The Day The Universe Froze: New Model For Dark Energy

[steven johnson]

Considering that more than half of the milky way galaxy is dark matter, its physics is of more than passing concern.

ScienceDaily (May 11, 2009) — Imagine a time when the entire universe froze. According to a new model for dark energy, that is essentially what happened about 11.5 billion years ago, when the universe was a quarter of the size it is today.
The model, published online May 6 in the journal Physical Review D, was developed by Research Associate Sourish Dutta and Professor of Physics Robert Scherrer at Vanderbilt University, working with Professor of Physics Stephen Hsu and graduate student David Reeb at the University of Oregon.
A cosmological phase transition — similar to freezing — is one of the distinctive aspects of this latest effort to account for dark energy — the mysterious negative force that cosmologists now think makes up more than 70 percent of all the energy and matter in the universe and is pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate.
Another feature that distinguishes the new formulation is that it makes a testable prediction regarding the expansion rate of the universe. In addition, the micro-explosions created by the largest particle colliders should excite the dark energy field and these excitations could appear as exotic, never-seen-before sub-atomic particles.



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090508190416.htm

[caraher]

1. Note that dark matter and dark energy are different things

Dark matter is the source of attractive gravitational interactions - galaxies interact gravitationally as if they have much more mass than the matter we can see in them. Dark energy is a repulsive interaction that seems to be more a property of space.

[centristgrandpa]

2. guessing is sometimes not good...

I say this with the utmost respect to all who have worked or working on identifying the structure of this universe but, if memory serves me well, remember Voyager 1 and 2, NASA was about 98% wrong about how they envision all the outer planets and moons. If this was an indicator, I sense they are truly wrong about dark matter and dark energy to name a few. They don't even know what those materials are made of, only that certain levels of high energy out-put are coming from those sectors..