Quick Qu on matter in the universe

Hi guys, When we are told that matter only makes up about 4% of the universe, I'm picturing all of the stars and planets clumped together like a big trash pile.

If all this matter were broken down to its basic ingredient of energy and spread out over the universe, wouldn't it completely fill in the universe?

reply to post by jiggerj


no, man,, physical matter and organisms are basically trash,,
all the important formulas exists on a different plain,,
but maybe it would fill all out, if you took all the matter from all possible and impossible dimensions...
the real problem is that most things in our hood, has no mass...

No, dark matter and dark energy make up most of the universe.

Originally posted by jiggerj
Hi guys, When we are told that matter only makes up about 4% of the universe, I'm picturing all of the stars and planets clumped together like a big trash pile.

If all this matter were broken down to its basic ingredient of energy and spread out over the universe, wouldn't it completely fill in the universe?

the 4% figure comes from observed deviations from a cosmological expansion model. It's quite possible that the cosmological expansion model is flawed in some ways (professional dissent against these models does exist), so there's no point taking that figure as gospel.

There is also the fact that electromagnetic phenomena like charge and light are given 'no mass' for purely theoretical reasons (despite the fact that the pressure of light is a known force), so you can't really trust the standard model to give you a decent answer on that either.

As an overall coherent theory, that "there is only 4% 'real matter' in the universe" statement is pretty shaky.

reply to post by jiggerj


Think about the size of an atom.



soz for the bad animation and the guys voice, but it explains it reasonably well.. Lots and lots of empty space between things.

reply to post by jiggerj


If its only yes or no answer you are looking for.
The answer is yes.

When i think of dark matter, i think sea of thick black oily goop and planets are just floating in it.

its thought no, it wouldn't full up all of space, because space is a real dimension. distance exists. from you to china. and china to the next solar system, and the next solar system, to the next one, and that one to the next galaxy... all these points of events and conglomerates of energy/matter exist relative to one another in degrees of distance and time (space-time)... So you are basically describing what is thought may happen at the end of the universes existence. If it is thought this energy was began at some point (big bang) then that was the birth of the energy and it was fresh, and it clumped together and made structures that can do things, but eventually because of entropy, those structures lose their cohesiveness, and come undone.. so the galaxies that are actually tremendous distance away from one another, will independently come undone into tinnier and tinnier pieces, these tinier and tinier pieces will still be those distances away from one another and still traveling further and further. ( wikipedia the supposed life span of a proton...its a real long time)

So this part is discussed by cosmologists. Some people believe after all that happens, the laws of physics will cause all the separated energy/matter to starting turning like a tipping point or arch, and come heading back towards a single point and cause a new big bang or something. Some believe space may be infinite and the particles will just keep traveling and traveling with no forces to make the turn around... I dont know...

But if the universe is a closed isolated system, you say will all energy take up all space, im not sure, i think there is a close link between what the clumps of energy are capable of doing and forming, and their distance away from one another. It would also help to know what space-time or space actually is. If space-time is physically and materially absolutely nothing.. the absence of a quality of intrinsic matter/energy, unlike matter energy which is... matter/energy. then I dont see why you couldnt say all matter in the universe fills up the universe right now, and always...

Originally posted by jiggerj
If all this matter were broken down to its basic ingredient of energy and spread out over the universe, wouldn't it completely fill in the universe?

This "fill in the universe" needs to be more precisely defined to answer the question.

If the question is, will there be energy everywhere, I think the answer is already yes without converting any more matter than is already being converted. The CMBR or Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is thought to be everywhere, so one could say this "fills the universe" depending on how one defines this term.

If you are thinking full as in the concept of filling a glass with water and then watching it overflow when you add more, we do not have any theories that suggest it's possible to fill the universe with electromagnetic radiation in such a manner.

