Most of the Universe is Missing

Most of the Universe is Missing

2006, Science  -   45 Comments
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Ratings: 8.35/10 from 49 users.

Most of the Universe is MissingA fantastic Horizon (one of my favorites) that looks into the research on Dark Matter (with a twist of comedy to it!)... We know what 4% of the Universe is made of. But what about the rest?

There was a time, not so long ago, when science seemed to understand how the universe worked. Everything – us, the Earth, the stars and even exotic-sounding supernova – was made of atoms which were all created at time-zero: the Big Bang. In between the atoms was nothing, a void: quite literally, 'space'.

But recently things have started to unravel. There is, it seems, a lot more to the universe than meets the eye. According to the best estimates, we only really know what about 4% of it is made of.

But if only 4% is made of atoms, what about the rest? The rest is made of mysterious entities about which very little is understood, with equally mysterious names: dark matter and dark energy.

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steve brindle
steve brindle
2 years ago

I love Fritz Zwiki's description of his scientific opponents as spherical bastards as they are bastards every way you look at them. Sounds like he was a most interesting guy!

Dac
Dac
6 years ago

There are many many better documentaries on the Universe, inflation theory, worm holes, quantum mechanics, cosmic consciousness, string theory on YT - see Dr Penrose or Dr Robert Lanza's research

DustUp
DustUp
7 years ago

It really is amazing how people like to believe they know much more than they do. I would like the fellow above who thinks he knows the earth isn't flat (which probably includes most of the above) to take their binoculars or telescope out to where there is a bay or shoreline, where at a distance of 10 - 40 miles away, a part of the shoreline juts out enough to see that easy enough through your sight enhancer. If you lay on your belly near the water look through your binoculars 10 miles away and can see an object you know to be only about 65 feet above the water or less at low tide(or whenever you are there). What should that tell all you math and space folding interdimensional experts? After you can't believe your eyes, take your telescope to the 40 miles distant where you don't have to risk getting wet. How tall of an object, should be obscured from view, due to the claimed curvature of the earth? And why do you see it? And why do the Soviets as well as our military have photos of a city by the sea, taken from another city by the sea, that they should not be able to see? Watch a ship steam out of the harbor. Does its bottom gradually disappear or does the whole thing just get smaller and smaller, the same as if a car traveled away from you on a long flat road?

Actually use the SCIENTIFIC method, rather BS and blind faith in what your indoctrination teachie was taught and sucked up like an ape having at a banana just like most of us did from him or her, until we find out different.

All this cosmos baloney is pointless when they have yet to explain why it is they claim we are hurtling through space at 10s of thousands of miles per hour and magically the earth hasn't been stripped clean like an asteroid. Does gravity protect us and hold the atmosphere? HaHaHA. If I can break gravity all by my overweight self and jump 18 inches vertical. What is that compared to speed? Go ahead, stick your arm out the jet at even a measly 500mph let along 10s of thousands. And who is to say that gravity isn't a push from all sides by the mysterious omnipresent scalar forces, rather than the mysterious mass force of attraction? Are the scientists who came to that conclusion wrong and the gravity folks right? How do you know? By the way, if you can jump at all, like myself, you can imitate the supposed lunar excursions. If the moon truly has a lesser "gravity" they would have been doing MUCH higher verticals, even with they heavy gear. Yeah I believed all the bunk too at one time. And what of the moon, does it pull the tide or does it shade the scalar forces from one direction? Unfortunately, most chuck the scientific method in favor of what they were first led to believe. And mostly, they want to believe they were and are right because why would "they" lie? You are lied to constantly. It seems the better question is what are they working so hard at keeping from you? Did you learn anything of Tesla's better work after he invented AC? There is a reason that is kept from you too. People REALLY hate it when their whole world view is mutilated. They get mad. They sit there and make all sorts of claims of how ridiculous it is. Yet did your teacher show you or did you just believe because that is what "everyone knows to be true"... Yet not everyone is gullible all the time or we wouldn't have many of the documentaries on this website.

