Dark energy and dark matter, when we think of these, we usually think of Star Wars. We look at fantasy and fiction to determine the interpretation of dark energy and dark matter. In fact, dark matter is much more complicated than Darth Vader closing his hand into a fist and boom a person dies. Today, we will dive deeper into what really is dark matter and dark energy.
First we have to start with the basics. Well, our universe is infinite, if you already didn’t know that. Dark energy is the thing that expands our universe and dark matter is the thing that slows it down. Dark energy actually consists of 73 percent of the universe and dark matter consists of 23 percent of the universe. The other 4 percent is just atoms. So this means that the universe expands more than it shrinks because of the greater dark energy to dark matter ratio. Those are the basics of DE (dark energy for short) and DM (dark matter for short). There are two main phenomena that may be explained by the presence of dark energy and dark matter — the accelerating expansion of the universe, and the galaxies’ flat rotational curves. Previously, the explanation to these claims had good evidence supporting it. However, there was general skepticism from the community, because individuals could not believe that the vacuum could really have a non-zero density at a very small level (the original claim). However, when this new theory of DE and DM expanding and shrinking the universe, it was thought to be an anomaly. Surprisingly, the theory grew popular and became widely accepted. It still took some time for the paradigm shift to occur. Much of the previous evidence to the theory had to be dismissed. Such theories that rivaled this were general relativity and LTB models. However this overnight paradigm shift enlightened many intellectuals as it set “boundaries” on our universe.