I have previously posted about Dark Matter. This time, let us consider Dark
Energy.
On a 200 acre site, in the hills above the University of California at
Berkeley, you will find the Berkeley Lab. The street address is,
predictably, One Cyclotron Road. Berkeley Lab is the oldest of the U.S.
Department of Energy National Laboratories. So far, ten of the Berkeley
Lab's researchers have received Nobel Prizes for their work. These
scientists are not crackpots, they each have impeccable, irrefutable
credentials.
One of the more interesting projects at the Berkeley Lab is the Supernova
Cosmology Project. The SCP conducts searches for distant supernovae using
the Hubble Space Telescope. Some of their key contributions to the world
of
physics have been analytical methods for measuring the rate of expansion
of
the universe.
You are no doubt at least vaguely familiar with the Big Bang theory of how
the universe began. Since the Big Bang, the universe has steadily been
expanding in size. We are talking really, really big numbers here. The
current radius of the known universe is somewhere around fourteen billion
light-years ... and growing. In the May 28, 1999 issue of "Science"
magazine, Saul Perlmutter, the leader of the SCP, made an interesting
comment regarding the SCP's measurements of the rate of the universe's
expansion. Perlmutter stated that they were being forced to consider "the
possibility that some cosmic dark energy exists that opposes the
self-attraction of matter and causes the expansion of the universe to
accelerate".
Here is the problem that led scientists to investigate the existence of
"Dark Energy". On Day One, there was the Big Bang. The Universe began and
henceforth has been expanding outward ever since. Scientists can make what
they believe to be fairly accurate predictions of what this rate of
expansion should be, based on what the gravitational pull of the various
planets, stars, etc. of the universe should be. But, now that scientists
such as those in the SCP have figured out how to actually measure the rate
of expansion of the universe, they have found that our universe is
expanding
_faster_ than it should, faster than our calculations predict it should.
It
is as if some huge mass of energy exists, throughout the universe, which
attracts all things to it with a force greater than that of gravity.
To answer the question of why this is so, various theories about a "Dark
Energy" have arisen. But, to put it as Perlmutter did:
"The universe is made mostly of dark matter and energy and we don't know
what either of them is".
Well ... let me take a stab at coming up with a theory on what Dark Matter
and Dark Energy is.
To begin with, we should all agree by now that matter and energy are the
same thing. That was the underlying theme of Einstein's E=MC Squared
equation. Physicists even go so far as to measure the mass of subatomic
particles in electron volts, which is as much a measurement of energy as
it
is of mass. Hence, they will say that a proton's mass is 938 MeV (million
electron Volts).
So, we have all this "stuff" in the universe, the physical universe, all
this physical matter, that is also energy. But, now we are starting to
figure out that the known universe, the part of the universe which we
"know"
about, is only a fraction of the real universe. We know this to be true
because, clearly, there is "something" out there, something of
unimaginable
size, which means it is of unimaginable energy (remember what Einstein
taught us).
Something which is all around us, which is everywhere (Omnipresence) ...
which possesses unimaginable energy, virtually limitless power, enough
power
to attract the entire universe to it (Omnipotence) .... this is how man
has described, since the days of the Ancients ... God.
And yet, despite all the mass of Dark Matter, despite all the limitless
power of Dark Energy ... we can't see it, we can't measure it, yet we know
it MUST exist because the results of its existence are irrefutable ...
yes,
once again, this is how, since the days of the ancients, men have
described
... GOD
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY:
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/dark-energy.html
http://www.lbl.gov/Workplace/Trans****tation.html
http://www.lbl.gov/LBL-PID/LBL-Overview.html
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/PD_programs.html#Supernova_Cosmology
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067401832X/sr=8-1/qid=1139754455/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-3393161-7025420?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Genesis 1:1-31
Istlota
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