“The distance between the Red Sea at Suez and the Mediterranean Sea is 100 statute miles, the datum line of the Canal being 26 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and is continued horizontally the whole way from sea to sea, there not being a single lock on the Canal, the surface of the water being parallel with the datum line. It is thus clear that there is no curvature or globularity for the whole hundred miles between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; had there been, according to the Astronomic theory, the middle of the Canal would have been 1,666 feet higher than at either end, whereas the Canal is perfectly horizontal for the whole distance. The Great Canal of China, said to be 700 miles in length, was made without regard to any allowance for supposed curvature, as the Chinese believe the Earth to be a Stationary Plane. I may also add that no allowance was made for it in the North Sea Canal, or in the Manchester Ship Canal, both recently constructed, thus clearly proving that there is no globularity in Earth or Sea, so that the world cannot possibly be a Planet.” -David Wardlaw Scott, “Terra Firma” (134)
[DUnote: Half way = 50mi, X^2/Dia => 50*50/7921 = 1666ft (5280ft/mi); however, I use 7913mi for the avg Dia of the earth, sources vary]

Go forth and re-learn the truth for yourselves, then ask, why DO they lie? Or pretend to be brilliant while calling the Chinese and others morons because that's so much easier.

gwhosubex
gwhosubex
9 years ago

This documentary is SLOWWWW, superficial, and boring.

awful_truth
awful_truth
9 years ago

You know, this is a good documentary in explaining the issues surrounding the 'standard model', as well as including scientific opponents to dark matter/dark energy.
For myself, I will likely never accept the direction cosmology is heading for the following reasons.
1) Just because you can predict something, does not mean you understand it. Ptolemy is a prime example since he could predict the past or future positions of planets 2000 years ago, but he was wrong since we now know the earth is not the center of the solar system, with the sun, and planets performing epicycles.
2) Einstein who called his own attempt at a 'cosmological constant' the greatest blunder of his career. He was attempting to create a force in opposition to gravity 'to prevent' everything from coming together. Now, we have the opposite problem because everything is not flying apart, with scientists doing the exact same thing for the opposite reason.
3) Dark matter/dark energy can never be observed or measured which is the hallmark of scientific basis. Without these pre-requisites, you have now entered the realm of philosophy/faith. (I believe but cannot prove)
I am still convinced that the arbitrary decision to accept the idea of expansion over contraction is flawed. The fact that science measured the rate of this movement as accelerating implies contraction over expansion. (equivalence principle) Since we are part of the system, we cannot discern the difference between the two. (Einstein noted the universe must be expanding or contracting, just not static)
Alan Guth's inflation theory contradicts itself by stating the initial inflation was moving faster than the speed of light. If everything is accelerating, than one can only conclude the universe already expanded to completion, and is now collapsing in on itself. (that is why it is accelerating)
Last but not least, if space is collapsing in on itself, it would explain why objects of mass in the outer reaches of galaxies are not hurling themselves outward even though they are travelling as fast as the objects in the inner galaxy. Thus, there is no need to redefine gravitation (variable) or add extraneous variables like dark matter/energy to the standard model equations.
Of course, I also accept the fact I could be completely wrong in all of this, ( I sure don't know everything) however my explanation better fits what we understand with certainty today. In the final analysis, theories that are elegant in their simplicity best fit the criteria of accuracy. (facts seldom hold, good theories seldom so!)
In any case, check out the documentary. If you are interested in such things, I am quite sure you will find it enjoyable. Take care everyone!

Arthur Boucher
Arthur Boucher
11 years ago

what a crock.the only real evidence here suggests that gravitational physics is completely wrong. talk about a conspiracy theory.where is the science? string theories and dark matter are a joke! fictitious stories made up without proof or fact.in light of this mess i think the electric model of the universe is looking better all the time .at least their not making fairy tales up and calling it science

Olga Gorev-Junior
Olga Gorev-Junior
11 years ago

The physics that is valid in our universe might be different in the other universe. For example instead of e=m*l^2, it might be e=m*l^n/xxx, where n is not equal to 2 and xxx is something else... We cannot assume that our laws of physics are the same everywhere. I would rather believe in Vedic ancient books about cosmic development, they sound more consistent, seriously :-) Dark matter and dark energy seem just as ridiculous as a pink elephant analogy from the movie.

Christian Klinckwort Guerrero
Christian Klinckwort Guerrero
11 years ago

There is a big tree just outside this house. G.W.B. will look as strange fruite hanging, and everybody giving a roud of aplause

Justin Mars
Justin Mars
12 years ago

I have to agree with Prof. Disney. They are coming up with conclusions before they really know the truth. Its alot like the days when they said the earth was flat. Now we see how ridiculous that idea was. A hypothesis has to be proven before it can be theory. So to me it will always be a hypothesis until they prove otherwise.

Achems_Razor
Achems_Razor
12 years ago

"Dark energy contributes approx 73 percent of the critical density. When added to the 27 percent of criticality astronomers had already measured, this brings the total right up to 100 percent of the critical density, just the right amount or matter and energy for a universe with zero spatial curvature"

"Current data thus favor an ever-expanding universe shaped like the three-dimensional version of the infinite tabletop or of the infinite video game-screen."

