Science Chats Forum

Anyone good with describing dark matter and dark energy for people without degrees in physics?

Quote:

. . . . The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment, located in the deep Soudan mine in Minnesota, is designed to directly detect new elementary particles that might make up the dark matter known to dominate our galaxy. . . . scientists have spent the past 40 years building a magnificent theoretical house of cards that could have toppled with the slightest whiff of inconsistent data. In the 1970s evidence began to accumulate from observations of our galaxy’s rotation that there was perhaps 10 times as much invisible as visible material out there. Although mundane explanations for such material—from snowballs to planets to cold gas—at first seemed possible, gradually it became clear that none of these could fit the bill. Meanwhile independent calculations of the abundance of light elements expected to be produced in the first minutes after the big bang implied that the universe simply lacked enough protons and neutrons to account for this dark matter if the predictions were to agree with observations. . . . independent computer calculations about the formation of galaxies as the universe expanded suggested that only some new kind of material, which did not interact as normal matter does, could collapse early enough to lead to the structures we see. . . . for what we see to make sense, a host of new elementary particles quite likely exists. If so, theorists have determined that the earliest moments of the fiery big bang could have produced these particles in precisely the abundance to account for dark matter, and their interactions with normal matter would have been weak enough to make them invisible to telescopes. . .

Excerpts from Dark Matters by Lawrence M. Krauss.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dark-matters

The truth is they don't know what Dark Matter and Dark Energy are--there may be something seriously wrong with the formulae.

I suspect, in what I have since seen about dark energy and dark matter, that both theories are designed to plug holes in other theories. I have heard an argument that they can be studied. But they're not studied, they are declared their for reasons other then being able to study them. Determining something exists because it has gravity, although it cannot be seen nor studied, makes me wonder. That and scientists tend to declare anything that can't be dragged into a lab, and made to cooperate, fake.

Everything you say is correct except the last sentence. When we're talking about Dark Mass/Dark Energy, all we're considering IS something that can't be dragged into a lab. It's a mathematical construct to patch the failure of certain formulae.

And while it is something that is acceptable in scientific circles, to a degree, I am often ridiculed for supporting the research into subjects that can be studied, but have been declared fake because science says so.

Dark Matter and Dark Energy are both acknowledged as stop-gaps by the majority of the people who actually know what's going on, I think.

But to estimate the total mass of the universe is ridiculous. Anyone who does that is not a scientist to begin with.