Related papers: Dark Matter: Early Considerations
From astronomical observations, we know that dark matter exists, makes up 23% of the mass budget of the Universe, clusters strongly to form the load-bearing frame of structure for galaxy formation, and hardly interacts with ordinary matter…
The hypothesis that cold dark matter consists of primordial superheavy particles, the decay of short lifetime component of which led to the observable mass of matter while long living component survived up to modern times manifesting its…
Over the past few decades, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. I begin with a review of the observational evidence for the existence of dark matter: rotation curves of…
It is now believed that the universe is composed of a small amount of the normal luminous matter, a substantial amount of matter (Cold Dark Matter: CDM) which is non-luminous and a large amount of smooth energy (Dark Energy: DE). Both CDM…
[A brief review intended for a general physics colloquium audience.] Astrophysicists now know that 80% of the matter in the universe is `dark matter', composed of neutral and weakly interacting elementary particles that are not part of the…
One of the great scientific enigmas still unsolved, the existence of dark matter, is reviewed. Simple gravitational arguments imply that most of the mass in the Universe, at least 90%, is some (unknown) non-luminous matter. Some particle…
In the first section, I will try to convey a sense of the variety of observational inputs that tell us about the existence and the spatial distribution of dark matter in the universe. In the second section, I will briefly review the four…
Classical particle-like solutions of field equations such as general relativity, could account for dark matter. Such particles would not interact quantum mechanically and would have negligible interactions apart from gravitation. As a relic…
We review observational, experimental and theoretical results related to Dark Matter.
While astrophysical and cosmological probes provide a remarkably precise and consistent picture of the quantity and general properties of dark matter, its fundamental nature remains one of the most significant open questions in physics.…
The concept of dark matter in the Universe and its components has been discussed in the 1930s by several authors, and in particular by Oort (1932) and Zwicky (1933). However, it is only in the 1970s that the existence of dark matter was…
The evidence is that the mass of the universe is dominated by an exotic nonbaryonic form of matter largely draped around the galaxies. It approximates an initially low pressure gas of particles that interact only with gravity, but we know…
As cosmology has entered a phase of precision experiments, the content of the universe has been established to contain interesting and not yet fully understood components, namely dark energy and dark matter. While the cause and exact nature…
Empirical mass estimates for galactic dark matter objects, published between December 1991 and May 1999, are presented in tabular and graphical forms. Trends in the data are identified and uncertainties are discussed. Similarities among…
Last year observations had a profound impact on our views on the amount and nature of dark matter in the universe. We give a brief review of the recent history of dark matter models beyond the pure cold dark matter universe. In view of the…
A comet-like, but magnitudes smaller, extremely low albedo interstellar meteoroid population of fragile aggregates with solar type composition, measured in space and terrestrially, is most probably the universal dark matter. Although…
The observational evidence for dark matter on progressively larger cosmic scales is reviewed in a rather pedagogical fashion. Although the emphasis is on dark matter in galaxies and in clusters of galaxies, its cosmological evidence as well…
Cosmological and astrophysical measurements indicate that the universe contains a large amount of dark matter. A number of weak scale dark matter candidates have been proposed in extensions of the standard model. The potential to discover…
Progress in observational cosmology over the past five years has established that the Universe is dominated dynamically by dark matter and dark energy. Both these new and apparently independent forms of matter-energy have properties that…
A huge amount of good quality data converges towards the picture of a spatially flat universe undergoing the today observed phase of accelerated expansion. This new observational trend is commonly addressed as Precision Cosmology. Despite…