(Brian Greene) "The Hidden Reality"

Gunnar1961
Gunnar1961
12 years ago

When they say that the universe's expansion is accelerating, based on the most distant parts of the universe moving faster than they ought to be, I can't help but wonder if cosmologists are sufficiently taking into account the fact that the doppler shift used to calculate their velocities reflect the velocities they had at the time the light from them left them on its way to our telescopes billions of years ago--not the actual velocities they have now. It is hard to imagine that such intelligent men would not try their best to take that into account, but could it be that there is an, as yet, undetected source of error in their observations that could throw off their calculations by some small but significant amount?

Christian Preston
Christian Preston
12 years ago

seems dangerous to invent something as huge as dark matter and dark energy to explain something which you believe must theoretically be true, though thats not to say that it hasnt been done before and subsequently validated. i've been enjoying watching some of the alternative theories of what is holding the universe together, and while i disagree with the electric cosmology idea that there is electric connections between all celestial bodies in the universe, it seems plausible that the 'cloud' described in this doc, and accredited to dark matter, could instead maybe be a huge electro-magnetic field created by whatever is in the center of the galaxy. it seems restricting to imagine that gravity is the only force working on the large scale. As the 'working mother' says in this doc, in the very small scale of atoms other forces have to be taken into account, why not also in the larger scale? finally, it seems tragically futile to attempt the measurement of something like dark matter with instruments made of atoms, when they are suggested to be intrinsically different.

Guest
Guest
13 years ago

Jesus made the black holes to test our faith! lol

cainer
cainer
13 years ago

a galaxy surrounding a 'black hole' has its own atmosphere,.. its all in a big bubble if you will..
the outer stars will spin at the same rate as the inner stars due to inward pressure from infinate 'space', theres no mystery here

MJ
MJ
13 years ago

This will sound incredibly unscientific, but if I'm not mistaken, for anything to 'expand', technically speaking, there needs to be a space beyond it to expand in and fill out. So if there is a theoretical end to the universe and it is ending, what then is the space from without the universe?

azilda
azilda
13 years ago

May be dark matter is the stuff which is about to exist or to take form...for the human eye.
Strange that the eye itself has a black hole matter in it's middle.
Do we see or do we create what we are about to see in order to understand what we were seeing.
az

Jo McKay
Jo McKay
13 years ago

Correction - I was beginning to wrap my head around the 'idea' of Dark Matter ( a denser kind of gravity). Thanks

Jo McKay
Jo McKay
13 years ago

Thank you Vlatko for recommending this one. It's great. I just finished watching the new Horizon Doc (Maybe everything we know about the Universe is Wrong - or something like that) and while I had been starting to wrap my head around the 'theory/idea' of dark energy, had at least 'heard of dark energy (re: the satellite mapping of the Big Bang), when I was then introduced to Dark Flow, I thought "OK now I am going to explode ??? So this slightly older doc gets to what I was trying to comment last night - It 'sounds like' the Cosmology Standard Model is becoming the Bible of Cosmology - and hey, I don't want a Bible of cosmology, I want a book of science. OK, so, IT is invisible (so far) & we don't know WHAT it is, but we know it's something, so we'll call it dark matter (cuz it kinda acts like matter) and this other stuff, also invisible, and dark (but acts like energy) we'll call dark energy, and this movement which can not be explained re: how fast the Universe is expanding, well, since dark has become the favorite term we decided to give that a name as well, and vallah we have Dark flow, but really, honestly, we can't find IT (Yet) so we "could " be completely wrong. (Or completely out to lunch) lol. NOW write it up that way and I will give it the appropriate attention, but, hello, you can NOT find these 'dark forces' so how the bleep can we justify a measurement of how much of it invisible 'darks' there are out there? Please!

sociology rich
sociology rich
13 years ago

@Rob jones
Yes Rob it helped me. Having spent many hours watching this stuff it still busts my mind trying to undrstand it so any help i'll take. I'm a teacher from the uk and me and the students often watch this kind of thing in our general studies sessions. I'm no scientist but i love the ideas and just hope one of them get a taste for it.
all the best
Rich Miller

opinin
opinin
13 years ago

@Rob Jones

it is more complicated than that. hawkings book the universe in a nutshell atempts to describe it. I remeber many different theories describing how it looks like "over the edge". one says that our multydimensional space (11 or 13 dimension or whatever similar number) is folded in such a manner that you cannot actualy go over the edge, it is imposible. Yet you can still ask, but ok what if I get over... The problem is that our understanding is tied to our 3Dworld and picking up rotten apples, so our "common sense" can not actualy describe or comprehend what it is like. The popular layman literature has same parralels, but that is only how as far as we can get with normal words, and it is often missinterpreted by common layman that these parrales are the actuality. But mathematicaly it makes sense up to the degree, that you can not picture 4d space but matematicaly you just use matrix with 4x4 structure... or 20x20 structure for 20d space.

so try reading hawking, michio kaku (not sure about spelling), and related books and you should get a nice picture. Maybe there are some more documents about this.

did this help? :)

Diego
Diego
13 years ago

I like the guy who says "the astronomy I got I picked up on the streets". Cracks me up! :D

Daz
Daz
13 years ago

"Professor Frink, Professor Frink, he'll make you laugh, he'll make you think..."

