INTRODUCTION

In the early 1990's, one thing was fairly certain about the expansion of the Universe. It might have enough energy density to stop its expansion and recollapse, it might have so little energy density that it would never stop expanding, but gravity was certain to slow the expansion as time went on. Granted, the slowing had not been observed, but, theoretically, the Universe had to slow. The Universe is full of matter and the attractive force of gravity pulls all matter together. Then came 1998 and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of very distant supernovae that showed that, a long time ago, the Universe was actually expanding more slowly than it is today. So the expansion of the Universe has not been slowing due to gravity, as everyone thought, it has been accelerating. No one expected this, no one knew how to explain it. But something was causing it. Eventually theorists came up with three sorts of explanations. Maybe it was a result of a longdiscarded version of Einstein's theory of gravity, one that contained what was called a "cosmological constant." Maybe there was some strange kind of energy-fluid that filled space. Maybe there is something wrong with Einstein's theory of gravity and a new theory could include some kind of field that creates this cosmic acceleration. Theorists still don't know what the correct explanation is, but they have given the solution a name. It is called dark energy.

WHAT IS DARK ENERGY?

Dark energy is the name given to an unexplained force that is drawing galaxies away from each other, against the pull of gravity, at an accelerated pace. Dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to accelerate the expansion of the universe. Dark energy is the most accepted theory to explain observations since the 1990s that indicate that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. In the standard model of cosmology, dark energy currently accounts for 73% of the total mass-energy of the universe.

Two proposed forms for dark energy are the cosmological constant, a constant energy density filling space homogeny , and scalar fields such as quintessence or moduli, dynamic quantities whose energy density can vary in time and space. Contributions from scalar fields that are constant in space are usually also included in the cosmological constant. The cosmological constant is physically equivalent to vacuum energy. Scalar fields which do change in space can be difficult to distinguish from a cosmological constant because the change may be extremely slow.

This diagram reveals changes in the rate of expansion since the universe's birth 15 billion years ago. The more shallow the curve, the faster the rate of expansion. The curve changes noticeably about 7.5 billion years ago, when objects in the universe began flying apart as a faster rate. Astronomers theorize that the faster expansion rate is due to a mysterious, dark force that is pulling galaxies apart.

WHAT IS DARK MATTER?

When the Universe was young, it was nearly smooth and featureless. As it grew older and developed, it became organized. We know that our solar system is organized into planets (including the Earth!) orbiting around the Sun. On a scale much larger than the solar system (about 100 million times larger!), stars collect themselves into galaxies. Our Sun is an average star in an average galaxy called the Milky Way. The Milky Way contains about 100 billion stars. Yes, that's 100,000,000,000 stars! On still larger scales, individual galaxies are concentrated into groups, or what astronomers call clusters of galaxies. The cluster includes the galaxies and any material which is in the space between the galaxies. The force, or glue, that holds the cluster together is gravity -- the mutual attraction of everything in the Universe for everything else. The space between galaxies in clusters is filled with a hot gas. In fact, the gas is so hot (tens of millions of degrees!) that it shines in X-Rays instead of visible light. In the image above, the hot X-ray gas (shown in pink) lying between the

galaxies is superimposed on an an optical picture of the cluster of galaxies. By studying the distribution and temperature of the hot gas we can measure how much it is being squeezed by the force of gravity from all the material in the cluster. This allows scientists to determine how much total material (matter) there is in that part of space. Remarkably, it turns out there is five times more material in clusters of galaxies than we would expect from the galaxies and hot gas we can see. Most of the stuff in clusters of galaxies is invisible and, since these are the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, scientists then conclude that most of the matter in the entire Universe is invisible. This invisible stuff is called 'dark matter', a term initially coined by Fritz Zwicky who discovered evidence for missing mass in galaxies in the 1930s

The nature of dark matter is unknown. A substantial body of evidence indicates that it cannot be baryonic matter, i.e., protons and neutrons. The favored model is that dark matter is mostly composed of exotic particles formed when the universe was a fraction of a second old. Such particles, which would require an extension of the so-called Standard Model of elementary particle physics, could be WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), or axions, or sterile neutrinos.

