Running head: Dark matter in space 1 Dark matter in space Submitted by: Student ID# Presented to: Professor’s name Date Course Number and Name Running head: Dark matter in space 2 Dark matter in space Space is the most mysterious yet amazing thing that is known to humankind. Among the many mysteries of this space is that of dark matter. Dark matter is the dominant gravitationally attractive component in the Universe, but we do not know what it consists of. All the evidence for the existence of dark matter and constraints on it’s nature come from astronomy (Peter, A. H. G. 2012). According to Bacall (2015), the existence of dark matter does not have any proven theories, however, from what is known about dark matter, it’s nature is believed to be beyond the scope of what is known about matter currently. A possibility of the existence of dark matter has been around since the late 1920s, but the nature is yet not known beyond just the basic knowledge about this peculiar matter. NASA has been using the Hubble Space Telescope for the observation of dark matter since the late 1990s. The scientists have proposed a number of theories to explain the characteristics of dark matter and the composition for the universe that is proposed by NASA (2009, para 3) is that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Other than this, dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe. The other remaining matter that remains in the universe make up about less than 5% of the universe. A theory that has been proposed by NASA (2009) states that Einstein’s theory of gravity is not correct. That would not only affect the expansion of the universe, but it would also affect the way that normal matter in galaxies and clusters of galaxies behaved. The understanding of dark matter is the most important concept in order to determine whether the universe continues to expand, expands to one point and then collapses or Running head: Dark matter in space 3 whether the universe is at a flat phase, where it expands and then stabilizes once equilibrium is reached. The formation, evolution and understanding of all the galaxies and clusters can be quite well understood from a better understanding and evaluation of the dark matter and its composition and constituents. For instance, “Motions of the stars tell you how much matter there is,” Pieter van Dokkum, a researcher at Yale University, said in a statement. “They don’t care what form the matter is, they just tell you that it’s there.” (Redd, N. T. 2019). Since dark matter is very different from ordinary matter that exists in the universe, a variety of different experiments are being conducted and have been conducted in the past too, for getting a better understanding about dark matter. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer or AMS, The LUX experiment, which is short for Large Underground Xenon dark-matter experiment, The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, IceCube Neutrino Observatory, Planck spacecraft are some of the well known and promising experiments and equipment, that have been used for the research of dark matter. According to Bucklin (2019), using the gravitational lensing, scientists were able to determine that most of the matter was near the galaxy clusters and not in the red haze of gas clouds where most visible matter was. The galaxy collision therefore separated dark and visible matter—and by doing so, allowed scientists to find evidence of the former. Bucklin (2019) also stated that by observing the rotation of the stars in the galaxy, the deduced graphs for the velocity of stars and plotting that graph against the distance from the centre of the galaxy gives an idea about the distribution of mass for the dark matter. Running head: Dark matter in space The existence of dark matter and the theories that propose anything related to it’s existence have been in jeopardy and have been looked by many with a skeptical eye. The major reason that People and scientists alike find it hard to believe that dark matter exists is that it cannot be seen and neither does it emit light. The possible particles that can contribute to the formation of dark matter makes it only more difficult to believe the theories proposed. The only major non-particle candidate for dark matter is the primordial black hole, which would have collapsed directly from highly over dense regions of the early Universe, the existence of which requires funky physics (Peter, A. H. G. 2012). Also, according to Peter (2012), both the departments of astronomical and astroparticle sciences cannot figure out the composition or the constituents of dark matter on their own, and instead an amalgamation of knowledge from both of these fields is needed for a better picture about the dark matter and its constituents. 4 Running head: Dark matter in space 5 References NASA. (2009). Dark Energy, dark matter. https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy. Redd, N. T. (2019, July 16). What is dark matter? The https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.space.com/amp/20930-dark-matter.html. NASA. Space. Bucklin S. M. (2017, February 3). A history of dark matter. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/a-history-of-dark-matter/. Bacall, N. A. (2015). Dark matter universe. PNAS October 6, 2015 112 (40) 1224312245. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1516944112 Peter, A. H. G. (2012). Dark matter: A brief review. https://arxiv.org/abs/1201.3942 Running head: Dark matter in space 6 Pictures Running head: Dark matter in space 7 Running head: Dark matter in space 8 Running head: Dark matter in space 9 Running head: Dark matter in space 10