For example, put up a 1000 watt broadcast tower, emitting energy in the form of radio waves. It fills the space around it in some sense, but the space isn't really "full", because you can put an identical tower next to it, and add another 1000 watts. No matter how many towers or how many watts you flood the space with, as far as I know there's still room for more since it's never completely "full".

So the short answer is, with one definition of full (meaning everywhere), it's already filled, and with another definition of full (meaning can't hold anymore), it's impossible to fill, because it can always hold more electromagnetic radiation.

Originally posted by SpearMint
No, dark matter and dark energy make up most of the universe.

edit on 14-2-2013 by SpearMint because: (no reason given)

That's what we are told, SM. But, if you figure that all of the atoms that make up a planet are held together by gravity, if gravity were to suddenly shut down, that planet would turn to dust in the universe (well, I'm guessing that would happen). Point is, if all of the stars and planets and black holes were reduced to dust, they would spread out and if they don't fill the entire universe they would certainly occupy more than 4% of it. Right?

reply to post by Arbitrageur

This "fill in the universe" needs to be more precisely defined to answer the question.

This is why I'm confused, Arb. When physicists tell us that the universe is 85% dark matter (or whatever that percentage is), it seems to me that they are comparing it to all the physical matter without breaking down the physical matter into a state that would be comparable to dark matter. Hope I explained this well enough?

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by SpearMint
No, dark matter and dark energy make up most of the universe.

edit on 14-2-2013 by SpearMint because: (no reason given)

That's what we are told, SM. But, if you figure that all of the atoms that make up a planet are held together by gravity, if gravity were to suddenly shut down, that planet would turn to dust in the universe (well, I'm guessing that would happen). Point is, if all of the stars and planets and black holes were reduced to dust, they would spread out and if they don't fill the entire universe they would certainly occupy more than 4% of it. Right?

Well atoms are held together by Van der Waals force. I'm not sure of the answer, but I assume that if you could separate all atoms then they would take up the same amount of space, just spread out. There's space between atoms anyway so it would just be increasing that space. There's a lot of space inside them too, I'm not sure if that's included in the 4%.

I'm just speculating, I really don't know.

Originally posted by SpearMint

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by SpearMint
No, dark matter and dark energy make up most of the universe.

edit on 14-2-2013 by SpearMint because: (no reason given)

That's what we are told, SM. But, if you figure that all of the atoms that make up a planet are held together by gravity, if gravity were to suddenly shut down, that planet would turn to dust in the universe (well, I'm guessing that would happen). Point is, if all of the stars and planets and black holes were reduced to dust, they would spread out and if they don't fill the entire universe they would certainly occupy more than 4% of it. Right?

Well atoms are held together by Van der Waals force. I'm not sure of the answer, but I assume that if you could separate all atoms then they would take up the same amount of space, just spread out. There's space between atoms anyway so it would just be increasing that space. There's a lot of space inside them too, I'm not sure if that's included in the 4%.

I'm just speculating, I really don't know.

I'm just taking a guess at it, too. When you say atoms are held together by...whatever...it's not my point. My point is that all of these atoms that make up a planet are compressed together, scrunched, jammed, whatever you want to call it. So, if all of the atoms were released from a planet wouldn't you think there'd be a lot more than meets the eye?

reply to post by jiggerj


upload.wikimedia.org...


thats what It seems like one mainstream consensus in cosmology is...

Dark matter is not really well known, but its thought to be matter that does not reflect EM radiation, giving it its name 'dark', because it can not be seen by instruments (which relay on EM radiation) but it can be detected or thought to be detected by its supposed gravitational affect on visible matter. It was also wanted to exist when cosmologists/astronomers viewed images of galaxies and determined that the mass and matter they could see, could not account for the gravity that keeps the stars in orbit and the galaxy spiraling.

Dark energy is thought to be the energy which causes spatial expansion of the universe and at an accelerated rate. So its proposed that "dark energy", since the beginning of the universe has been increasing over time. And this is directly correlated to the fact the universe is now larger then it was, with more distance between galaxies, and distance between galaxies continue to increase at a supposed accelerated rate.