DISCOVERY OF DARK ENERGY AND DARK MATTER

First sign from observed data The first suggestion for dark energy from observed data happened in 1992,

when Hungarian astronomer Gyrgy Pal and his collaborators published a paper. Previously, in 1990 Broadhurst et al. had published the so called "pencil beam survey" about the irregularities in the galaxy distribution. Using this data Pal et al. found in some cosmological model the irregularities became more regular.In these models the cosmological constant (dark energy) was needed. Two years later in another paper they suggested that Supernovae In 1998, published observations of Type Ia supernovae ("one-A") by the High-z Supernova Search Team followed in 1999 by the Supernova Cosmology Project suggested that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. This work was awarded by the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011. Since then, these observations have been corroborated by several independent sources. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background, gravitational lensing, and the large scale structure of the cosmos as well as improved measurements of supernovae have been consistent with the Lambda-CDM model. Supernovae are useful for cosmology because they are excellent standard candles across cosmological distances. They allow the expansion history of the Universe to be measured by looking at the relationship between the distance to an object and its redshift, which gives how fast it is receding from us. The relationship is roughly linear, according to Hubble's law. It is relatively easy to measure redshift, but finding the distance to an object is more difficult. Usually, astronomers use standard candles: objects for which the intrinsic brightness, the absolute magnitude, is known. This allows the object's distance to be measured from its .Later observations confirmed this value.

actual observed brightness, or apparent magnitude. Type Ia supernovae are the best-known standard candles across cosmological distances because of their extreme, and extremely consistent, brightness. Recent observations of supernovae are consistent with a universe made up 71.3% of dark energy and 27.4% of a combination of dark matter and baryonic matter.

Cosmic microwave background The existence of dark energy, in whatever form, is needed to reconcile the measured geometry of space with the total amount of matter in the universe. Measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies, most recently by the WMAP spacecraft, indicate that the universe is close to flat. For the shape of the universe to be flat, the mass/energy density of the universe must be equal to a certain critical density. The total amount of matter in the universe (including baryons and dark matter), as measured by the CMB, accounts for only about 30% of the critical density. This implies the existence of an additional form of energy to account for the remaining 70%. The WMAP five-year analysis estimate a universe made up of 74% dark energy, 22% dark matter, and 4% ordinary matter. More recently, the WMAP seven-year analysis gave an estimate of 72.8% dark energy, 22.7% dark matter and 4.6% ordinary matter.

WMAP 5 & 7 Year analysis estimate a Universe made up of 74 & 72.8% Dark Energy and 22 & 22.7% Dark Matter & 4 & 4.6% ordinary matter respectively

Large-scale structure The theory of large scale structure, which governs the formation of structures in the universe (stars, quasars, galaxies and galaxy clusters), also suggests that the density of matter in the universe is only 30% of the critical density. The WiggleZ galaxy survey from Australian Astronomical Observatory scanned 200,000 galaxies to determine their redshift. Then, by exploiting the fact that baryon acoustic oscillations have left voidsregularly of ~150 Mpc diameter, surrounded by the galaxies, the voids were used as standard rulers to determine distances to galaxies as far as 2000 Mpc (redshift 0.6), which allowed astronomers to determine more accurately the speeds of the galaxies from their redshift and distance. The data confirmed cosmic acceleration up to half of the age of the universe (7 billion years), and constrain its inhomogeneity to 1 part in 10. This provides a confirmation to cosmic acceleration independent of supernovas. Late-time integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect Accelerated cosmic expansion causes gravitational potential wells and hills to flatten as photons pass through them, producing cold spots and hot spots on the CMB aligned with vast supervoids and superclusters. This so-called late-time Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect (ISW) is a direct signal of dark energy in a flat universe. It was reported at high significance in 2008 by Ho et al. and Giannantonio et al.

