Aestus Ajith

Earth might have hairy dark matter This illustration shows Earth surrounded by theoretical filaments of dark matter called "hairs." Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The solar system might be a lot hairier than we thought. A new study publishing this week in the  Astrophysical Journal  by Gary Prézeau of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, proposes the existence of long filaments of dark matter, or "hairs." Dark matter is an invisible, mysterious substance that makes up about 27 percent of all matter and energy in the universe. The regular matter, which makes up everything we can see around us, is only 5 percent of the universe. The rest is dark energy, a strange phenomenon associated with the acceleration of our expanding universe. Neither dark matter nor dark energy has ever been directly detected, although many experiments are trying to unlock the mysteries of dark matter, whether from deep underground or in space. Based on many o...

Physicists just found a link between dark energy and the arrow of time Is dark energy the reason time moves forward? For years, physicists have  attempted  to explain  dark energy  - a mysterious influence that pushes space apart faster than gravity can pull the things in it together. But physics isn’t always about figuring out what things are. A lot of it is figuring out what things  cause. And in a recent paper,  a group of physicists asked this very question about dark energy, and found that in some cases, it might cause time to go forward. When you throw a ball into the air, it starts with some initial speed-up, but then it slows as Earth’s gravity pulls it down. If you throw it fast enough (about 11 km per second, for those who want to try), it’ll never slow down  enough to turn around and start falling back towards you, but it’ll still move more slowly as it moves away from you, because of Earth’s gravity. Physicists and as...