The Truth About Dark Energy and Dark Matter

By Dr. Walt Brown of the Center for Scientific Creation
(From the book, In the Beginning - 8th Edition)

For decades, big bang theorists said that the amount of mass in a rapidly expanding universe must be enough to prevent all matter from flying apart; otherwise, matter could not come together to form stars and galaxies. Estimates of the universe’s actual mass always fell far short of that minimum amount. This “missing mass” is often called dark matter, because no one could see it or even detect it. Actually, “missing mass” had to be “created” to preserve the big bang theory. [See “Missing Mass” below.] The media’s frequent reference to “dark matter” enshrined it in the public’s consciousness, much like the supposed “missing link” between apes and man.

The big bang has struck again by devising something new and imaginary to support the theory. Here’s why. The big bang theory predicts that the universe’s expansion must be slowing, just as a ball thrown upward must slow as it moves away from the Earth. For decades, cosmologists tried to measure this deceleration. The shocking result is now in—and the answer has been rechecked in many ways. The universe’s expansion is not decelerating; it is accelerating! [consider these quotes]:

• “Three years ago, observations of distant, exploding stars blew to smithereens some of astronomers’ most cherished ideas about the universe [the big bang theory]. To piece together an updated theory, they’re now thinking dark thoughts about what sort of mystery force may be contorting the cosmos.” “According to the standard view of cosmology, the once infinitesimal universe has ballooned in volume ever since its fiery birth in the Big Bang, but the mutual gravitational tug of all the matter in the cosmos has gradually slowed that expansion.” “In 1998, however, scientists reported that a group of distant supernovas were dimmer, and therefore farther from Earth, than the standard theory indicated. It was as if, in the billion or so years it took for the light from these exploded stars to arrive at Earth, the space between the stars and our planet had stretched out more than expected. That would mean that cosmic expansion has somehow sped up, not slowed down. Recent evidence has only firmed up that bizarre result.” Ron Cowen, “A Dark Force in the Universe,” Science News, Vol. 159, 7 April 2001, p. 218.
• “Not only don’t we see the universe slowing down; we see it speeding up.” Adam Riess, as quoted by James Glanz, “Astronomers See a Cosmic Antigravity Force at Work,” Science, Vol. 279, 27 February 1998, p. 1298.
• “In one of the great results of twentieth century science, NSF-funded astronomers have shown both that the universe does not contain enough matter in the universe to slow the expansion, and that the rate of expansion actually increases with distance. Why? Nobody knows yet.” National Science Foundation Advertisement, “Astronomy: Fifty Years of Astronomical Excellence,” Discover, September 2000, p. 7.
• “The expansion of the universe was long believed to be slowing down because of the mutual gravitational attraction of all the matter in the universe. We now know that the expansion is accelerating and that whatever caused the acceleration (dubbed “dark energy”) cannot be Standard Model physics.” Gordon Kane, “The Dawn of Physics Beyond the Standard Model,” Scientific American, Vol. 288, June 2003, p. 73.

Therefore, to protect the theory, something must again be invented. Some energy source that counteracts gravity must continually accelerate stars and galaxies away from each other. This energy, naturally enough, is called dark energy.

Neither “dark matter” (created to hold the universe together) nor “dark energy” (created to push the universe apart) has been seen or measured.^w We are told that “most of the universe is composed of invisible dark matter and dark energy.”^x Few realize that both mystical concepts were devised to preserve the big bang theory.

Rather than cluttering textbooks and the public’s imagination with statements about things for which no objective evidence exists, wouldn’t it be better to admit that the big bang is faulty? Of course. But big bang theorists want to maintain their reputations, careers, and worldview. If the big bang is discarded, only one credible explanation remains for the origin of the universe and everything in it. That thought sends shudders down the spines of many evolutionists.

Missing Mass

Imagine seeing several rocks in outer space, moving radially away from Earth. If the rocks were simultaneously blasted away from Earth, their masses, changing velocities, and distances from Earth would have a very precise mathematical relationship with each other. When a similar relationship is checked for billions of observable galaxies, an obvious conclusion is that these galaxies did not explode from a common point in a huge “big bang.”^a It is even more obvious that if such an explosion occurred, it must have been much, much less than billions of years ago.

Evolutionists try to fix this problem in two ways. They assume that the universe is filled with at least ten times as much matter as can be seen. This is maintained even though three decades of searching for this “missing mass” have turned up nothing other than the conclusion that it does not exist.^b

A second “fix attempt” assumes that the rocks (or, in the real problem, all particles in the universe) were briefly, almost magically, accelerated away from some point. This process, called inflation, supposedly reached speeds billions of trillions of times faster than the speed of light.^c In instant later, and for no apparent reason, inflation stopped. All this happened by an unknown, untestable phenomenon—not by a blast. Then this matter became controlled by gravity after it reached just the right speed to give the universe an apparent age (based on one set of assumptions) of about 13.7 billion years.d Such flights of imagination and speculation are common in the field of cosmology.
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(to access the footnotes to this article click here)