THEORIES FOR EXISTENCE

DARK ENERGY One explanation for dark energy is that it is a property of space. Albert Einstein was the first person to realize that empty space is not nothing . Space has amazing properties, many of which are just beginning to be understood. The first property that Einstein discovered is that it is possible for more space to come into existence. Then one version of Einstein's gravity theory, the version that contains a cosmological constant, makes a second prediction: "empty space" can possess its own energy. Because this energy is a property of space itself, it would not be diluted as space expands. As more space comes into existence, more of this energy-of-space would appear. As a result, this form of energy would cause the Universe to expand faster and faster. Unfortunately, no one understands why the cosmological constant should even be there, much less why it would have exactly the right value to cause the observed acceleration of the Universe. New measurements of the expansion rate of the universe lend new support for the theory of dark energy that suggests a mysterious force is pulling the cosmos apart at ever-increasing speeds .Scientists have few ideas why such a force would exist, but the evidence for dark energy which like dark matter has remained elusive to detection attempts is growing, and a competing hypothesis can apparently be ruled out. In a new study, a team of researchers led by Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, report that they've calculated how fast the universe is expanding to a greater degree of accuracy than ever before, shrinking the error bars on their measurements by about 30 percent. Hubble telescope measures the universe The improved accuracy comes thanks to the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. It's a new instrument that was only installed on the orbiting observatory in 2009, during NASA's last space shuttle mission to upgrade the space telescope. he researchers used the new camera to observe a special class of exploding stars called type 1a supernovas, which are useful because they always release the same amount of light. Astronomers

compare this intrinsic brightness to their measured brightness which varies depending on how far away from Earth they are to judge cosmic distances .The new measurements confirm astronomers' growing consensus that the universe is not only expanding like a balloon, but picking up speed in doing so. Based on our current laws of gravity -namely, Einstein's theory of general relativity that's unexpected. To explain this surprising reality, scientists came up with dark energy, which would counteract the force of gravity that tries to pull the universe inward. But to date, dark energy has remained undetectable to astronomers.

Gazing deep into the universe, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spied a menagerie of galaxies. This image represents a typical view of our distant universe. In taking this picture, Hubble is looking down a long corridor of galaxies stretching billions of light-years distant in space, corresponding to looking billions of years back in time.

DARK MATTER There is as yet no answer to this question, but it is becoming increasingly clear what it is not. Detailed observations of the cosmic microwave background with the WMAP satellite show that the dark matter cannot be in the form of normal, baryonic matter, that is, protons and neutrons that compose stars, planets, and interstellar matter. That rules out hot gas, cold gas, brown dwarfs, red dwarfs, white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. Black holes would seem to be the ideal dark matter candidate, and they are indeed very dark. However stellar mass black holes are produced by the collapse of massive stars which are much scarcer than normal stars, which contain at most one-fifth of the mass of dark matter. Also, the processes that would produce enough black holes to explain the dark matter would release a lot of energy and heavy elements; there is no evidence of such a release. The non-baryonic candidates can be grouped into three broad categories: hot, warm and cold. Hot dark matter refers to particles, such as the known types of neutrinos, which are moving at near the speed of light when the clumps that would form galaxies and clusters of galaxies first began to grow. Cold dark matter refers to particles that were moving slowly when the pregalactic clumps began to form, and warm dark matter refers to particles with speeds intermediate between hot and cold dark matter. This classification has observational consequences for the size of clumps that can collapse in the expanding universe. Hot dark matter particles are moving so rapidly that clumps with the mass of a galaxy will quickly disperse. Only clouds with the mass of thousands of galaxies, that is, the size of galaxy clusters, can form. Individual galaxies would form later as the large cluster-sized clouds fragmented, in a top-down process. In contrast, cold dark matter can form into clumps of galaxy-sized mass or less. Galaxies would form first, and clusters would form as galaxies merge into groups, and groups into clusters in a bottom-up process.

The observations with Chandra show many examples of clusters being constructed by the merger of groups and sub-clusters of galaxies. This and other lines of evidence that galaxies are older than groups and clusters of galaxies strongly support the cold dark matter alternative. The leading candidates for cold dark matter are particles called WIMPs, for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. WIMPs are not predicted by the so-called Standard Model for elementary particles, but attempts to construct a unified theory of all elementary particles suggest that WIMPs might have been produced in great numbers when the universe was a fraction of a second old. A typical WIMP is predicted to be at least 100 times as massive as a hydrogen atom. Possible creatures in the zoo of hypothetical WIMPs are neutralinos, gravitinos, and axinos. Other possibilities that have been discussed include sterile neutrinos and Kaluza-Klein excitations related to extra dimensions in the universe.

