Whenever we look up at the universe at night everything we see, that is all the protons, neutrons and electrons, make up for only 4% of the mass and energy of the Universe.
The rest is the dark and mysterious stuff known as dark energy (70%) and dark matter (26%).

Scientists know that dark matter acts like regular matter when it comes to gravity but it doesn’t release light which makes it very different to what makes up the stars and planets that do their celestial dance about us.

One way they are trying to learn more about dark matter is by studying clusters of galaxies, in fact it was galaxies that gave us the first evidence that dark matter existed.

Because galaxy clusters move around so quickly there has to be a lot of matter to hold them together with their gravity. Most of the normal matter is hot gas but there is not nearly enough mass in this hot gas to hold all the normal matter together and that’s where invisible, dark matter comes into the equation.

To study some of the interesting properties of dark matter like whether it interacts with itself, the study of galaxy clusters violently colliding with other galaxy clusters has shown that dark matter can been wrenched free of normal matter which is something that doesn’t generally happen in the universe.

Dark energy is perhaps the biggest mystery in all of physics

Studying clusters of galaxies is a good way of estimating how much matter there is in the universe and this helps to work out how much dark energy there is.

Another way to look at dark energy is to look at how galaxy clusters grow with time.

It seems that galaxies haven’t grown much over the last 6 or 7 billion years and it could be that dark energy is limiting the growth of these objects.

• So if it is so that we only know about 4% of the macrocosm, I wonder if the same applies for the microcosm?
• Is their dark matter, dark energy that goes into the making of our own internal universes?
• What holds all the molecules and atoms that go into making the structure of our bodies together?
• Is it another form of dark matter or dark energy?
• If there is how would we know, what would it do if we found out and does it really matter anyway?

All of these questions I am going to mumble over as I toss back a pint or two at my local and let the universe get on with its merry way, revealing its mysterious workings in its own good time which by our standards is too bloody long anyway to really make much difference to we, who are mere blinks in the existence of creation.

Cheers,
Clip Tycles

(the information for this article has been shamelessly collected and reassembled from an article titled “The Universe Darkly” by Megan Watzke from the Chandra website)

Read about Dark Matter at Wikipedia

In this particular part of the universe, 6-10 billion light years away, there is a remarkable drop in the number of galaxies.

Astronomers had known there was something different about this spot in the universe, it had been dubbed the ‘cold spot’ because it stood out on a map produced by the Cosmic Microwave Background or (CMB), which are faint radio waves that are a remnant of the Big Bang, kind of like the earliest baby picture available of the universe.

This cold region of Eridanus was discovered in 2004 after studying the ‘Sky Survey’, which as its name suggests is a mapping of regions of the sky, it was found that there was a scarcity of galaxies in this area.

That along with the slightly lower temperature in this area led astronomers to come to the conclusion that there is an enormous hole in this part of the universe, nearly a billion light-years across.

It is empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies and gas, as well as the mysterious dark matter. Read more about this phenomenon here.

This image taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Visit the Chandra site : http://chandra.harvard.edu/

Astronomers have known for years that the Universe has voids largely empty of matter, but no one has ever found one this size and they believe that what they have found is not normal.

Well, I ask, what is normal in this universe of outstanding beauty and infinite possibilities?

That wraps itself around our tiny planet and carries us through its expansion of the infinite so vast, so bizarre and so delightfully stunning.

It is the envy of us all that astronomers have a very unique perspective as they gaze out into the boundless realms of the universe, seeing things few of us could imagine.
What they will discover next will be reported to you from the roving mind of your raving reporter,

Clip Tycles

This three and a half minute video displays some of the more spectacular imagery taken by this awesome piece of engineering.

Scene 31 – from the play “Mill On The Floss”.

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Here is a video that will absolutely expand your perspective beyond its limits!

Tony Darnell, from AstronomyBuff.com has created a 6 minute YouTube video that will blow you away! This is the Hubble Deep Field imagery presented with a great voice over and some very cool music.

What is the Hubble Deep Field?

It is the furthest we have ever seen into space using the most advanced telescope we have. Free from the distortion of The Earths atmosphere it uses its huge penetrating eye to see deep into space.

Press play and experience what happens when Hubble stares at a blank patch of sky!

Interested in how the Hubble Space Telescope works?

Read this article over at www.howstuffworks.com