Dark Energy: As Strange As Dark Matter

"Dark energy appears to be energy inherent to space itself, and is causing the Universe to expand at an exponential rate. Although there are some differences between dark energy and inflation, there are some unique similarities, too. Could these two phenomena be related? And if so, does that mean the beginning and end of our Universe are connected?"

Are The Beginning And End Of The Universe Connected?

Understanding Dark Matter Through A New Natural Law?

"None of these explanations are completely satisfying, say the authors. Their paper doesn’t go into the details, but it falls right in the middle of an ongoing discussion about the validity of the dark matter model. This work demonstrates a regularity in the data, says McGaugh. “How you interpret that is a whole 'nother can o' worms.” There’s no doubt that scientists will be elbow deep in that can before long."

A Natural Law for Rotating Galaxies… What Does This Mean for Dark Matter?

Dark Matter: It Is So Mysterious That It May Not Exist

"Dark matter was proposed to help explain a variety of cosmic puzzles, such as why galaxies can spin as fast as they are observed to without being ripped apart. However, the nature of dark matter remains a puzzle in itself. Now scientists analyzing more than 150 galaxies find that dark matter might not explain their new observations, which they say hints that dark matter might not exist and that a new law of nature might be needed to solve all these mysteries."

New Findings Muddy Understanding Of Dark Matter

The Latest On Dark Matter Detection

"After 20 years working on WIMPs, supersymmetry and dark matter, he has no doubts about the course of research. 'The Higgs boson was postulated in 1964 and discovered in 2012,' he says. 'I am not really surprised it has taken us 30 years and we haven't seen anything yet. It may take another 20. Right now, it would be premature to give up.'”

Dark matter: What's the matter?

Nothing Is Something In Physics

"A common way to look at this state is to call it the quantum vacuum. It’s the lowest-energy state of empty space, and yet one of the puzzling things that quantum physics teaches us is that the zero-point energy, or the ground state of the Universe, isn’t actually a state of zero energy. On the contrary, it’s a finite, positive value- - - "

What Is The Physics Of Nothing?

The Passion Of Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Neil deGrasse Tyson is one passionate astrophysicist, and this collection of his most expressive, charismatic moments proves it. Thank you for all the nice comments and support!"

Those 6 Times Neil deGrasse Tyson Couldn't Contain Himself

The Universe May Have Had No Beginning?

"The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once."

No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

What's Happening Now With String Theory?

"In cosmology, string theory 'packages physical models in a way that’s easier to think about,' Silverstein said. It may take centuries to tie together all these loose strings to weave a coherent picture, but young researchers like Beem aren’t bothered a bit. His generation never thought string theory was going to solve everything. 'We’re not stuck,' he said. 'It doesn’t feel like we’re on the verge of getting it all sorted, but I know more each day than I did the day before – and so presumably we’re getting somewhere.”"

The Strange Second Life of String Theory

Why So Few Habitable Exoplanets Found? It May Be Due To The Wrong Tools

"The Planetary Habitability Laboratory database at the University of Puerto Rico’s Arecibo telescope facility counts just 10 exoplanets that are likely to be habitable.² Ten, out of 3,375. That statistic creates an image of a universe filled with gas giants, flaming hot lava spheres and frozen snowballs — with nary a cozy, just-right second Earth to be found.

"Appearances, however, can be deceiving. The list of habitable exoplanets is so short not because there aren’t many, scientists told me, but because the tools we use to find exoplanets are biased."

Why It’s So Hard To Find The Next Earth, Even If You’re Looking Right At It

The Elusive Dark Matter

"Physics has missed a long-scheduled appointment with its future—again. The latest, most sensitive searches for the particles thought to make up dark matter—the invisible stuff that may comprise 85 percent of the mass in the cosmos—have found nothing."

Physics Confronts Its Heart of Darkness

The Big Bang Theory Is An Example Of How Science Works

"Like the slow, creeping heat death of the universe predicted by the Big Bang model, in which the Universe expands forever until what's left is too devoid of energy to sustain life, the Steady State theory gradually fizzled out in scientific circles. Hoyle, however, defended his theory until his dying day in 2001, never accepting the overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang."

The Idea That the Big Bang Destroyed

The Theory Of Everything Marches On

A theory of everything would unite the four forces of nature, but is such a thing possible?

Quantum Mechanics: But Where Is God?

"Why doesn’t the world make sense? At the fundamental level of atoms and subatomic particles, the familiar 'classical' physics that accounts for how objects move around gives way to quantum physics, with new rules that defy intuition."

Believers in an interventionist God are really missing the wonders of reality.

How Quantum Mechanics Could Be Even Weirder

Dark Matter

"Dark matter is the most mysterious, non-interacting substance in the Universe. Its gravitational effects are necessary to explain the rotation of galaxies, the motions of clusters, and the largest scale-structure in the entire Universe. But on smaller scales, it’s too sparse and diffuse to impact the motion of the Solar System, the matter here on Earth, or the origin and evolution of humans in any meaningful way. Yet the gravity that dark matter provides is an absolute necessity for allowing our galaxy to hold onto the raw ingredients that made life like us and planets like Earth possible at all. Without dark matter, the Universe would likely have no signs of life at all."

Is Dark Matter Required For Life To Exist?

Gravitational Waves May Reveal Stringy Universe

"More importantly, this is just the beginning of gravitational wave astronomy. Last year, calculating the gravitational wave signature of stuff that we might observe was largely of academic interest. Now, however, it is the stuff that will drive our observatories."

Pattern of gravitational waves may reveal string theory's remnant strings.

Lawrence Krauss Clarifies Atheism, Science And Physics

There is much misunderstanding of atheism and atheists, especially by the religious.  Robert Wright, an atheist, but a critic of "New Atheism", provides a backstop for Lawrence Krauss' clear and succinct presentation of atheism, science and physics in this 90 min video. 

Fear Of Knowing

"Essentially everything you see around you as you go through your day is made of just three particles of matter — protons, neutrons and electrons — interacting through a handful of forces — gravity, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces.

Tiny Tests Seek the Universe’s Big Mysteries

"Huge supercolliders aren’t the only way to search for new physical phenomena. A new generation of experiments that can fit on a tabletop are probing the nature of dark matter and dark energy and searching for evidence of extra dimensions."

Over distances of a few dozen microns — a little thinner than that dollar — known forces like gravity could get weird, or, even more exciting, previously unknown forces could pop up.

Deepak Chopra And Physics

"One of the early trivializers of fundamental physics is Deepak Chopra, whose indiscriminate use of words such as quantum, energy, field, and non-locality renders them as frivolous as a burp after a course of tandoori chicken."

Pull up a chair, get your popcorn and the beverage of your choice:

Deepak Chopra’s professionalism in the writing of Quantum Healing is of such a low quality that it borders on charlatanism.

Uniting Theories In Physics

"Linking the different forces into a single theory isn’t easy, since each behaves a different way. Electromagnetism is long-ranged, the weak force is short-ranged, and the strong force is weak in high-energy environments such as the early universe and strong where energy is low. To unify these three forces, scientists have to explain how they can be aspects of a single thing and yet manifest in radically different ways in the real world."

The more science knows, the more it realizes that more is needed.

GUT (Grand Unified Theory)