A Little Astrophysics-From the Big Bang to Now

III Dark Matter and Dark Energy

Jim Rauf
OLLI Fall 2022

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What is Dark Matter?

Nobody knows!

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Dark Matter - Some History
• In 1884,Lord Kelvin estimated the number of dark • He estimated the mass of
bodies in the Milky Way from the observed the galaxy, which he
velocity dispersion of the stars orbiting around the
center of the galaxy determined is different from
the mass of visible stars

• He concluded "Many of our

supposed thousand million
stars, perhaps a great
majority of them, may be
dark bodies"

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Dark Matter - Some History

• 1937 Fritz Zwicky at Cal Tech studied the

movement of individual galaxies within a huge
cluster of galaxies called the Coma Cluster
• The cluster is about 300 million light years from
earth and contains thousands of galaxies that orbit
its center
• He used the motions of a few dozen galaxies as a
tracer of the gravity field that binds the cluster
together
• Zwicky discovered that their velocity had a • For the Coma cluster, Ve= 977 km/s and R = 3 Mpc
shockingly high value
• Implies a mass of 3.3 x 1015Mo
• He inferred an enormous mass for the Coma
• The mass estimate from visual luminosity is about 5 x
Cluster 1012Lo, so the mass-to-light ratio is M / L =
• The total mass of the galaxies in the cluster was 660Mo/Lo. This shows again the magnitude of the
not enough to explain the measured velocities dark matter problem.
• Additional galaxy cluster observations show the same lack
of visible mass to explain the galaxies’ velocities

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Dark Matter - Some History

• All the Coma Cluster galaxies are moving more

rapidly then the “escape velocity” for the cluster
• Escape velocity is the speed required to overcome
the gravitational attraction of a large mass (planet,
star , galaxy or galaxy cluster)

Ve = escape velocity
G = universal gravitational constant
M = mass of the body to be escaped from
R = distance from the center of the mass

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Dark Matter - Some History
• 1960s and 1970s Vera Rubin, Kent Ford, and Ken • Vera Florence Cooper Rubin ( 1928 –2016)
Freeman provided further strong evidence, also pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates
using galaxy rotation curves
• She uncovered the discrepancy between the
• They worked with a spectrograph to measure the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies
velocity curve of edge-on spiral galaxies with by studying galactic rotation curves
greater accuracy
• Identifying the galaxy rotation problem, her work
• This result was confirmed in 1978 provided evidence for the existence of dark matter
• An influential paper presented Rubin and Ford's • These results were confirmed over subsequent
results in 1980 decades
• They showed most galaxies must contain about six
times as much dark as visible mass
• By around 1980 the apparent need for dark matter
was widely recognized as a major unsolved
problem in astronomy

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Dark Matter
• The arms of spiral galaxies rotate around the
galactic center
• The luminous mass density of a spiral galaxy
decreases as one goes from the center to the
outskirts
• If luminous mass were all the matter, then we can
model the galaxy as a point mass in the center and
test masses orbiting around it
• Kepler's Second Law - it is expected that the
rotation velocities will decrease with distance from
the center
• The galaxy rotation curve remains flat as distance
from the center increases
• The obvious way to resolve this discrepancy is to
conclude the mass distribution in spiral galaxies is
not similar to that of the Solar System
• In particular, there is a lot of non-luminous matter
(dark matter) in the outskirts of the galaxy

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Dark Matter

Artist's impression shows the expected distribution of dark matter in

the Milky Way galaxy as a blue halo of material surrounding the
galaxy

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Dark Matter
• We can infer its existence by the deflection of distant
starlight
• If light from a distant galaxy is bent by the
gravitational field of a clump of dark matter between
us and the galaxy, it is possible that two images of the
same galaxy can be produced The bending of light by
the gravitational field of matter is called gravitational
lensing
• In some cases, the starlight travels to an observer by
multiple paths around the galaxy, producing a ring

• Light from a distant star is bent around a galaxy

• Under the right conditions, we can see a ring of light
instead of a single star

