Friday, February 06, 2009

What is the Difference Between Dark Matter & Dark Energy?

Now there is the 10 thousand dollar question of the day... ain't it. I will admit to being confused by the difference myself. That is what made this article in The Daily Galaxy so very interesting.

As it sits right now, Only 4% of the stuff that makes up the universe is stuff we understand. So what is the other 96%? Well two names keep coming up and what confuses me is the fact that even learnered people use the two labels interchangeably - dark matter and dark energy.

From the article:
  • ...astronomers at the University of St Andrews are attempting to “simplify the dark side of the universe”. They say the two most mysterious constituents in the universe are actually the same thing.
Hummm somehow that doesn't seem to clear anything up - but it would seem dark matter and its counterpart dark energy are so closely intertwined that it’s not clear that they’re even two different materials, but instead, two sides so to speak of the same coin.

What really makes the whole argument strange is the 4% we see might in fact be all the matter that there is in the universe. Some scientists say that many of the new findings may instead point to a reinterpretation of the dark component as a modification of the law of gravity rather than particles or energy.

That clear things up for you? No?

Read the complete Daily Galaxy article
. It really is indepth and has a wealth of solid information.




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