This composite image shows the galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56, also known as the "bullet cluster." This cluster was formed after the collision of two large clusters of galaxies, the most energetic event known in the universe since the Big Bang. The hot gas in each cluster was slowed by a drag force, similar to air resistance, during the collision. In contrast, the dark matter was not slowed by the impact because it does not interact directly with itself or the gas except through gravity

ALTERNATIVE THEORIES
Dark matter and dark energy are two of the most mind-boggling ingredients in the universe. Ever since these concepts were first proposed, some astronomers have worked feverishly to figure out what each thing is, while other astronomers have tried to prove they don't exist, in hopes of restoring the universe to the more understandable place many would like it to be. Some cosmic background One of the prime ways researchers tally how much these components contribute to the overall makeup of the universe is by measuring a dim glow of light pervading space that is thought to be left over from the Big Bang. The most detailed measurements yet taken of this radiation, which is called the cosmic microwave background (CMB), come from a spacecraft dubbed the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Recently astrophysicist Tom Shanks of Durham University and his graduate student Utane Sawangwit went back to examine the WMAP data and used a different method to calibrate how much smoothing, or blurring, the telescope was causing to its images. This smoothing is an expected affect, akin to the way Earth's atmosphere blurs stars' light so they twinkle. Instead of using Jupiter as a calibration source, the way the WMAP team did, Shanks and Sawangwit used distant astronomical objects in the WMAP data itself that were emitting radio light .When they checked radio sources in the WMAP background, they found more smoothing than the WMAP team expected. That would have big implications for cosmology if they were proven right If this smoothing error is larger than thought, it could indicate that fluctuations measured in the intensity of the CMB radiation are actually smaller than they originally appeared. The size of these fluctuations is a key parameter used to support the existence of dark matter and dark energy. With smaller ripples, there would be no need to invoke exotic concepts like dark matter and dark energy to explain the CMB observations, Shanks said

Modified Gravity Models that seek to explain cosmic acceleration by changing the law of gravity must be consistent with other observations of the amount of helium produced by hydrogen nuclear fusion reactions in the first few minutes, fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background at few hundred thousand years, and the growth of clusters of galaxies billions of years later. The growth of galaxy clusters is influenced by the expansion rate of the universe, which is controlled by the competing effects of dark matter and dark energy, and by the properties of gravity over large scales. By contrast, observations of supernovas or the large-scale distribution of galaxies, which measure cosmic distances, depend only on the expansion rate of the universe and are not sensitive to the properties of gravity. Chandra observations of galaxy clusters have been used to test an alternative theory of gravity called called "f(R) gravity." In this theory, the acceleration of the expansion of the universe does not come from an exotic form of energy but from a modification of the gravitational force. Mass estimates of galaxy clusters in the local universe were compared with model predictions for f(R) gravity. Data from geometrical studies, such as supernova work, were also used. Using this comparison between theory and observation, no evidence was found that gravity is different from Einstein's theory on scales larger than 130 million light years. This limit corresponds to a hundred-fold improvement on the bounds of the modified gravitational force's range that can be set without using the cluster data. In a second study, a comparison was made between X-ray observations of how rapidly galaxy clusters have grown over cosmic time to the predictions of Einstein's theory. Once again, data from geometrical studies such as distances to supernovas and galaxy clusters were incorporated. Nearly complete agreement was seen between observation and theory, arguing against any alternative gravity models with a different rate of growth. In particular a model with 5 dimensions, predicts a slower rate of cluster growth than Einstein's theory because gravity is weakened on large scales as it leaks into an extra dimension.

FUTURE OF DARK ENERGY AND DARK MATTER

The immediate future of the Universe will be governed by dark energy, which will determine the rate of dilution and cooling of the matter and energy. But, perhaps dark energy plays a more profound role in the history of the Universe, determining our distant past as well as our longterm future. Finding the identity of dark matter has emerged as one of the most important scientific challenges of the twenty-first century

In the cosmological constant formulation, dark energy is constant in time, while the matter density drops as the universe expands, in proportion to the cube of the scale factor. So if we consider the universe in its early days the energy contained in the dark matter would have dominated over dark energy, as the mass density would have been much greater than today. The crossover from matter dominated to dark energy dominated came after the universe was about 9 billion years old, or about 5 billion years ago. This emergence of dark energy as the dominant force, due to its nature as a repulsive property of empty space-time, results in an accelerating expansion of the universe, which has been called the runaway universe. Our universe is apparently slated to become hugely larger than its current enormous size. If dark energy is vacuum energy, then the cosmic acceleration will continue and the Universe will expand at an ever-increasing rate. In about 100 billion years, the only galaxies visible will be those nearer than a few million light years. If dark energy is a scalar field, the possible futures depend on the nature of the scalar field. The expansion could stop and become a collapse, it could expand more or less as in the vacuum energy scenario, or the acceleration could increase without limit, and the Universe would end in a "big rip" that tears apart galaxy clusters, galaxies, stars and eventually, atoms.

