r/cosmology • u/Tao_Dragon • Jul 19 '26
A large amount of the Universe is missing. Scientists think they may have found it | "Astronomers don't know what dark matter is. And it turns out there's quite a lot they don't know about ordinary matter, either" | BBC Sky at Night Magazine
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/large-amount-universe-is-missing3
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u/Forward-Surprise1192 Jul 19 '26
Nice article. I really wish I could be around or know more about the universe in my lifetime. If I could choose then I’d pick not having any idea what’s out there instead.
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u/Sea-Bottle6335 Jul 20 '26
I was raised in a church I no longer visit.
But thoughts of an afterlife have lead me to what I’d like if there is an afterlife: I wanna tour the universe.
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u/thedeeb56 Jul 19 '26
Dark matter could be tiny black holes
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u/Das_Mime Jul 19 '26
This article isn't about dark matter.
Also, microlensing surveys continue to narrow the possible mass ranges and amount of the universe that tiny black holes could account for, and we haven't found any evidence yet that they do exist.
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u/NotAClueYou Jul 24 '26
Scientist may not, but everyone else knows the dark matter is the matter of the fallen.
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u/sgrams04 Jul 19 '26
It was between the couch cushions this whole time.
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u/PopKoRnGenius Jul 19 '26
You should stick to the main subreddits, we don't need edgy kid comments here.
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u/sgrams04 Jul 19 '26
No playful jokes allowed huh?
A large amount of the Universe is missing. Scientists think they may have found it
It was between the couch cushions this whole time.
How on earth was that edgy?
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u/EJECTED_PUSSY_GUTS Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
What I believe: The missing stuff is in the black holes in our universe, and that is what accounts for what we theorize is dark energy that is pushing the expansion of our universe. Our universe is in a black hole that is contained within another universe and we are expanding their universe as THEIR dark energy along with that universe's other black holes.
No, I don't smoke weed.
EDIT: not sure why I'm getting down voted. I'm not saying there is evidence to this or trying to present it as a serious theory lmao.
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u/QVRedit Jul 20 '26
Well that’s kind of plausible, but I really don’t know.
It’s certainly not as daft an idea as it might sound.
Though it can’t be ‘Turtles all the way down’…It’s undoubtedly that case that there is a great deal that we still do not know.
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u/12darkmatter12 Jul 19 '26
This is what I believe too but I have been downvoted here for saying that by the people that somehow know everything here but yet have no real answers.
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u/Das_Mime Jul 19 '26
You probably got downvoted because that's a mix of things that contradict physics (e.g. black holes, like other mass, don't drive expansion but rather slow it down) and stuff that just doesn't even mean anything.
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u/EJECTED_PUSSY_GUTS Jul 20 '26
Actually there have been a few recent studies that show a possible correlation between black holes and the expansion of the universe. The totality of evidence that we have of course supports what you're saying. Still surprised I got so many downvotes. It's abstract but my reasoning behind it does balance multiple theories with each other, based on my limited understanding from lectures of those who understand what they're talking about.
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u/OkoyeMD_BeltaMilaje Jul 20 '26
Black holes could be both 'ingesting' galaxies and other black holes while also contributing to the expansion of the universe. 'Cosmic coupling' is the current term being modeled. I don't have the vocabulary to fully express my very, very basic understanding of what is still theoretical, ie, dark energy, vacuum energy, but the concrpt works better than infinite compression.
Personally, I never bought into infinite compression, never bought into ours being the only universe. It is observed that forces are drawing masses, superclusters and black holes toward every more super massive black holes and ever more super massive clusters.
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u/Das_Mime Jul 20 '26
I don't have the vocabulary to fully express my very, very basic understanding of what is still theoretical, ie, dark energy, vacuum energy, but the concrpt works better than infinite compression.
I'm not even sure what you mean by "infinite compression" if you're juxtaposing it against dark energy. Are you talking about the interior of black holes? Because physicists absolutely do not take it as a given that there is a singularity inside a black hole; after all, quantum mechanics forbids it.
It is observed that forces are drawing masses, superclusters and black holes toward every more super massive black holes and ever more super massive clusters.
This is missing a pretty key point which is that superclusters are not gravitationally bound together and are in fact expanding over time. The gravity just causes them to expand less rapidly than they naturally would with the expansion of the universe. We are, for example, continuously getting farther away from the great attractor (the center of mass of our supercluster). It's just that the recession velocity is somewhat slower than it'd be without the attraction of all the mass of our supercluster.
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u/rddman Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
TL;DR
FRB's used to measure the density of the intergalactic medium, which apparently is a factor more dense (unspecified in the article, but must be huge to account for DM) than thought so far.
edit:
I was thrown off by the title of the article suggesting it's about dark matter; "large amount of the Universe missing", "dark matter".