The universe is endlessly filled with gazillions of fascinating bizarre wonderful and terrifying
cosmic entities strange moons wandering asteroids odds-defying planets stars of all age colors
and sizes awe-inspiring galaxies ever hungry black holes that bend space and time mysterious
and yet marvelous nebulas supernovas quasars gamma-ray bursts that's a lot and yet so less
yes you heard that right these trillions and trillions of cosmic entities that are
sprinkled across the cosmic horizon contribute so little to the composite of the entire universe
roughly five percent only staggering isn't it and naturally now you are wondering what is the
majority of the universe made up of welcome the Factnomenal and today let's find out about dark
matter and dark energy the two major yet mysterious components of our deer universe
everything that we know in the universe is made up of atoms and more specifically
particles like protons neutrons and electrons normal matter consists of these particles which
can be categorized in one of three fundamental ways quarks bosuns and leptons as well as their
antimatter counterparts anti-quarks and anti-leptons particles such as quarks have
other interesting ways of being organized such as flavors these flavors are known as
up down top bottom strange and charm yes sorry unfortunately cookie dough is out of stock when
flavors were decided these unique flavors are used to describe different physical properties and how
the particles interact leptons on the other hand are categorized on the basis of their properties
of decay likewise bosons are force-carrying particles related to the four fundamental
forces of the universe weak and strong forces electromagnetic forces and gravitational forces
the standard model of physics gives us an inside look at the quantum world and also describes the
forces that govern how these particles interact with each other one such interaction is the
photorealistic effect a physics-related phenomenon where an atom that absorbs electromagnetic
radiation peaks at a higher energy state and then moves to a less energetic state and emits a photon
hence its name but what happens when they don't emit photons or are detectable by our
scientific instrumentation this is a problem that scientists have tried to decipher for many years
unlike visible undetectable particles things get a little weird with these
other particles that physics tells us are there but we cannot sense them
particles that do not emit reflect or absorb electromagnetic radiation can be defined as
dark matter apparently dark matter is the reason why galaxies and other galactic formations are
possible and look the way they do dark matter also holds clusters of galaxies together
preventing them from flinging and spiraling out of shape millions of years ago but how are we so
sure about dark matter's role in the universe when we aren't even sure where and what it is
as scientists always do by conducting experiments and hours and hours of observing galaxies they
found out that these clusters of stars require a much much larger amount of mass to maintain
their shape galaxies are secretly thick and proud of it moreover when we look at other
systems with our telescopes we see that Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion as well as gravitation
aren't behaving as the laws of physics dictate they should if the matter we see is all there
is this is because of this additional dark factor we can't see it but it's there that means gravity
affects both normal and dark matter scientists think that dark matter might express itself
in the universe as weakly interacting massive particles or wimps unlike those kids you knew
from middle school wimps are actually these heavy and slow types of particles which would explain
the galactic clumping and web systems we observe as mentioned before astronomers see the effects
of gravity which suggests that there are forms of matter at a higher quantity than what is observed
scientists have estimated the universe as being composed of 71.4 percent dark energy 24
dark matter and everything else like atoms only contributing to 4.6 everything we see hear touch
and interact with is less than five percent of what we know is out there isn't that insane
dark matter is also the cause of light bending due to gravity despite the absence of a cosmic entity
to cause gravitational lensing when dark matter interacts with gravity you will end up seeing
objects in different places in the sky relative to where they actually are this occurs because mass
bends and even warps the fabric of space-time this bends the path in which light travels resulting
in a viewing of the star in a different place when you look through a microscope
it's like dark matter itself is trying to give us clues about its presence scientists have
thought about three different ways of finding dark matter particles using earth satellites to detect
particle collisions using lab detectors and using particle colliders to try to create dark matter
we have thought about a more common particle and how it could be responsible for dark matter
neutrinos are a type of particle that does not interact with light however they have
too much energy and a small quantity of mass to be categorized as dark matter dark matter
might be composed of a different and new type of particle that hasn't been discovered yet
there is also a possibility that dark matter comes from a universe in a separate dimension
interjecting with our universe and is affecting objects with mass that we can observe and detect
maybe looking at dark energy can help us understand the dark matter better as well
not really in 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding earlier scientists
expected the expansion to be slowing due to the force of gravity without Hubble's discovery space
telescopes perhaps wouldn't have become a reality later the Hubble space telescope continued working
on its inspirations work and tried to measure the expansion rate of the universe scientists actually
came up with a clever way of trying to calculate this rate they knew that type 1a supernovae are
a type of stellar object that emits a fixed value for luminosity during their explosion
so scientists use this data to their advantage by measuring the brightness and calculating their
distances due to the expansion of the universe the light wavelengths that travel to us are
now stretched out this is known as cosmological redshift using the supernova data would then allow
them to measure the redshift that had occurred from the point where the light left the supernova
they could use this information to measure the redshift relating to the universe's expansion
the scientists were expecting the experiments to bring back data that will show the expansion
is slowing down but the results surprised them they realized that the galaxies were not only
moving away from us but were accelerating now what would cause these galaxies to speed up
before we get to the answer to that question let's talk about energy from the notion
and understanding of the laws of conservation we know that energy cannot be created or destroyed
but there are some strange exceptions the world of physics is bizarre and marvelous
if the object we are considering is smaller than Planck's constant divided by two pi like
particles for example it can actually come in and out of existence how wild is that
don't know what that means well this happens when matter and antimatter
annihilate each other particles never sit still and always have energy even in very small amounts
they are always moving or vibrating and traveling in and out of existence at a fluctuating rate
us humans are incredibly limited in our vision and what wavelengths we can perceive
according to nasa the human eye can detect wavelengths between 380 and 700 nanometers
this is what we refer to as visible light light or electromagnetic radiation has a wide
spectrum of wavelengths we can detect with the naked eye or scientific instrumentation
humans can only observe a very small portion of the spectrum this is due to biological factors
every color we know has a different wavelength associated with it violet has very short
wavelengths compared to red which has the longest the colors of objects can allow us to understand
different aspects of their composition like chemicals or temperatures fireworks for example
emit different colors because they use different types of metals stars and other stellar objects
in space can be blue or red which informs us about how hot or cool the surface and body can be
but their wavelengths can also change and tell us how far away they are from us as compared to
before if the universe was just made up of normal matter and forces we interact with on a daily
basis everything in outer space would be equally distributed and slowing in expansion speed but
clearly that is not what is happening two-thirds of all the energy around us consists of this
anti-gravity force that we can't see or measure this is not normal energy this is dark energy
scientists have come up with alternative theories and explanations for dark matter and dark energy
Einstein thought there was a cosmological constant some suggest that we all float in the space fluid
we can't directly see maybe Einstein's theory of gravity is incorrect and gravity is actually an
all-encompassing concept that includes a logical explanation for this accelerating expansion
or maybe we are intersecting the path of another universe and can't see it because we are limited
to our three physical dimensions and temporal dimension while possibly there could be many
dimensions that all play a role in the strange scientific phenomena we encounter in the universe
hopefully all the current and future nasa missions and telescopes will bring us some answers soon
we live in a mysterious universe and human curiosity will guide us to the answers to
these questions one can help but wonder about all the strange things that happen all around us
do you have any wild theories about our universe tell us in the comments
and as always thanks for watching Factnomenal