Dark Matter and Dark Energy

General Questions
#1

Scientist theorize that dark matter makes up most of the universe and that it is made up of particles that do not reflect light so it can’t be seen. They do not know much of anything about dark energy (where it comes from or even what it is.

My question is:

Could it be possible that the particles that make up dark matter are both negatively and positively charged at the same instance causing them to both repel and attract simultaneously (bump each other) which would release energy (dark energy)? This may not be plausible… just a weird thought…

#2

I cannot make sufficient sense of your proposal to even begin to critique it. What could it possibly mean to say that a particle is simultaneously negatively and positively charged?

#3

If you mix a negative charge with a positive charge, you get a neutral particle.

#4

I dark matter particles had charges, I’d think they’d have to interact with light (electromagnetically).

#5

Dark matter and dark energy (or as I refer to them, “atramentous corporeity” and “crepuscular palpitation”) are placeholders for a set of phenomenon observed by astronomers. We do not currently observe either directly or have a clear understanding of their properties except for the interactions they have on visible (hot) matter as cosmological scales.

Technically, most matter is “dark matter” insofar as it radiates little if any energy; you and I and almost everything we can see is dark matter, in contract to the “hot” matter in stars and other radiating phenomena. However, there is a large amount of mass that is unaccounted for in observation but appears to affect the dynamics of large scale structures such as galaxies and larger, which is referred to as missing dark matter, because if it were normal matter it would interact electromagnetically (that is, it would absorb like and other radiation). For this reason, the missing dark matter is widely considered to interact only using the gravitational forces and (perhaps) the weak interaction (often described as “weakly interacting” although the actually affect on other mass is huge, dwarfing the interactions we can attribute to hot matter). There are various proposals for the composition and properties of dark matter–there is some speculation that neutrinos, which are weakly interacting particles could contribute to dark matter but the model of neutrino interactions is inconsistent with observations–but it could well be an entire family of heretofore unknown particles or some other phenomenon entirely unrelated to our conception of particles based upon the Standard Model. However, the most straightforward assumption is that these are just previously undiscovered particles that don’t interact electromagnetically.

Dark energy is basically a correction factor to explain the continued expansion of a universe that should have long collapsed back upon itself. It only interacts gravitationally against the plenum of space-time, and in opposition to how massy objects exert gravitational influence on other objects and the underlying plenum. That is basically the long and short of anything that we can authoritatively say about dark energy.

Insofar as I can understand the question posed by the o.p., it does not fit the presumed behavior of either dark matter or dark energy or would result in the effects that we see, nor can particles be simultaneously both positively and negatively charged. Charge is a fundamental property of quarks and charged leptons which do not change arbitrarily. A combination of positive and negative particles together makes an electric dipole and relative motion of the particles will create an electromagnetic field that will change in strength and scale, virtually disappearing when the particles are close together, but this does not create the repulsive gravitational interaction with space-time.

Stranger

#6

I know this OP has been critiqued already, but the above statement is not quite right, is it?

When I first heard of ‘dark matter’ I assumed it literally was something just plain ‘black’, like coal dust. But I believe even coal dust would eventually absorb sufficient light energy that it would warm and radiate and be observable.

So is it correct that ‘dark matter’ is simply something that doesn’t reflect light?

#7

It is true that coal dust, if heated sufficiently, would glow of it’s own accord significantly in the visible spectrum. But even if it stayed cold, it would block some of the light from stars behind it and be detectable that way. (Missing) Dark Matter is clearly not coal dust.

Even worse than that, it does not interact electromagnetically at all. Not even the electromagnetic forces that give “normal” matter its rigidity. Think something like neutrinos, which can easily pass through the planet without significant chance of interaction, but more massive.

#8

At least some of the dark matter is just ordinary stuff that happens not to be glowing, like coal dust (or more likely, like gas giant planets wandering around in interstellar space). Ordinary stuff like hydrogen, coal dust, and us is called “baryonic matter”, meaning that most of its mass is in baryons, protons and neutrons. But there are pretty hard limits on the amount of baryonic matter there can be in the Universe, due to something called Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Basically, there are a few isotopes of atoms at the beginning of the periodic table that are primordial: They’re not formed in stars or any other common process, so any that exist must be leftover from the Big Bang. Which isotopes will be formed this way, and how many of each, will depend on the density of baryons in the Universe at the time of their formation. And from that, we can calculate the current density of baryons in the Universe. And that density is too low to account for the dark matter, by a significant margin. So even without knowing what all forms the baryonic matter in the Universe is clustered into, we know that most of the dark matter must be non-baryonic.