Dark energy.........Dark matter.........when?

Dark Energy is way too unknown to even guess about.

Dark Matter, in my opinion, is just something that some eager astronomers added to the equations to make their observations fit Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.

I wouldn't be surprised if, in the next 100 years, some NEW PHYSICS is developed, to explain the gravitational effects we currently see, that we blame on Dark Matter.

Then again, those who do support its existence do have good reasons.

Either Dark Matter exists, and there is something out there that has a lot of mass, but doesn't interact with regular matter and the EM spectrum (light, for example) except for its gravitational influence... or Dark Matter is make believe, and Einstein's model of gravity is incomplete, in much the same way Newton's model of it was.

The LHC might help uncover some of these mysteries. So perhaps we will have our answer... or at least come closer to understanding some of these things better, in the very near future.

Don't forget about "dark flow" as well. I would agree with some other answers that we need a new model for the workings of the universe and also scrap the Big Bang theory which needs so many things to be tacked onto it for it to work. What about intergalactic shadows which contradict it?

"The apparent absence of shadows where shadows were expected to be is raising new questions about the faint glow of microwave radiation once hailed as proof that the universe was created by a "Big Bang."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/06090...

Dark flow......................

"As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered.

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow."

The stuff that's pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude.

They discovered that the clusters were moving nearly 2 million mph (3.2 million kph) toward a region in the sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela. This motion is different from the outward expansion of the universe (which is accelerated by the force called dark energy).

"We found a very significant velocity, and furthermore, this velocity does not decrease with distance, as far as we can measure," Kashlinsky told SPACE.com. "The matter in the observable universe just cannot produce the flow we measure."

Inflationary bubble

The scientists deduced that whatever is driving the movements of the clusters must lie beyond the known universe.

A theory called inflation posits that the universe we see is just a small bubble of space-time that got rapidly expanded after the Big Bang. There could be other parts of the cosmos beyond this bubble that we cannot see.

In these regions, space-time might be very different, and likely doesn't contain stars and galaxies (which only formed because of the particular density pattern of mass in our bubble). It could include giant, massive structures much larger than anything in our own observable universe. These structures are what researchers suspect are tugging on the galaxy clusters, causing the dark flow.

"The structures responsible for this motion have been pushed so far away by inflation, I would guesstimate they may be hundreds of billions of light years away, that we cannot see even with the deepest telescopes because the light emitted there could not have reached us in the age of the universe," Kashlinsky said in a telephone interview. "Most likely to create such a coherent flow they would have to be some very strange structures, maybe some warped space time. But this is just pure speculation."

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080923-dark-...

Scientist have apparently (we don't have to take it for granted you know) calculated that with the current expansion of the universe there is 75% dark energy and 21% dark matter. Dark Energy makes space expanding while Dark Matter pulls it back (with it's gravity). Based on the calculated visible and un-visible mass in the universe and it's expanding speed scientists have calculated the values you stated.

Dark Matter: We know it's there. We can see its effects on normal matter. It is what keeps galaxies together. Theorists have said dark matter may be made of a WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle), and as the name implies, we haven't yet discovered it in our experiments because it interacts very very weakly with ordinary matter

Dark Energy: The name given to the 'stuff' that is causing increased cosmic expansion. We have no idea what it is

Evalyn Gates (University of Chicago) has an excellent book out called "Einstein's Telescope". It in, she explains how we know dark matter and dark energy exist, and what we are doing to find out what they are. The book is also an excellent primer on modern cosmology

The Higg's field (or something like it) which is a scalar field and pervades the Universe everywhere, may be the common factor that links Dark matter, Dark energy, and Gravity.

Hopefully, when they get LHC up and running, they'll find the Higg's particle. If so, and it possesses the predicted characteristics, it will tell us much more about the Universe and how its organized.

See: Higgs boson - CERN LHC - Fermilab Tevatron-1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH4GuTSLGJI

Just because we cant "see" them doesn't mean we can't detect them. Everything has a gravitational pull, a black hole, you cant see, but you can see a star slingshot from its intense gravitational pull. Dark mater can be noticed when a visible object passes behind such dark matter. As far as when we are going to be able to encounter such things, I don't think it will be in our lifetime, if ever. If you think about it, the only thing that can have no light emittingg from it, is something that pulls the light towards it self, which would probably not be a good thing to stand near, or eat.

White