Dark Matter
The primary evidence for dark matter comes from calculations showing that many galaxies would behave quite differently if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter. Some galaxies would not have formed at all and others would not move as they currently do.[3] Other lines of evidence include observations in gravitational lensing[4] and the cosmic microwave background, along with astronomical observations of the observable universe's current structure, the formation and evolution of galaxies, mass location during galactic collisions,[5] and the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters. In the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, the total mass-energy content of the universe contains 5% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter, and 68.2% of a form of energy known as dark energy.[6][7][8][9] Thus, dark matter constitutes 85%[a] of the total mass, while dark energy and dark matter constitute 95% of the total mass-energy content.[10][11][12][13]
Dark Matter
The hypothesis of dark matter has an elaborate history.[17] In the appendices of the book 'Baltimore lectures on molecular dynamics and the wave theory of light' where the main text was based on a series of lectures given in 1884,[18] Lord Kelvin discussed the potential number of stars around the sun from the observed velocity dispersion of the stars near the sun, assuming that the sun was 20 to 100 million years old. He posed what would happen if there were a thousand million stars within 1 kilo-parsec of the sun (at which distance their parallax would be 1 milli-arcsec). Lord Kelvin concluded "Many of our supposed thousand million stars, perhaps a great majority of them, may be dark bodies".[19][20] In 1906, Henri Poincaré in "The Milky Way and Theory of Gases" used the French term matière obscure ("dark matter") in discussing Kelvin's work.[21][20] He found that the amount of dark matter would need to be less than that of visible matter.
The second to suggest the existence of dark matter using stellar velocities was Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn in 1922.[22][23] A publication from 1930 points to Swedish Knut Lundmark being the first to realise that the universe must contain much more mass than we can observe.[24] Dutchman and radio astronomy pioneer Jan Oort also hypothesized the existence of dark matter in 1932.[23][25][26] Oort was studying stellar motions in the local galactic neighborhood and found the mass in the galactic plane must be greater than what was observed, but this measurement was later determined to be erroneous.[27]
In 1933, Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky, who studied galaxy clusters while working at the California Institute of Technology, made a similar inference.[28][29] Zwicky applied the virial theorem to the Coma Cluster and obtained evidence of unseen mass he called dunkle Materie ('dark matter'). Zwicky estimated its mass based on the motions of galaxies near its edge and compared that to an estimate based on its brightness and number of galaxies. He estimated the cluster had about 400 times more mass than was visually observable. The gravity effect of the visible galaxies was far too small for such fast orbits, thus mass must be hidden from view. Based on these conclusions, Zwicky inferred some unseen matter provided the mass and associated gravitation attraction to hold the cluster together.[30] Zwicky's estimates were off by more than an order of magnitude, mainly due to an obsolete value of the Hubble constant;[31] the same calculation today shows a smaller fraction, using greater values for luminous mass. Nonetheless, Zwicky did correctly conclude from his calculation that the bulk of the matter was dark.[20]
Further indications of mass-to-light ratio anomalies came from measurements of galaxy rotation curves. In 1939, Horace W. Babcock reported the rotation curve for the Andromeda nebula (known now as the Andromeda Galaxy), which suggested the mass-to-luminosity ratio increases radially.[32] He attributed it to either light absorption within the galaxy or modified dynamics in the outer portions of the spiral and not to the missing matter he had uncovered. Following Babcock's 1939 report of unexpectedly rapid rotation in the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy and a mass-to-light ratio of 50; in 1940 Jan Oort discovered and wrote about the large non-visible halo of NGC 3115.[33]
Early radio astronomy observations, performed by Seth Shostak, later SETI Institute Senior Astronomer, showed a half-dozen galaxies spun too fast in their outer regions - pointing to the existence of dark matter as a means of creating the gravitational pull needed to keep the stars in their orbits.[34]
Vera Rubin, Kent Ford, and Ken Freeman's work in the 1960s and 1970s[35] provided further strong evidence, also using galaxy rotation curves.[36][37][38] Rubin and Ford worked with a new spectrograph to measure the velocity curve of edge-on spiral galaxies with greater accuracy.[38] This result was confirmed in 1978.[39] An influential paper presented Rubin and Ford's results in 1980.[40] They showed most galaxies must contain about six times as much dark as visible mass;[41] thus, by around 1980 the apparent need for dark matter was widely recognized as a major unsolved problem in astronomy.[36]
A stream of observations in the 1980s supported the presence of dark matter, including gravitational lensing of background objects by galaxy clusters,[46] the temperature distribution of hot gas in galaxies and clusters, and the pattern of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. According to consensus among cosmologists, dark matter is composed primarily of a not yet characterized type of subatomic particle.[14][47] The search for this particle, by a variety of means, is one of the major efforts in particle physics.[15]
The arms of spiral galaxies rotate around the galactic center. The luminous mass density of a spiral galaxy decreases as one goes from the center to the outskirts. If luminous mass were all the matter, then we can model the galaxy as a point mass in the centre and test masses orbiting around it, similar to the Solar System.[d] From Kepler's Second Law, it is expected that the rotation velocities will decrease with distance from the center, similar to the Solar System. This is not observed.[51] Instead, the galaxy rotation curve remains flat as distance from the center increases.
