What if an invisible element holds the
universe together?
Dark Matter is like thermites in a house.
You can see how they interact in the house but you can't see them at first.
But eventually you
will. This type of matter doesn't interact with light.
It justs interacts gravitationally.
But how did scientists reach this hypothesis?
In 1933, Fritz Zwicky calculated the mass of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies
based on its motions, brightness, number, and gravitational attraction,
and saw that the total mass was 400 times bigger than what he could actually see,
so he proposed the existence of Dark Matter.
Years later, in 1977, Vera Rubin and Kent Ford saw that the components of spiral galaxies
maintained the speed in the edge compared to the ones in the center,
and they thought that surely dark matter was involved.
Astrophysicists think that most dark
matter is made of exotic particles
that are unknown to us.
Cold or hot?
There are two types of dark matter.
Simulations say that dark matter particles need to move slow,
similar to a snail race, to form structures like the ones scientists observe.
This is known as cold dark matter.
This is the reason why the hypothesis of hot dark matter,
made up of fast moving particles, similar to a car race is quite not accepted.
When the universe formed, dark matter helped organize the structure of the universe
and hold it together with dark matter clouds and halos, even though the universe is expanding.
Dark matter plays an important role in the universe, but how can we detect it?
If you play Badminton and someone launches 5 birdies at the same time,
then 2 will go curved in the sides,
one will pass through the upper center
and the other through the lower center.
the fifth birdie won´t pass.
This is what happens with gravitational lensing, but instead of birdies, the light curves.
If two cars crash they will produce energy and momentum,
similar to what happens in the Large Hadron Collider,
when trying to produce dark matter particles that may pass undetected.
So, if it is a fundamental part of the universe,
then how can the detection of dark matter contribute to other areas of physics?
The detection of dark matter could help us understand how and why
the universe is structured in the way scientists have observed.
The particles detected could help to test the supersymmetry theory
finding the pair to another particle just like the pair of the Boson and Fermion.
Dark Matter plays an important role in the universe,
so Dark Matter is like the glue that holds the universe together!
