Problems With Dark Matter

The Universe
Photo Source: NASA

The Universe really presents problems for scientists. There have been many theories about what it is and how it started, but there always seems to be a problem with them. The current theory is the Big Bang theory, which states that a super atom exploded spitting out matter and energy that is still expanding to this day. The prior theory was almost the same, but it said that the expansion of the universe was slowing down and that eventually gravity would cause all the galaxies to come back into another super atom and presumably explode again. This was only recently found out to be wrong, when astonished astronomers discovered that not only was the expansion of the universe not slowing down, but it was accelerating. They couldn't believe it and had others check and recheck their calculations, but they were correct. Einstein had first thought that there was some constant in the universe that we were unaware of, but eventually discarded this notion and said it was his biggest mistake. Well today scientists think that his 'biggest mistake' may not have been a mistake at all and that this constant is dark matter.

Here is where most of us get lost, including me. Dark matter has never been seen directly, but scientists claim that they have seen it indirectly because they feel that regions of space that contain it, bend light. They have searched all over space for what they believe are bent light paths and charted them and they claim that this proves the theory. It is very important for them to find this dark matter, because they feel that this is the only explanation for the speeding up of the expansion of space between galaxies. They go so far as to state that new space is being created ahead of the expanding universe and that this is all because of dark matter. Now I do not understand how space can be created, since it is basically nothing. I say basically nothing because even space does have something in it, even if it is just tiny occasional hydrogen atoms. I can not wrap my head around the concept of creating nothing. I have heard the explanations of this and yet it sounds like dribble to me.

One of the huge problems is that astronomers and scientists claim that the universe is made of 73 percent Dark Matter, 23 percent Dark Energy, which is different than dark matter and only 4 percent normal matter. Can you imagine that everything we can see out in space and everything that is visible in huge telescopes that can peer almost to the edge of the universe, according to many astronomers and scientists, is only about 4 percent of what really exists? Supposedly, according to scientists, dark matter is something that passes through us every day and goes right through our planet. The same is said for neutrinos. It seems that both of these particles pass through everything, but dark matter is composed of something called a Wimp particle. Wimps are weakly interacting massive particles. If a particle passes through everything how can you detect it?

So far the people at Fermi Lab have been trying for years to detect Wimps or dark matter. With neutrinos it was found that a solution of cleaning fluid that was positioned deep in mine shafts would show trails when neutrinos went through, but not Wimps. Wimps were harder to detect. Fermi Lab came up with the idea that if a Wimp hit the atom of normal material, it would have to release an increased electrical charge, though it would be very minor. They set up detectors in extremely clean rooms that contained material that had atoms packed together. Other devices were used to filter out all other particles. The experiment has been going on for years and yet no dark matter has been detected. Other scientists have claimed that they have indirectly detected dark matter, but their claims have yet to be confirmed.

Unfortunately it is not too hard to blame something that occurs on dark matter and at times it seems that everyone is jumping on this boat. The claim is that more and more indirect evidence has to lead one to believe that dark matter exists. This is the same sort of thing that was going on when everyone was claiming that the universe was slowing down. All sorts of indirect evidence found its way into publications, yet it was all wrong. I know that I am out of my class if I try and argue against dark matter since I am not even a scientist, just a follower of scientific news, but I am going to take the chance and look at some other causes for the expanding universe and ask some questions.

One thing that I would really like to know is why the universe is expanding and galaxies are not? That's right, the distance between galaxies is getting greater, but the distance between stars and planets in galaxies is not. The first thing that I have to ask is could all these calculations be wrong? If they are based on the red shift theory, that is the faster an object is going the more light is shifted to the red, then I have to ask the question why this shift has been proven wrong in some cases? It has been shown that objects that were known to be nearer than some other objects in space, still showed a greater shift to the red. Let me be kind and not even travel down this road and assume that the scientists are correct and the universe is expanding faster and faster. Could it be a sort of wave effect that is responsible? When a surfer rides a wave, he is carried along at accelerated speeds, perhaps there are gravity waves that flow through space that we are not aware of yet and are strong enough to carry the galaxies along?

An alternate theory suggests that there may be something so far out in space that we are unaware of it, but its attraction is so strong that it is pulling the galaxies toward it with increasing speed. Wouldn't it be something if all the scientists were wrong about the universe dying a cold and lonely death, because galaxies might be pulled to some object and then form a super atom that explodes creating another universe. Maybe there is an unlimited series of these things at great distances from each other and this will keep happening as the universe travels from one to another and is reborn each time?

Let's form our own new theory and call it the theory of never ending creation. It will state that space has certain areas of extreme attraction that pull universes toward it. Eventually they collapse and form a super atom and then the pressure explodes them and maybe even destroys the super attractive force. The universe expands and the power of the next super attractive force causes this to happen again in a different area far from the last one. Hey why can't we form our own theory, is it any stranger than the ones that have been formed in the past?

Lastly I have to wonder why just because something is accelerating, it means it always will? That is the assumption of the astronomers and scientists in this case. Maybe at some point in space the expansion will start to slow down because of unknown gravitational objects that will be encountered. What I really find interesting is that with all this talk of a big bang, astronomers can not pinpoint where it happened. You would think that with all the sophisticated computer simulations out there, that this would be possible. So there you have it, science is banking on something that is yet to be discovered to prove a theory that they have come up. I wish them luck, if they are right it would explain a lot.