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Published byShana Atkins Modified over 9 years ago
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Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Fate of the Universe
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Mass within Sun’s orbit: 10 11 M Sun Observable stars and gas clouds: ~few 10 9 M Sun
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Dark Matter: An undetected form of mass that emits little or no photons, but we know it must exist because we observe the effects of its gravity Dark Energy: An unknown form of energy that is causing the universe to expand faster over time Dark matter and dark energy
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“Normal” Matter: ~ 4.4% –Normal Matter inside stars:~ 0.6% –Normal Matter outside stars:~ 3.8% Dark Matter: ~ 25% Dark Energy~ 71% What is the Universe made of?
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Spiral galaxies all tend to have flat rotation curves indicating large amounts of dark matter
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The visible portion of a galaxy lies deep in the heart of a large halo of dark matter
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measure the velocities of galaxies in a cluster from their Doppler shifts Mass is 50 x larger than the mass in stars!
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Clusters contain large amounts hot gas: emits x rays Temperature of hot gas tells us cluster mass: 85% dark matter 13% hot gas 2% stars
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Gravitational lensing of background galaxies also tells us the mass
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Ordinary Dark Matter (MACHOS) –Massive Compact Halo Objects: dead or failed stars in halos of galaxies Extraordinary Dark Matter (WIMPS) –Weakly Interacting Massive Particles: mysterious neutrino-like particles The Best Bet What is dark matter made of?
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MACHOs do not cause enough lensing events to explain all the dark matter
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There’s not enough ordinary matter WIMPs could be left over from Big Bang Models involving WIMPs explain how galaxy formation works Why Believe in WIMPs?
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Gravity of dark matter is what caused protogalactic clouds to contract early in time
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WIMPs don’t contract to center because they don’t emit photons, so they can not radiate away their orbital energy
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Maps of galaxy positions reveal extremely large structures: superclusters and voids
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WIMP models agree better with observations
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Critical density of matter Not enough dark matter Fate of universe depends on the amount of dark matter Lots of dark matter
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Amount of dark matter is ~25% of the critical density suggesting fate is eternal expansion Not enough dark matter
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But expansion appears to be speeding up! Not enough dark matter Dark Energy?
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Brightness of distant white-dwarf supernovae tells us how much universe has expanded since they exploded
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Accelerating universe is best fit to supernova data
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