The Mysterious Dark Energy
The Universe is a mystery, and there are many things we do not know about it. For example, it is not known how it was created; there are only theories and speculations about this topic. It is unknown how big it is, the scientists can only estimate its size. And it is unknown what it is made of. It is known that it is made out of dark energy, but it is unknown what that is.
Two researchers who work at the South Pole Telescope have tried to solve this mystery for more than four years, and the task has not been a very easy one. Besides the difficulty of the problem, the scientists have also had troubles with the weather conditions, as the area is one of the wildest in the world. The simple act of moving from one place to the other requires more than 20 minutes of dressing, until one looks more like a snowman made out of clothes than a human being. The constant temperature is -100 degrees Fahrenheit, or -73 degrees Celsius, and in most of the cases they have to get out of the facility. We have been interested in the sky and in the universe for hundreds of years. Galileo was the first person who developed a telescope and used it in order to take a closer look at the sky. That happened 400 years ago, and thanks to that invention we have been constantly trying to find out if there is more in the Universe than we know.
In these 400 years, we managed to find out that there are more planets than we were aware of, more precisely that there are 400 of them, and that there are billions of stars. We have found out that the effects of the Big Bang can still be detected in the Universe, as the radiation emitted by it can still be traced. The scientists have reached to the conclusion that despite of these discoveries, we know almost nothing about the Universe. It has been estimated that we know approximately 4 percent about the Universe; about its size, and about what it is made out of. It seems that the remaining 23 percent is made out of the dark matter, and the other 73 percent is made out of dark energy, which is one of the biggest mysteries in science so far. Sean Carroll, who is a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology, said that it is known what the Universe is made out of, but that it does not make any sense. The truth is that little is known about the dark matter, not to mention the dark energy. There are some theories about the dark matter, but they have no idea what the dark energy might be.
Michael S. Turner, who is a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, said that the dark energy is one of the biggest mysteries in science. Numerous cosmologists and scientists have gathered together in order to solve this mystery. They hope that the theory which they will develop sometimes in the future will be much more important than the one issued by Galileo. They said that they tried for too long to find out what the Universe is made of, when they did not even answered the biggest question of them all: what is the Universe? The first time when they questioned the information about the Universe was in the 1970s. That is when they started considering the fact that our galaxy might not be the center of the Universe as it was initially believed. They reached to the conclusion that our galaxy has a very small size, and as a result it would not be able to support the entire Universe. They said that if the Milky Way would have been the center of the Universe, then it would not be able to keep all the things together.
However, they were puzzled by the fact that the other supposed galaxies did not emit light, as the Milky Way does. Because of this, they reached to the conclusion that there might be something in the Universe which does not emit light, yet which is still able to keep all the things together. That “something” is the dark matter. Astronomer Vera Rubin said that the assumption that all the bodies from the Universe emit light was with flaws, as that is not the official way in which the things work in the Universe. She said that the reason why it was believed that all the stars and other bodies emit light, was because of an assumption, and not because they had data to back up the claim. From 1970 to 1990, most of the astronomers were focused on finding more information about the dark matter and about its properties. They did not know what it was, but they wanted to find out more about it, as they believed that the answer to this question might provide answers regarding the fate of the Universe.
Edwin Hubble was the first astronomer who realized that the Universe is expanding. He noticed this in 1929 when he took a look at the distant galaxies and he noticed that they kept on moving away from us. Needles to say, the discovery made lots of sensations, as this was the first time when they realized that the Universe was not as static as it was initially considered to be. The Universe was on a constant expansion, and they realized that this would mean that lots of new processes might go on in the Universe. Based on this information they have reached to the conclusion that the Universe might have been formed through the Big Bang. However, they did not have any ideas about the way in which the end of the Universe might look like. The Universe is made out of different types of matter, and the matter is drawn to other types of matter because of the rules of gravity.
It was unknown if this gravitational force could have the capacity of completely destroying the Universe. At first it was believed that the Universe is on a constant expansion, and that it would expand until life on it would get completely destroyed. We would die because we would be too far apart from the sun and the conditions for life would not be too hospitable. On the same time there were some who believed that the Universe would have the capacity of surviving because it would be able to remain to the same state. Saul Perlmutter, who is an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory together with Brian Schmidt, who is also an astrophysicist but at the Australian National University want to find out the future and the end of the Universe. The two teams were rivals, but both of them waned to predict the future of the Universe by analyzing the supernovas. They used the brightness of the supernovas in order to predict if the Universe is expanding or not, and they have reached to the conclusion that the Universe is expanding, and as a result the possibility of expanding until life would seize to exist on the planet might be possible and plausible. Based on that information, it seems that the gravitational pull is not the force which makes the Universe to expand, but something else.
Both of the teams reached to the conclusion that the Universe is expanding because of the dark energy, and ever since then most of the scientists have been in the search for this mysterious material. William Holzapfel is an astrophysicist at the University of California at Berkley, and one of the researchers who work at the South Pole. He said that the conditions are very inhospitable for the majority of time, but that there are cases when the temperatures are more bearable. The scientists can only operate for six months, as during the other six months, the conditions are very harsh, and the sky is not clear. The scientists have stated that the best thing for them would be to make the analysis from the space, but NASA does not seem to like this idea too much. The agency said that they would allow them to conduct the experiments from space only if they can not be conducted from Earth. One of the problems is that the costs associated with conducting the experiments from the outer space are too high. When a satellite malfunctions in the space, it is most likely that it will never be repaired and that it will be lost forever. If an instrument is malfunctioning here on Earth, then it can be repaired.
The satellite dish located in the area needs to be cleaned on a constant basis and in most of the cases; the task is done by one or two people. The job is difficult, but the area is the best when it comes to observing the universe. They often face numerous problems and when that happens, they need to take care of them as fast as possible. The problem is that very few scientists remain at the location during the winter period, which is between May and October there. They are isolated, as the planes can not fly over the area during that period because the oil would become solid. In case something goes wrong, and the problem can not be fixed, it will remain like that during those months. There are some theories regarding the dark matter, and it is believed that it is made out of axions and neutralinos. When it comes to the dark energy, the scientists have no information; they do not know what it is like, the way in which it behaves, and so on.
They believe that one of the ways of measuring it would be through the baryon acoustic oscillations, a process which took place at the beginning of the Universe and which can still be measured. There are some who say that this method of measuring is not too efficient, as it might not measure the dark energy. Another possible method of measuring the dark energy would be the gravitational lensing. The gravitational lensing uses the theory issued by Einstein, which says that the light appears to bend when it travels though space because the matter which is in space pulls it. It is believed that the matter which has this effect on the light is the dark matter, and it does this through the dark energy. Of course, no one was able to test if this is right or wrong, thus the theory still remains unknown. Another way of measuring the dark energy is through the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect, named after two Soviet scientists. They have discovered that if a photon interacts with a hot gas, then the energy will be increased. The scientists can measure that energy increase in order to observe the influence which the dark energy has on the Universe. There are many who do not believe these theories, and who do not believe that the dark energy actually exists.
They believe that the dark energy is something made up, and they demand proof that it exists. The scientists who are working on the problem have stated that they might be able to bring proof regarding the existence of the dark energy in about two years. They want to track the galaxy clusters, as they believe that they would be the first thing which would have to suffer in case the dark energy would be present in the area. Currently this is the only information about the dark energy and about the dark matter. All we have to do is wait to see if they will make new discoveries in this domain. They are optimistic that they will be able to use new and improved technologies in order to find out more about the situation and about this great mystery.
