and Dark Matter, published by Harvard & Smithsonian, dark matter is an invisible material whose mass affects ordinary matter – stars, galaxies, etc. – by moving it in ways that would not be possible if it was only the mass of ordinary matter involved. Now, an invisible material in which light passes through as if it was transparent might sound like fan-fiction, but its existence is confirmed when observing how its mass affects galaxy clusters. Clusters of galaxies and the hot gas within it have a dark “halo” around each of them that keep them remaining in the cluster, more so than gravity. Once again, if it was just gravity in play, these clusters would not move and behave this way. By analyzing this unusual “pulling in” of matter, astronomers are able to measure how much invisible mass (dark matter) there is in a cluster, giving a gauge as to how prominent dark matter is in the universe, thus landing on the 27% mark. What this means for us is that everything we know about the universe is sustained by dark matter keeping it intact. 

    With dark matter out of the way, it’s time to turn our attention to dark energy, which is arguably more important than dark matter considering it makes up 68% of the universe. Dark energy is the name given to something that permeates throughout the vacuum of space, unaffected by all of space and time, that’s causing the universe’s expansion (Dark Energy, CERN). That was probably a lot for readers who didn’t already know this, so let me explain. The universe is currently expanding at an accelerating rate. What this means is that everything in the universe is moving away from each other, all at the same relative speed. The universe’s expansion, according to Davide Castelvecchi from Nature, was first discovered in the 1920’s when American astronomer Edwin Hubble saw that galaxies were receding from the Milky Way, with further galaxies moving away even faster. This repulsive “anti-gravity force” was dubbed dark energy, and to this day, no one knows what it actually is or how it came to be. Many astronomers and physicists believe dark energy to be an intrinsic part of space itself, that it’s just one of the qualities of space that happen to be true. Regardless of what it actually is, its presence in the universe has been thoroughly substantiated with countless studies that confirm its existence. 

    Now, knowing what dark matter and dark energy are, what does this do for us? Well, both have proven to be a huge part of our universe, which helps us utilize their presence to answer questions we’ve had for centuries, such as why the universe is expanding and why clusters of galaxies stick so closely. Only through these discoveries can mankind hope to explain how the universe works and how it came to be. Dark matter and dark energy are just 2 more of the countless aspects of the universe that lead to our birth. They both are part of the reason why we are all here.


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