Dark Matter And Dark Energy

Released: May 9, 2026 8:00 AM CST

Here is the twenty-seventh episode of Quantum Foam, Dark Matter And Dark Energy. These are 2 distinct areas of science. We can only account for a certain amount of the matter we see. The rest is known as Dark Matter. Approximately 85 percent of the total amount of matter is unaccounted for. There are gravitational effects that are caused by left over, unexplained matter. We can't detect Dark Matter with our recording instruments, which are based on electromagnetism. We are able to detect gravitational effects from the Dark Matter interacting with normal matter using current Astrophysics. There could be a hidden world made of Dark Matter. Lord Kelvin postulated that there were more dark bodies than had previously been explained. There were people back in the 1920s and 1930s studying the motion of stars. The telescopes could only see within our own galaxy, The Milky Way. Redshifing and blueshifting requires denoting The Hubble Constant. To understand, we need to take a close look at Doppler shift and The Cosmological Constant. This constant is an intrinsic property of space. Einstein's biggest blunder was introducing this Cosmological Constant, known as Lambda. It implies the existence of a repulsive force pervading space that counteracts the gravitational attraction holding matter together. He thought he didn't need it, but it turns out he DID need it to describe the universe. The relative expansion of the universe is parameterized by dimensionless scale factor Alpha, also known as the cosmic scale factor. We are not able to model different galaxies mathematically as point masses. The reason for Dark Energy is unknown. In order to understand what this is, we take a look at galactic and extragalactic events. According to our measurements, Dark Energy accounts for approximately 68 percent of the available energy in our present-day universe. This is our observable universe. Ordinary matter is called Baryonic matter. The photon is the quanta of the electromagnetic field. They are massless and always move at the speed of light denoted by c. 186,000 miles per second is approximately the speed of light. The Cosmological Constant is the reason why we detect Dark Energy. There is something called a zero-point energy. It's the lowest energy a quantum mechanical system can have. There is underlying vacuum energy everywhere. It is energy that permeates throughout the entire universe.

There may be the correct amount of energy in the universe for it to eventually halt and then contract back onto itself. The universe is expanding and changing with time. It is full of matter. The expansion of the universe was previously expanding at a different rate. The expansion rate is accelerating. Before, there were those that thought the expansion rate of the universe was slowing down due to gravitational effects. This was the big conundrum with the models of cosmology that attempted to explain this. There are unknown effects coming from matter that we are not able to directly observe. There is also an outward potential tendency to expand that is fueled by an energy we are unable to explain. Dark Matter deals with mass, Dark Energy deals with calculating the curvature of space. 7.5 billion years ago structures in the universe began flying apart at a faster rate. The expansion rate increased at this time. This is due to a mysterious force. Virtual particles out in the vacuum of space come from the quantum. We have a cosmology that has a definite expansion built right in. We are taking a look at different theories that include these ideas. The General Theory Of Relativity can be considered for revision purposes, but in all likelihood it is a correct theory. In order to prove different aspects of these theories we can admire the versatility of The General Theory Of Relativity. To do this, we need to gather observational evidence. This is hard to do and is time-consuming. It is difficult to calculate the speed within separate inertial reference frames that describe Relativity. One object's direction of motion is looked at with an average background of everything else. As an object gains more kinetic energy it increases in mass relative to other objects. We are taking a look at both theories that are well-understood and also descriptions of nature that are not well-understood. What is this stuff? Is it aliens? Is it God? What kind of matter and energy is this? Is the universe as we understand it to be flat or curved? We know that there is something else going on here. We can use computer models to see where this matter and energy is located and what it is exactly. There may be something going on with Black Holes, matter, and information loss. Is this related to Dark Matter? When we have properly analyzed the information that has come from the James Webb Space Telescope, we will have a greatly increased pool of knowledge that may give us a better understanding of Dark Matter And Dark Energy.