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Dark Matter-NASA
• Combining theoretical models and cosmological • It is not in the form of dark clouds of normal
observations scientists have come up with the matter, matter made up of particles called baryons
composition of the universe :
• We know this because we would be able to detect
• ~ 68% dark energy baryonic clouds by their absorption of radiation
passing through them
• ~ 27% dark matter
• It is is not antimatter, because we do not see the
• ~ 5% normal matter unique gamma rays that are produced when
• We are much more certain what dark matter is not antimatter annihilates with matter
than we are what it is • We can rule out large galaxy-sized black holes on
• It is dark, meaning that it is not in the form of stars the basis of how many gravitational lenses we see
and planets that we see • High concentrations of matter bend light passing
• Observations show that there is far too little visible near them from objects further away, but we do
matter in the universe to make up the 27% not see enough lensing events to suggest that such
required by the observations objects to make up the required 27% dark matter
contribution

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Dark Matter
• There are still a few dark matter possibilities that • Dark matter candidates arise frequently in
are viable theories that suggest physics beyond the
Standard Model, such as supersymmetry
• Baryonic matter could still make up the dark
and extra dimensions
matter if it were all tied up in brown dwarfs or in
small, dense chunks of heavy elements • One theory suggests the existence of a
“Hidden Valley”, a parallel world made of
• These possibilities are known as massive compact
dark matter having very little in common
halo objects, or "MACHOs“
with matter we know
• The most common view is that dark matter is not
baryonic at all
• But that it is made up of other, more exotic
particles-
• Like axions ( a hypothetical elementary
particle postulated in 1977)
• WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles)

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CERN Dark Matter and Dark Energy
• Dark matter • One idea is that it could contain "supersymmetric
particles" – hypothesized particles that are
• Unlike normal matter, dark matter does not partners to those already known in the Standard
interact with the electromagnetic force. Model
• This means it does not absorb, reflect or emit • Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
light, making it extremely hard to spot may provide more direct clues about dark matter
• Researchers have been able to infer the existence • Many theories say the dark matter particles would
of dark matter only from the gravitational effect it be light enough to be produced at the LHC
seems to have on visible matter
• If they were created at the LHC, they would escape
• But what is dark matter? through the detectors unnoticed
• However, they would carry away energy and
momentum, so physicists could infer their
existence from the amount of energy and
momentum “missing” after a collision

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Dark Matter - Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN
• The term hadron refers to subatomic composite particles
composed of quarks held together by the strong force
• The best-known hadrons are the baryons such as protons
and neutrons
• A collider (LHC at CERN in Europe) is a type of a particle
accelerator which brings two opposing particle beams
together such that the particles collide
• In particle physics, colliders, though harder to construct,
are a powerful research tool because they reach a much
higher center of mass energy than fixed target setups
• Analysis of the byproducts of these collisions gives
scientists good evidence of the structure of the subatomic
world and the laws of nature governing it
• Many of these byproducts are produced only by high-
energy collisions, and they decay after very short periods
of time
• Many of them are hard or nearly impossible to study in
other ways

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Matter in the Universe

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What is Dark Energy?

Nobody knows!

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Dark Energy
• Dark energy is the repulsive force that is the • In the 1920s after Hubble discovered that the
dominant component of the universe universe was expanding , Einstein discarded his
• The rest of the universe consists of ordinary matter cosmological constant-”his greatest blunder”
and dark matter • The measured amount of matter in the mass-
• Dark energy is relatively uniform in time and space energy of the universe was low so some unknown
and is repulsive within the volume it occupies missing component , like the cosmological constant
, was required to make up the deficit
• It is not well understood
• Direct evidence for the existence of this “dark
• A kind of repulsive force was hypothesized by energy” was first presented in 1998
Einstein in 1916 and was represented by his
cosmological constant in his general theory of
relativity in order to counteract the attractive force
of gravity
• The cosmological constant was required to
describe a static universe -neither contracting or
expanding

