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NASA turns to the dark
side - - - 'Normal' matter = 5 percent of the particular universe we happen to be somewhat familiar with, though our understanding of that 5 percent is still in its infancy, and only recently has science discovered and begun investigating (from afar) the nature of some of the larger planets that orbit stars apart from our own. Heck, humans have only traveled to one non-earth body, the moon, and currently have plans to return there, but elsewhere? Maybe Mars, in a couple of decades or so, over --50 years-- since landing on the moon! Perhaps the biggest mystery, other than whether or not life exists elsewhere, and whether or not intelligent life (like us) is common or rare, and whether intelligent life (like us) can survive long enough to make contact with other intelligent life, black holes. 'Dark' matter = 25 percent of the particular universe we happen to be unable to sub- stantiate, yet, as to its nature. 'Dark' energy = 70 percent of the particular universe we inhabit, something scientists happen to have stumbled on a few short years ago, discovering that the particular universe we happen to be in is not slowing its 'big bang' expansion, as was expected, but instead, is mysteriously speeding up. - - - July 3, 2007 NASA turns to the dark side 'Beyond Einstein' probes to investigate shadowy force pushing universe apart Tom Spears, CanWest News Service http://tinyurl.com/2qu295 - - - Complete article: NASA has announced five new space missions to track mysteries that go "beyond Einstein" - where the universe came from, - what it's made of, and - whether space has edges. The plan is to have two major observatories in space and three smaller probes, to track mysterious black holes and an even greater mystery - potent but undetectable energy that pushes the universe apart. The first launch is set for 2015. NASA says its new Einstein Probes Office will "provide key information to help answer funda- mental questions about the origin and evolution of the universe." "If you go back 10 years, we still were of the view that the universe might stop its expansion," says astronomer Paul Delaney of Toronto's York University. Since then, astronomers have found that the uni- verse is not only continuing to expand, but its spread is speeding up. And the force pushing it is just plain weird. Even astrophysics experts say so, and these are people who believe that gravity can bend space and time, and that an electron can be in two different places at once. Pushing the universe apart is something called dark energy -- "dark" in the sense that we can't observe it in the way we see light or sense heat and X-rays. "Seventy per cent of the universe is dark energy. None of us know what the damn stuff is... yet it's 70 per cent of everything," Delaney says. "Fact is stranger than fiction." By contrast, just five per cent of the universe is "normal" matter. The remaining 25 per cent is dark matter -- like dark energy, something we can't see. This tantalizes astronomers. As NASA said in an- nouncing the new project, Earth's surface is 70 per cent water, and what would it be like if we couldn't see or feel water? All we know is dark energy's effect. It exists in vacuums and it's repulsive: It pushes things apart. "NASA as well as a variety of observational efforts from the ground have begun to tune themselves to a very direct assault on dark energy," Delaney says. The Beyond Einstein Program consists of five pro- posed missions. The big ones are the Laser Inter- ferometer Space Antenna, to orbit the sun measur- ing gravitational waves in our galaxy and beyond, and Constellation-X, to view X-rays emitted by mat- ter falling into black holes. Smaller probes would investigate the nature of dark energy, the physics of the Big Bang, and the distri- bution and types of black holes in the universe. A sample question: Is there an edge where regular space stops and a black hole begins? - - - end of article - - -
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