Transcript Wiencke-95x - Colorado School of Mines

That other pesky 95%
Dark Energy and Dark Matter
Prof. Lawrence Wiencke
Department of Physics Engineering
Colorado School of Mines
Nov 9 2011
The Dark Side
95% of the
Universe Is Dark!
Energy budget of Universe
•
•
•
•
•
•
Stars and galaxies are only ~0.5%
Neutrinos are <1%
Rest of ordinary matter (electrons and protons) are ~5%
Dark Matter ~25%
Dark Energy ~70%
Anti-Matter 0%
No Dark Matter
No Dark Energy
THE HIGGS!?#
Spitzer Space Telescope
M81
Rotation speed
Observed
100
Expected if the
mass of the galaxy
= the mass we can
see
50
5
10
Distance from the center
Vera Rubin 1980s
Some sort of invisible Mass must extend
out ~10 times further than the stars!
Full Court Press!!
Produce at an accelerator
Detect them in our halo
Detect annihilation products
Dark Matter annihilating in our
halo should produce positrons,
neutrinos and gamma rays
Evidence for Dark Matter from Lensing
Einstein: Gravity bends light
Light travels along straight lines unless it
passes a massive object.
Light coming from behind a massive object
such as a star, a galaxy, a cluster of
galaxies or a clump of dark matter will be
bent the same way a glass lens works.
The more massive the object, the more
gravity it has and the more the light is bent
Zoom in on a galaxy cluster – Gravity from the invisible matter is bending
light and we can see the distorted images that result
giant arcs are galaxies behind the cluster, gravitationally lensed
Discovery of Cosmic
Microwave Background, 1964
Michael S Turner
The Universe circa 380,000 yrs
WMAP
±0.001% Fluctuations
Michael S Turner
DARK MATTER
from the
Primordial Soup
fraction of a second later
Hot Primordial Soup
380,000 years later
Radiation Last Scattered
13.78 thousand-million years later
Today
Tip of the Iceberg
Most of the matter is dark
and
it’s not even “normal” stuff!
Go to 11???
STRING THEORY - 11 dimensions and more …..
What is Dark Energy ?
“ ‘Most embarrassing observation
in physics’ – that’s the only quick
thing I can say about dark energy
that’s also true.”
Edward Witten
19
Discovery! – 1998
Nobel Prize in Physics 2011
Hi z Supernova Team
Supernova Cosmology Project
Adam G. Riess
Brian P. Schmidt
Saul Perlmutter
1. Create a White Dwarf
A dying star becomes a white dwarf.
Inquiring into Dark Energy
NSTA - Baltimore 2006
22
2. Dump more mass onto it
The white dwarf strips gas from its stellar companion….
Inquiring into Dark Energy
NSTA - Baltimore 2006
23
3. Until it explodes
….and uses it to become a hydrogen bomb. Bang!
Inquiring into Dark Energy
NSTA - Baltimore 2006
24
4. Observe it in a distant galaxy
The explosion is as bright as an entire galaxy of stars….
…..and can be seen in galaxies across the universe.
Inquiring into Dark Energy
NSTA - Baltimore 2006
25
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
is a telescope Fermilab helped build
and operate.
It has a 2.4m mirror and no Dome
Located in New Mexico
• First started collecting images in 2000
•120 MegaPixel digital camera
SDSS
has measured ~ 1 million galaxies and
over 500 type 1a Supernova and also
found that the expansion of the
universe is accelerating
SDSS-II Supernova Survey
~500 Well studied SNe Ia, suitable for framing
Our Universe’s Expansion is
Accelerating!
expansion
accelerating
open
Now
closed
time
“The most beautiful
thing we can
experience is the
mysterious. It is the
source of all true art
and all science. Those
to whom this emotion
is a stranger, who can
no longer pause to
wonder and stand rapt
in awe, are as good as
dead: their eyes are
closed.”
Albert Einstein
95% of the
Universe Is Dark!
Will!!
What can we learn
about it?