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Firehanger
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- TL;DR Summary
- What is the evidence for our theory for the existence of dark energy
Hey peeps,
Ok, so I need some help here. I've just been watching some videos explaining the existence of dark energy and dark matter - something which has always fascinated me.
These videos pose the theory that for the first 9 billion years of the universe dark matter ruled but, for the last 5 billion years, dark energy has now taken over - causing the increase an increase in the expansion of the universe.
I'm hoping someone can help me understand this a little better, as it's suggesting that its the every increasing generation of dark matter, primarily in the cosmic voids, which is pushing normal and dark matter away.
I'm interested to know what evidence we have that dark energy is pushing as opposed to dark and normal matter pulling.
For example, it sounds to my novice brain that it's almost the equivalent of posing an argument to state that, in the case of an object falling into a gravity well, it's actually also being pushed into the denser gravity by another force.
Are we able to measure the effects of dark energy in such as way as to be confident that it exists and is exerting this repulsive force, rather than simply being a mirror concept which is the opposite of the attractive force of gravity?
Another example is with magnetism. We know a metal object will be pulled towards a magnet (or at least one pole of the magnet). Dark energy sounds to be the equivalent of saying that in addition to the magnetic force attracting the metal object, there is also another force pushing the object toward the magnet.
This just doesn't sit well in my layman's mind, and I'm sure I'm just being uneducated! lol
The above makes sense in my head, as I've written it, but so I hope I've explained my conundrum sufficiently for someone to help me out!
:)
Ok, so I need some help here. I've just been watching some videos explaining the existence of dark energy and dark matter - something which has always fascinated me.
These videos pose the theory that for the first 9 billion years of the universe dark matter ruled but, for the last 5 billion years, dark energy has now taken over - causing the increase an increase in the expansion of the universe.
I'm hoping someone can help me understand this a little better, as it's suggesting that its the every increasing generation of dark matter, primarily in the cosmic voids, which is pushing normal and dark matter away.
I'm interested to know what evidence we have that dark energy is pushing as opposed to dark and normal matter pulling.
For example, it sounds to my novice brain that it's almost the equivalent of posing an argument to state that, in the case of an object falling into a gravity well, it's actually also being pushed into the denser gravity by another force.
Are we able to measure the effects of dark energy in such as way as to be confident that it exists and is exerting this repulsive force, rather than simply being a mirror concept which is the opposite of the attractive force of gravity?
Another example is with magnetism. We know a metal object will be pulled towards a magnet (or at least one pole of the magnet). Dark energy sounds to be the equivalent of saying that in addition to the magnetic force attracting the metal object, there is also another force pushing the object toward the magnet.
This just doesn't sit well in my layman's mind, and I'm sure I'm just being uneducated! lol
The above makes sense in my head, as I've written it, but so I hope I've explained my conundrum sufficiently for someone to help me out!
:)