Is Unknow Force in Universe Acting on Dark Matter?
To sum up my history in the pursuit of dark matter and energy, I knew before August 2009 that dark matter basically was unknown "stuff" in the universe (actually, it's the majority of stuff in the universe) and it acted on visible matter, so our galaxies can stay together and not fly apart, since it exerts gravitational effects. Dark energy is like the opposite of gravity, but again, it's called "dark" because they don't really know what to call it-or even what it is, seeing as the "opposite of gravity" is just a wild guess. Then, I read two books by Michio Kaku about all of the bizarrities of physics. He started to throw in negative matter and energy, which is really bizarre, and then I got really confused. All I could glean from that discussion was that nobody really knows what dark matter is, and that we walk through it all the time (it's omnipresent!) yet it doesn't interact with us (that is, while we can catch things like air in a balloon, or "interacting" with it, we can't do the same with dark matter. Bearing this in mind, I shall try my very best to figure out what the article is talking about and explain it as well.
The article starts with saying that there is "an unexpected link between mysterious 'dark matter' and the visible stars and gas in galaxies that could revolutionise our current understanding of gravity." How gravity got in there is beyond me, because the first part is a whopper in the first place. Dr. Hongsheng Zhao then suggests that there is an unknown force in the universe acting on dark matter. (Although I have to say: aren't there enough complicated forces already? Do we really need another one?) I'll get back to this later, though, because the article describes it more clearly later on.
The next paragraph then is basically what I said in my first paragraph, but to illustrate my point of what I was saying earlier, here are some citations: It says that "only 4% of the universe is made of known material," which means there's a lot of unknown stuff (gases, stars, quasars, and all of that doesn't count as "unknown") in the universe. It also says that "a solid understanding of dark matter as well as direct evidence of its existence has remained elusive," which basically means they flat out don't know what dark matter is and can't really prove that there is "dark matter" at all.
After that, we really start getting into the hard part of the article. It says that the team researching this thinks that the interactions (but remember, we walk through the stuff all the time without even knowing we are, so this is pretty significant) between normal matter and dark matter "could be more important and more complex than previously thought," or that dark matter isn't just keeping our galaxies together, it could be doing other things as well- or it might not even exist at all, it could be a new force. Dr. Benoit Famaey basically explains, as I see it, that dark matter is doing an intricate balancing act throughout the entire universe, and that the dark matter "acts" in a way that it seems to "know" where the visible matter in the universe. Dr. Zhao allows us to visualize it by saying that it's like going to a zoo with all sorts of animals at different ages and finding that they all have the same backbone weight- so an elephant and a monkey have the same backbone weight. In the universe, even though all the galaxies are like different animals that are at different ages, they seem to all have the "fingerprints" of an "invisible fifth force." Then, it says that this force might solve a mystery I mentioned earlier: dark energy (We're just back to square one). Of course, if you aren't sastified with that craziness, they also say that it could also lead to a revision and a whole new outlook of gravity (quick history: Newton discovered gravity, Einstein revised it to make it better.) I can't quite grasp this (if anyone who knows physics can explain, I'd be very grateful) because, from what I know about the universe, it's hard enough to grasp the size of the universe (let's just say it's so incredibly big I've given up trying to imagine it), let alone what's in it. My opinion summed up on all of this: it's all mind-boggling, really complicated, and immensely bizarre craziness! That's why I like it.
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