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CERN Dark Matter and Dark Energy
• Dark energy • In the early 1990s, one thing was fairly certain about
the expansion of the universe
• Dark energy makes up about 68% of the universe
and appears to be associated with the vacuum in • It might have enough energy density to stop its
space expansion and recollapse
• It is distributed evenly throughout the universe, • It might have so little energy density that it would
not only in space but also in time – in other words, never stop expanding
its effect is not diluted as the universe expands • But gravity was certain to slow the expansion as time
• The even distribution means that dark energy does went on
not have any local gravitational effects, but rather a • The slowing had not been observed, but,
global effect on the universe as a whole theoretically, the universe had to slow
• This leads to a repulsive force, which tends to • The universe is full of matter and the attractive force
accelerate the expansion of the universe of gravity pulls all matter together
• The rate of expansion and its acceleration can be
measured by observations based on the Hubble
law
• These measurements, together with other
scientific data, have confirmed the existence of
dark energy and provide an estimate of just how
much of this mysterious substance exists

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Dark Energy
• In 1998 the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
observations of very distant supernovae that
showed that, a long time ago, the universe was
actually expanding more slowly than it is today
• Observations at great distances are observations of
the past
• So the expansion of the universe has not been
slowing due to gravity, as everyone thought, it has
been accelerating
• This was unexpected
• No one knew how to explain it
• This diagram depicts changes in the rate of expansion
since the Big Bang
• The more shallow the curve, the faster the rate of
expansion
• The curve changes noticeably about 7.5 billion years ago,

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Cosmological Scale Factor Versus Time

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Dark Energy
• Eventually theorists came up with three sorts of • More is unknown than is known
explanations • We know how much dark energy there is because we
• Maybe it was a result of a long-discarded version of know how it affects the universe's expansion
Einstein's theory of gravity, one that contained • Other than that, it is a complete mystery
what was called a "cosmological constant"
• It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark
• Maybe there was some strange kind of energy-fluid energy
that filled space
• Dark matter makes up about 27%
• Maybe there is something wrong with Einstein's
• The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever
theory of gravity and a new theory could include
observed with all of our instruments, all normal
some kind of field that creates this cosmic matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe
acceleration
• Theorists still don't know what the correct
explanation is, but they have given the solution a
name
• It is called dark energy

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Dark Energy
• One explanation for dark energy is that it is a property • Another explanation for how space acquires energy
of space comes from the quantum theory of matter
• Albert Einstein was the first person to realize that • In this theory, "empty space" is actually full of
empty space is not nothing temporary ("virtual") particles that continually form
and then disappear
• Space has amazing properties, many of which are just
beginning to be understood • But when physicists tried to calculate how much
energy this would give empty space, the answer came
• The first property that Einstein discovered is that it is out wrong - wrong by a lot
possible for more space to come into existence
• The number came out 10e120 times too big
• Then one version of Einstein's gravity theory, the
version that contains a cosmological constant, makes a • That's a 1 with 120 zeros after it
second prediction: "empty space" can possess its own • So the mystery continues
energy
• Because this energy is a property of space itself, it
would not be diluted as space expands
• As more space comes into existence, more of this
energy-of-space would appear
• As a result, this form of energy would cause the
universe to expand faster and faster

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Dark Energy
• Another explanation for dark energy is that it is a • A last possibility is that Einstein's theory of gravity
new kind of dynamical energy fluid or field is not correct
• Something that fills all of space but something • That would also affect the way that normal matter
whose effect on the expansion of the universe is in galaxies and clusters of galaxies behaved
the opposite of that of matter and normal energy
• This fact would provide a way to decide if the
• Some theorists have named this "quintessence," solution to the dark energy problem is a new
after the fifth element of the Greek philosophers gravity theory or not: we could observe how
galaxies come together in clusters
• But, if quintessence is the answer, we still don't
know what it is like, what it interacts with, or why it • If a new theory of gravity is needed, what kind of
exists theory would it be?
• So the mystery continues • How could it correctly describe the motion of the
bodies in the Solar System, as Einstein's theory is
known to do, and still give us the different
prediction for the universe that we need?
• There are some candidate theories, but none are
compelling
• So the mystery continues.

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Constituents of the Universe –Most Not Understood

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Dark Energy
• What is needed to decide among dark energy
possibilities –
• A property of space
• A new dynamic fluid
• A new theory of gravity
• More data and better data

DATA

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Next Session

Stars

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