Originally posted by jiggerj

So, if all of the atoms were released from a planet wouldn't you think there'd be a lot more than meets the eye?

lets say only the earth existed, ignoring the sun etc.

the earth right now is massive, composed of an exact quantity of atoms.

you are kinda saying think about the atoms one by one how much space they would take up? If you laid them out one by one end to end they would reach real far? that may be true, but that would be a line like object and there would still be lots of space on either side. the same quantity of atoms making up that long line, are wrapped up in all types of molecular configurations and voila, you have the earth we see, a massive semi spherical body. Do you know there are light years of distance between our sun and the next closest sun. that distance is real. so if we took the earth atom by atom, I dont think it would reach across that distance. basically, I think the totality of space, is a lot larger then the extent of the sum of all matter. I could be wrong. You are asking, can it be possible that the "size" of the sum of all matter can possibly be equal to the totality of space (maybe space-time)? im not sure

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by SpearMint

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by SpearMint
No, dark matter and dark energy make up most of the universe.

edit on 14-2-2013 by SpearMint because: (no reason given)

That's what we are told, SM. But, if you figure that all of the atoms that make up a planet are held together by gravity, if gravity were to suddenly shut down, that planet would turn to dust in the universe (well, I'm guessing that would happen). Point is, if all of the stars and planets and black holes were reduced to dust, they would spread out and if they don't fill the entire universe they would certainly occupy more than 4% of it. Right?

Well atoms are held together by Van der Waals force. I'm not sure of the answer, but I assume that if you could separate all atoms then they would take up the same amount of space, just spread out. There's space between atoms anyway so it would just be increasing that space. There's a lot of space inside them too, I'm not sure if that's included in the 4%.

I'm just speculating, I really don't know.

I'm just taking a guess at it, too. When you say atoms are held together by...whatever...it's not my point. My point is that all of these atoms that make up a planet are compressed together, scrunched, jammed, whatever you want to call it. So, if all of the atoms were released from a planet wouldn't you think there'd be a lot more than meets the eye?

Well I think it would appear to be bigger to a point, then the space between the atoms will get so big that it would appear to be a gas, and then eventually we'd see nothing at all. If you're talking about the actual volume taken up by the atoms then I think it would be exactly the same, since there's space between and inside atoms all the time. That's why things can condense so much in black holes. For this reason I think that no matter how compressed or spread apart atoms are, they will always occupy the same volume, but the space will chance altering the appearance.

Originally posted by jiggerj
This is why I'm confused, Arb. When physicists tell us that the universe is 85% dark matter (or whatever that percentage is), it seems to me that they are comparing it to all the physical matter without breaking down the physical matter into a state that would be comparable to dark matter. Hope I explained this well enough?

Actually it would help if you looked up the percentages since your 85% number is way off:

science.nasa.gov...

It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe.

So it's only 25% dark matter. The other 70% is energy, specifically dark energy.

The Virgo Consortium has modeled what they think universe might look like if dark matter was visible. Here is one of their models:

www.virgo.dur.ac.uk...


I think in that model the regular matter is colored yellowish so you can see regular and dark matter, the lighter colored stuff that's not yellowish, on a comparable scale.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Actually it would help if you looked up the percentages since your 85% number is way off:

I googled it. I thought it was 96%, but all the links I saw said otherwise.

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Actually it would help if you looked up the percentages since your 85% number is way off:

I googled it. I thought it was 96%, but all the links I saw said otherwise.

Your statement said:

When physicists tell us that the universe is 85% dark matter

You need to read more carefully. The 85% is referring to something else which is specified in the phys.org link which is not what you said. If you read carefully you'll find out what it is, but if you can't figure it out let me know...I'll explain it, or read the link I posted which should explain it. The phys.org site is not saying 85% of the universe is dark matter...read it very carefully.

Also, the distinction is not so subtle and is also extremely relevant to the question in your OP.