Name: Robin D.
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 2000-2001
Question:
Could "dark matter/dark enery" be new stars that have
formed and their light has not reached us yet? Say a new star has
formed that is 1000 light-years away...we will not be seeing its light
for 1000 years.
Replies:
Robin,
Dark matter is not new stars we have not seen. Based on current theories,
nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. If we have not yet
received light from the star, we would not see any of its other effects
either.
Dark matter could be material that does not interact with light. It does not
block light. It does not emit light. The only thing it seems to interact
with is gravity. Provided our theories about gravity and motion within the
universe are correct, the universe needs more mass than we know about. One
possibility is there is a great deal of matter in the univeres that we
cannot detect. One possibility is that our theories are incorrect at very
large distances. All of science is theories that try to explain the reality
we measure. Dark matter is such a theory. Gravity is such a theory. More
experiments are done to try to determine which theories are correct and
which need to be adjusted to fit reality.
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