TTC - Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Side of The Universe
TTC - Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Side of The Universe
TTC - Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Side of The Universe
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The universe looks the same everywhere. Orion Nebula - A star forming region. A huge cloud of
Balloon analogy of an expanding universe – the idea gas that is collapsing under its mutual gravitational force
works if we think of the dots separating “only” and think and it will splinter off eventually to form individual stars.
that there’s no such thing as inside or outside of the It’s right here in the Milky Way.
balloon.
HUBBLE’S EQUATION The very structure of space and time themselves are dynamic;
space-time has a geometry and a curvature, and it’s that
v = Hd curvature that we interpret as gravity.
Where did space and time come from? This question doesn’t
03 SPACE, TIME AND GRAVITY make sense for Newton. But with relativity, this question
becomes relevant…but we don’t know yet the answer; but our
Special Relativity- 1905 – Einstein – a replacement for understanding of dark matter and energy will be part of the
Newton’s notion of space and time. clues that helps us answer the question eventually.
Einstein tried to incorporate gravity into his theory of special
relativity and realized that they are incompatible. He
eventually throws away special relativity and replaces it with 04 COSMOLOGY IN EINSTEIN’S UNIVERSE
something better - General Relativity
RANDY R. RUFINO NOTES FROM TTC – DARK MATTER, DARK ENERGY – DARK SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE PAGE 5 OF 2
How big is the universe? We don’t know how big the universe
is or whether the question makes sense.
We don’t have any direct evidence that the universe is finite in One of the surprising results of cosmology in the last ten years
size. (Does not mean that it’s not finite in size). is that today, the expansion rate of the universe is going up.
We only see a finite part of whatever universe there is. For The earth is bound together by the gravitational field of all the
two reasons: stuff in the earth, likewise for the sun, likewise for the galaxies.
The Milky Way galaxy is bound together by the mutual
1) The universe has a finite age. The time between gravitational force of all the 100 billion stars in it.
now and the big bang is very fairly well determined
The first crucial thing about the expansion of the universe is
to be about 14 billion years. Data is telling us that that bound systems do not expand. For example, the distance
it’s about 13.7 billion years. between two galaxies is getting bigger but the galaxies
2) Light travels at a finite speed. Light has only themselves are not getting bigger.
traveled a finite distance from the now until the big
bang. Even if the universe were infinite, we couldn’t The bound systems do not get stretched along with the
see all of it. We could only see a certain patch, the universe.
patch from which light can get into us in less than 14
This is a subtle thing that people are initially reluctant to
billion years. believe but it really is true. It’s the only way that you could
make sense of the claim that the universe is expanding. If
We do not know the actual size of the universe but we could everything in the universe, including people and atoms,
determine its relative size; for example, how many years expanded along with space, that would exactly be the same
would it take for the distance (to the galaxies) to grow by 10%, as if nothing is expanding.
by half, etc.
When we say that space is expanding, what we mean is, the
Cosmologists invented the SCALE FACTOR OF THE number of atoms that it would take to stretch from you to a
UNIVERSE – is a number which we set by convention equal distant galaxy is getting bigger. That’s because the atoms are
to 1 today. So, if the scale factor is ½, this means that all the fixed and the galaxies are moving away.
galaxies in the universe were half their current distance.
But while the universe is expanding, even though particles or
What we need to understand is what the scale factor is doing atoms do not stretch along with it, they become more dilute.
as a function of time. More and more space is coming into existence.
This means that the energy per particle is not changing if the
particle is moving slowly compared to the speed of light.
The rate of expansion in the past is bigger than it is now.
RANDY R. RUFINO NOTES FROM TTC – DARK MATTER, DARK ENERGY – DARK SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE PAGE 6 OF 2
For particles that are moving less than the speed of light,
energy is constant.
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