DARK MATTER

Just about 14 billion years ago, the universe flickered into existence in an event know as the Big Bang. Its beginning is difficult for us to imagine. The early universe would have been incredibly hot too hot for even atoms to exist- and extraordinarily dense. In fact, scientists believe that, at one point, the entire observable universe would have been about the size of a grain of sand. As the universe expanded, it became vastly larger and dramatically cooler. Atoms formed, then molecules. Gravity drew the matter into greater and greater clumps, eventually bringing into existence the stars, planets and galaxies so familiar to us today. All objects in the universe pull on one another with a force we call gravity. The more matter an object contains its mass- the more gravity it has. This matter can consist of both visible matter, like stars, and invisible matter, known as dark matter. Likewise, the closer objects are to one another, the stronger the gravitational attraction between them. Every bit of matter in the universe exerts a gravitational pull on every other bit. This creates a drag that should be slowing the universe down, even as it continues to expand from the energy of the Big Bang. In the late 20th century, astronomers found that the universe contains enough mass to slow the expansion of space, but not enough to stop it or bring it crashing back together. Instead the universe would coast forever, always slowing but never quite reaching a halt. By the late 1990s, the astronomers had determined the rate of the universes expansion. Now they wanted to measure the amount if had slowed down over the past few billion years. It was as though they had been able to view the current speed on the universes speedometer and now wanted to check how heavily the universe had been pushing down on the brake. As the 20th century neared a close, two groups of astronomers set out to determine the difference between the speed of the universes current expansion and the speed of the expansion in the past. Astronomers Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California and Brian Schmidt at Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia led competing, international teams in an effort to identify and study a kind of exploding star know as a Type 1a supernova. These supernovae are

the key to measuring tremendous distances across space, and therefore essential to deciphering the universes expansion. Evaluating the data from the supernovae, astronomers began to encounter some odd results. The supernovae were dimmer than expected. They were so dim that they had to be farther away than they should be. And if they were truly that far away, the universes expansion would have to be speeding up, no slowing down. But what could cause such acceleration? Gravity always pulls things together, never pushes them apart. Some other force, a never-before-detected energy, had to be propelling the expansion. The doubtful astronomers knew other possibilities existed that could explain the strange observations. The teams had been studying fairly distant supernovae, exploding stars whose light had begun traveling 4-7 billion years earlier. Perhaps these supernovae from an earlier time in the universe were just dimmer than more recent supernovae because of the composition of their stars. Or perhaps galaxies or even the space between galaxies contained more cosmic dust than people suspected, causing the explosions to appear faint, as though seen through a veil. Scientists now think this: When the universe was born in the Big Bang, it was expanding extremely fast. It was also much smaller and thus denser than it is today. Because the universes mass was so close together, gravity began slowing the universe down. But in the background the entire time was this other, mysterious, repulsive force the force that scientists would come to attribute to dark energy. As the universe continued to expand, though slowly, the galaxies containing the bulk of thes universes mass became farther and farther removed from one another. As the distance between mass became greater, the gravitational pull faded. As gravity weakened, the repulsive force took over and began forcing the universe to speed up

EXAMPLE
Imagine youre in an outdoor party one summer evening. The voices of the chatting guests overwhelm all the other noises nearby. Present, but drown down is the chirping of crickets. As the party lines down and the guests go away the chirping becomes clearer and clearer. Until is the main sound of the night. Like the crickets chirping, dark energy existed in the early universe but was overwhelmed by a stronger presence. It became significant once gravity, like the guests voices died away. As gravity effects weakened the power of dark energy began causing the expanding universe to speed up.