If Kepler's laws are correct, then the obvious way to resolve this discrepancy is to conclude the mass distribution in spiral galaxies is not similar to that of the Solar System. In particular, there is a lot of non-luminous matter (dark matter) in the outskirts of the galaxy.
Strong lensing is the observed distortion of background galaxies into arcs when their light passes through such a gravitational lens. It has been observed around many distant clusters including Abell 1689.[56] By measuring the distortion geometry, the mass of the intervening cluster can be obtained. In the dozens of cases where this has been done, the mass-to-light ratios obtained correspond to the dynamical dark matter measurements of clusters.[57] Lensing can lead to multiple copies of an image. By analyzing the distribution of multiple image copies, scientists have been able to deduce and map the distribution of dark matter around the MACS J0416.1-2403 galaxy cluster.[58][59]
Weak gravitational lensing investigates minute distortions of galaxies, using statistical analyses from vast galaxy surveys. By examining the apparent shear deformation of the adjacent background galaxies, the mean distribution of dark matter can be characterized. The mass-to-light ratios correspond to dark matter densities predicted by other large-scale structure measurements.[60] Dark matter does not bend light itself; mass (in this case the mass of the dark matter) bends spacetime. Light follows the curvature of spacetime, resulting in the lensing effect.[61][62]
In May 2021, a new detailed dark matter map was revealed by the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration.[63] In addition, the map revealed previously undiscovered filamentary structures connecting galaxies, by using a machine learning method.[64]
Although both dark matter and ordinary matter are matter, they do not behave in the same way. In particular, in the early universe, ordinary matter was ionized and interacted strongly with radiation via Thomson scattering. Dark matter does not interact directly with radiation, but it does affect the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by its gravitational potential (mainly on large scales) and by its effects on the density and velocity of ordinary matter. Ordinary and dark matter perturbations, therefore, evolve differently with time and leave different imprints on the CMB.
The cosmic microwave background is very close to a perfect blackbody but contains very small temperature anisotropies of a few parts in 100,000. A sky map of anisotropies can be decomposed into an angular power spectrum, which is observed to contain a series of acoustic peaks at near-equal spacing but different heights.The series of peaks can be predicted for any assumed set of cosmological parameters by modern computer codes such as CMBFAST and CAMB, and matching theory to data, therefore, constrains cosmological parameters.[65] The first peak mostly shows the density of baryonic matter, while the third peak relates mostly to the density of dark matter, measuring the density of matter and the density of atoms.[65]
The observed CMB angular power spectrum provides powerful evidence in support of dark matter, as its precise structure is well fitted by the Lambda-CDM model,[67] but difficult to reproduce with any competing model such as modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND).[67][68]
Structure formation refers to the period after the Big Bang when density perturbations collapsed to form stars, galaxies, and clusters. Prior to structure formation, the Friedmann solutions to general relativity describe a homogeneous universe. Later, small anisotropies gradually grew and condensed the homogeneous universe into stars, galaxies and larger structures. Ordinary matter is affected by radiation, which is the dominant element of the universe at very early times. As a result, its density perturbations are washed out and unable to condense into structure.[70] If there were only ordinary matter in the universe, there would not have been enough time for density perturbations to grow into the galaxies and clusters currently seen. 041b061a72