It's sad that that popped in to my head as soon as they said that (Dr. Frenk) fellow's name.

Refa
Refa
13 years ago

Is it just me, or did they forget about the massive black hole in the center of the galaxy?

They said the computer simulated galaxies fall apart if you only put the stars in it that you can see.

It looks to me like they calculated (or should I say estimated) the mass of the black holes. So the name "Dark Matter" might be correct, they just don't realize all Dark Matter is inside the Black Holes.

Rob Jones
Rob Jones
13 years ago

Not to rain on the cosmology parade, but, isn't there a part of the Universe that man cannot see, that is, he has nothing powerful enough to see that far, no detectors to detect that far, no sensors to sense that far?

It's kinda like saying, I have a telescope and I can see the end of the Universe. No, you can just see the end of the strength of your telescope, sensor, detectors, etc.

How does man know how big the Universe is with certainty? What if there's intelligent life on a plantet 100 to the 900 trillion trillioth power light years away? That my friend, is quite a long way away. Let me guess, if you were to go that far away, you'd be in the "stuff" that the Universe is expanding into.

And if the Universe is expanding into this "stuff", why isn't that "stuff" considered part of the Universe?

Rob Jones
Rob Jones
13 years ago

Into what is the Universe expanding?

DancingSpiderman
DancingSpiderman
13 years ago

Terry Horn, being born does NOT add to the relative weight of the planet.

Mass is pretty much conserved; it took metabolic energy to make you up to your present form, but since the sum total of that metabolic energy weighs so very little due to E=mc^2, the mass of the metabolic energy can be ignored when compared to the weight of the mass that is you. As you get heavier, the mass, from the things your mum or YOU ate to make you more massive, merely got distributed from the various food sources, and got redistributed onto you.

I'm headed on down to the QuikTrip for some late-night donuts (no holes) and a Mickeys 40...later

Terry Horn
Terry Horn
13 years ago

Does the Standard model help to build new instruments we can use?

Terry Horn
Terry Horn
13 years ago

Doesn't being born add to the relative weight of the planet etc, think about it. or do we stay in equalib from something else.

Philip Van Der Mude
Philip Van Der Mude
13 years ago

if we did not dream and took science as it is to be the only truth , then we would never have left the shores of Eurpoe to find an ALREADY discovered world but new to us dumb white humans .Great fun i hope we continue to grow and explore and and find things already known and not self destruct first .

so to find something that makes up 96 percent of the stuff with whihc you are useing to detect the stuff , just sounds wierd . I think about detection of something that is outside of the stuff is what we commonly use as the detector of the stuff , so how can we use stuff dependant on the stuff we are trying to detect, to dectect the stuff the dectector itself is made of to the tune of 96% made up of the stuff it itself is trying to detect , i am confused

any one out there able to enlighten me and my limited knowledge of detection .

Amir Bengali
Amir Bengali
14 years ago

very informative,interesting

DancingSpiderman
DancingSpiderman
14 years ago

@ 19:10 The scientits being interviewed declares that "Dark matter must be in another … non-atomic form… Something which has mass, but isn't made of atoms." In what form would this dark matter be, then?

There is a 2hour long documentary of Lt. Col. Tom Bearden on Google Video called "Energie Gratis EFTV1" where, starting at about the 14 minute point, Bearden details what this Dark Matter consists of. NOW it becomes evident that there is plenty of mass everywhere with which to compensate for the "unseen" missing matter to explain away Vera Rubin's inconsistency with Andromeda Galaxy's Rotation Curve shown @ 11:30 .

There are two Google Video documentaries which complement the info in this video:
Energie Gratis EFTV1 and
Energie Gratis EFTV2.
Each doc is in excess of 2hours. Enjoy.

Alan
Alan
14 years ago

Yes the BBC does it again. Horizon is the wonderful science magazine that has been running on British TV for decades now. Check out 'Life Story' about the discvoery of DNA structure, and the 'Alan Turing Story' about the great mathematician. As a Brit, this wonderful stuff from the BBC fills me with pride. Keep 'em coming.