"Dark Matter And Dark Energy May Be Different Aspects Of A Single Unknown Force"

In the last few decades, scientists have discovered that there is a lot more to the universe than meets the eye: the cosmos appears to be filled with not just one, but two invisible constituents –dark matter and dark energy – whose existence has been proposed based solely on their gravitational effects on ordinary matter and energy.

Now, theoretical physicist Robert J. Scherrer has come up with a model that could cut the mystery in half by explaining dark matter and dark energy as two aspects of a single unknown force. His model is described in an article published online by Physical Review Letters on June 30 and is available online at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0402316 .

“One way to think of this is that the universe is filled with an invisible fluid that exerts pressure on ordinary matter and changes the way that the universe expands,” says the professor of physics at Vanderbilt University. [continued]