Skip to content

Is the Era of Dark Matter Over?

Mysterious dark matter and dark energy may no longer be needed to explain the Universe’s accelerating expansion, which may be caused by tension between matter and antimatter.
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

What’s the Latest Development?


CERN physicist Dragan Hajdukovic has written a striking new paper than explains the universe’s accelerating expansion in terms other than dark matter and dark energy. By combining the idea of a quantum vacuum with gravitational repulsion between matter and antimatter, Hajdukovic has arrived at an energy density consistent with the cosmological constant, the force which is causing the Universe’s accelerating expansion. This new energy density is at least 30 orders of magnitude larger than the observed dark energy density.

What’s the Big Idea?

An interesting difference between Hajdukovic’s theory and the standard cosmological theory is that the latter predicts the expansion of the Universe is decreasing, which is at odds with astronomers’ observations. Whether Hajdukovic is right about opposing gravitational forces between matter and antimatter could be determined by experiments at the CERN physics laboratory in Europe, which is where Hajdukovic incidentally works. CERN’s AEGIS experiment is currently working to determine the properties of antihydrogen.

Photo credit: shutterstock.com

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related

Up Next