Ask Ethan: Might darkish matter be “regular stuff” we will’t see? | by Ethan Siegel | Begins With A Bang! | Feb, 2025
Darkish matter doesn’t soak up or emit gentle, but it surely gravitates. As a substitute of one thing unique and novel, might it simply be darkish, regular matter?
On the market within the Universe, our cosmic stock is split up into two classes:
- regular stuff, which incorporates all of the identified, found particles of the Customary Mannequin and every little thing they compose,
- and darkish stuff, which seems to come back within the types of darkish matter, which clumps and gravitates, and darkish vitality, which dominates the enlargement of the Universe.
Whereas regular matter makes up all of the issues we’ve ever straight detected and interacted with, together with atoms, gasoline, mud, plasma, stars, planets, black holes, neutrinos, gentle, and even gravitational waves, that solely sums up, in whole, to about 5% of the full vitality of the Universe. The overwhelming majority of the cosmic vitality funds involves us within the type of darkish stuff, with darkish vitality (68%) dominating darkish matter (27%) for the previous few billion years.
Despite the fact that darkish vitality and darkish matter dominate many of the Universe, we’ve solely ever detected them not directly, main many to doubt, or no less than query, their existence. That’s what Richard Whitrock is…
