What is Dark Matter?

With the whole universe in consideration, Matter consisting of the things we see everyday, from here to anything in the observable universe, only accounts for about 4-5% of the total occupation of the universe. This infers that the total universe consumption is almost made of things we can not actually see (95% of it). That is a staggering amount, when you think about all the billions of galaxies, consisting of billions of stars and planets in each, puts this into perspective. This leads to the unimaginable number of object that encompass the universe. Now dark matter will not all be sectioned in one area, for example, matter making up the observable universe will be in one place and dark matter be in another, dark matter compliments space and matter. There is evidence to suspect that dark matter is actually among us, not billions of light years of the periphery of the known universe. Dark matter and dark energy could be among us. Penetrating and interacting with the physical universe. Our only problem is being able to detect it. Currently there is a special experiment under way to detect dark matter and it is the first real decent shot in finding these heavy and dark particles. It is called the LUX (Large Underground Xenon) Detector (We will cover this in another post later)

 

Fig.1 A complex collision between clusters of dense Galaxies (Blue parts are Dark Matter)
Credit: Chandra X-Ray Telescope

A big issue for Dark matter, is that it is invisible, hence the dark part, it cannot absorb light or even emit it. Dark matter exists because it has mass, which in effect has a massive gravitational force. Capable of bending and warping light rays. So what exactly is Dark Matter? Well the answer is that no scientist or theorist actually knows the true answer, only guess and assumptions. Many believe it is comprised of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMP's). The mass part is hence since, we know that it exerts gravitational force. Since they are dark they have no electrical charge at all. Not emitting light or even casting a shadow. They do not obey the Electromagnetic forces at all. As such they are very difficult to detect and usually lead to indirect ways of observing particles like this. There have been discussions about Dark Matter theoretical weights to around 50 – 1,000 times the weight of a proton.

 

Fig. 2 A Panoramic view of Dark Matter and its coverage

In all, not much is known about the Exotic Substance known as Dark matter. But what we can infer from it will fill in large gaps in our understanding of the Universe.

Feynman