Abstract
About ninety years ago the general belief was that the universe was fairly understood. The general theory of relativity and the expansion of the universe successfully described the dynamics of stars and galaxies and even the large-scale structure of the universe. Questions, however, arose in the thirties of the last century, when Fritz Zwicky raised the question how the galaxies managed to remain stable, given the large rotational velocities of stars at the edges of the Milky Way. With the then known amount of gravitational matter stars could easily escape from the galaxy and the whole galaxy would disintegrate.
There is a theory, which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory, which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
MACHO—MAssive Compact Halo Object, sometimes also called ‘Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Object’.
- 2.
EROS—Expérience pour la Recherche d’Objets Sombres.
- 3.
OGLE—Optical Gravitational Lens Experiment.
- 4.
For simplification \(c=1\) has been generally used. If numbers, however, have to be worked out, the correct numerical value for the velocity of light, \(c\approx 3\times 10^8 \, \mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}\), must be used.
- 5.
LEP—Large Electron–Positron Collider at CERN in Geneva.
- 6.
ANTARES—Astronomy with a Neutrino Telescope and Abyss environmental RESearch.
- 7.
DAMA—DArk MAtter search.
- 8.
CDMS—Cryogenic Dark Matter Search.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grupen, C. (2020). Dark Energy and Dark Matter. In: Astroparticle Physics. Undergraduate Texts in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27339-2_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27339-2_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-27341-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-27339-2
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)