What (Not) On Earth is Dark Matter and Dark Energy
By: Fiona Gray
College Now Course - SCI 1
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Picture from a deep lens survey.
Black areas indicating dark matter
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WHAT IS DARK MATTER?
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WHAT DOES IT DO?
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HOW DO WE KNOW?
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| Dark matter occupies 90% of the universe. It is something astronomers have found to
answer the question of why things in space do not indefinitely fly away from each
other. What keeps it all together? Gravity, but from where? You need a large mass
to create a gravitational field strong enough to hold galaxies together. What large
form of mass is it? DARK MATTER and ENERGY! |
Light from very far galaxies and stars travels to earth, but on its journey the light
is bent, "what could it bend around," astronomers ask. They could not see anything,
but darkness. Dark matter and energy bend the light from distant sources and distort
the look of them to astronomers on earth. |
Other lenses on telescopes are used to see the light from these distant sources. Ultraviolet,
x-ray, and various other lenses used to see other types of light reveal the distortions
in the light's path.
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| WHO FOUND THEM? |
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| Scientists David Wittman, Tony Tyson, and David Kirkman, Ian Dell'Antonio, and Gary
Bernstein, had taken surveys of portions of the sky and proved the existence of dark
matter over large portions of the sky. |
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