• Question: Does dark matter exist on earth?

    Asked by charlieparker to Amar, Matt, Leah, Andrea, Ana on 7 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Amar Joshi

      Amar Joshi answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      I would have to say I don’t know. But then I don’t think many of the worlds top experts would say that too.

      The equations that are at the heart of physics have been proved to be correct for so many things. However, in order to explain the Universe as we see it there need to add dark matter to make the equations work. As yet we have no way of directly detecting dark matter but there are several experiments going on to see if we can (http://www.nature.com/news/dark-matter-hunt-gets-deep-1.12455)

    • Photo: Matthew Lam

      Matthew Lam answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Dark matter is thought to be everywhere in the Universe, so yes it would exist on Earth.

      However, no one has ever actually seen any of this ‘dark matter’ so we haven’t actually proved that it exists. Physicists have worked out that for the mathematics that describes our universe to be right, we have to use equations that account for dark matter. So it is just a theory (although one that is likely to be true) and won’t be proven until we physically detect some particle of dark matter.

      I recently read Phillip Pullmans Northern Lights trilogy, the basis for the film the Golden Compass, and that story has a great use of dark matter, which he calls Dust.

    • Photo: Andrea Hanvey

      Andrea Hanvey answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      I’m going to be honest, what I know amount physics I could write on a post it note! So I’m very sorry I don’t know!!

Comments

  • Photo: Matt

    Matt commented on :

    Physicists believe that dark matter exists everywhere in the Universe including on Earth. However, they’ve never actually been able to find it or detect it in anyway. The reason they believe it exists is because the mathematics that describe how our universe works needs to include equations that describe how dark matter interacts with all the other particles in the Universe.

    This means that dark matter is a theory and not yet proven as we haven’t actually seen it. This is a great example of how exciting research can be as lots of scientists around the world are racing to catch the first glimpse of dark matter.

  • elementaldisaster commented on :

    Thanks guys!