Dark Stuff

For most of the 20th century and into the 21st century the Big Bang theory has been the majority Universe-origin theory for those with a modern consciousness. This theory is not without its difficulties and many new generation cosmologists have questioned some of the gaps and flaws in the theory. Even though the Big Bang theory has withstood much scientific criticism and still holds the primary position for cosmological origins, the recent discovery of dark matter, dark energy and more recently, dark flow has complicated the landscape. The reason these phenomena are called dark is because we cannot see them but we know they are there by their effects on the behavior of galaxies.

Current thinking is that there may be as much as 5 times as much dark stuff in the Universe as the matter that we can see and measure. We do not know what dark energy is, but we can see its effects on expansion of the Universe. The result is that most of the Universe, including all around us here on Earth, is made up of stuff we cannot see with contemporary scientific instruments. This is different from the light energy that we can "see" and measure and use in our everyday technological lives as in radio broadcasts, wireless voice and data transmission and many others.

Another strange thing about dark matter is that it passes through the everyday matter we know about: starts, planets, us. We have very little doubt that dark matter/energy exists - we just do not know what it is. The invention of dark matter theory allowed the standard model of the Big Bang theory to get back on track - allowing us to explain why the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate rather than being static or shrinking.

Dark energy may be defined as "whatever it is that is causing the Universe to accelerate". Dark Flow is a newly discovered possibility where much of the Universe seems to be moving at a high speed toward a single point. In order to explain this flow, we may need another Universe such that our Universe is not everything - it is part of an even bigger picture. It may be possible that we are part of an even bigger structure, perhaps a bubble created by inflation.