Why is dark energy important then? Since five billion years ago, and on into the indefinite future, it has dominated the mass-energy content of the universe. It drives a re-acceleration of the universe. It inhibits the re-collapse (Big Crunch) of our entire universe or even substantial portions of the universe. Thus it naturally extends the life of the entire universe to trillions of years or much more far beyond what would occur were the universe to be dominated by matter only and with density at the critical value or above. Dark energy thus works to maximize the available time and space for life to develop and to evolve on planets found throughout the universe.

EXPERIMENTS FOR DARK MATTER

Despite the compelling evidence for dark matter, the issue of whether dark matter exists or gravity needs to be modified will likely not be resolved until dark matter particles are detected, or ruled out by lack of detection. Two types of experimental searches for dark matter candidates are being pursued by a number of investigators. These involve the direct detection of dark matter particles by some type of detector, and the detection of X-rays or gamma-rays from the decay or annihilation of dark matter particles. If WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) are the dark matter, then we must be swimming in a sea of dark matter and a billion or more of them would be passing through our bodies every second. The problem for their detection is the "weakly interacting" nature of WIMPs. Fortunately for us, almost all of them would pass through our bodies and through the entire Earth. However, it is possible that once in a great while a WIMP could collide with an atom and knock its nucleus askew, creating a minuscule vibration in a supercooled crystal detector. So far, the most sensitive of such experiments, the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search located half a mile underground in an old iron-ore mine in Minnesota, has failed to detect any WIMPs. More sensitive experiments are planned. Axions may also be detected directly, though using very different techniques. These hypothetical particles are predicted to interact with a strong magnetic field, to produce radio waves. Experiments such as the Axion Dark Matter Experiment have so far yielded negative results. Experiments using different techniques are planned for the near future.

Work being done at the Cryogenic Dark to detect Weakly Interacting Matter Particles, or WIMPs

Matter

Search,

an

attempt

Another approach is to detect dark matter indirectly by observing a unique signature from their decay. Most theories for WIMPs predict that when they collide, they annihilate and produce a shower of high-energy particles and radiation. One of the most important programs of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope will be to search for gamma rays from the annihilation of WIMPs, or from the interaction of axions with strong magnetic fields in the nuclei of galaxies. It is also possible that the decay of sterile neutrinos into X-rays could be detected by Chandra, XMM, or a future, larger X-ray telescope. Rather than taking a passive approach of observing dark matter directly in the lab, or indirectly through astronomical observations, some physicists propose making the stuff.Since the dark matter particles were presumably created in the first few nanoseconds or so of the Big Bang when temperatures were a quadrillion degrees, a particle accelerator that reproduces these conditions might create dark matter.

Extensive searches have been conducted for new particles of many kinds at and the Tevatron collider at Fermilab, so far without detection. Physicists are eagerly looking forward to the start of operations in late 2008 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. The LHC will be the world's most powerful particle accelerator, smashing protons together at energies of 10 trillion electron volts, high enough to produce many predicted versions of dark matter.

This graphic represents a simulated event at the LHC depicting the decay of a Higgs particle following a collision of two protons.

The bottom line: one way or another, many physicists and astronomers are optimistic that hard evidence for dark matter particles will be found in the next few years. If not, they will be faced with an even deeper mystery than they now confront.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION WHAT IS DARK ENERGY? WHAT IS DARK MATTER? DISCOVERY OF DARK ENERGY AND DARK MATTER THEORIES OF EXISTENCE DARK ENERGY DARK MATTER ALTERNATIVE THEORIES EXPERIMENTS FOR DARK MATTER FUTURE OF DARK ENERGY AND DARK MATTER

REFERENCES
http://chandra.harvard.edu http://thefutureofthings.com http://www.space.com http://science.howstuffworks.com http://en.wikipedia.org http://www.nasa.gov/