, 7 tweets, 3 min read
The statement that 95% of the Universe is "dark" or "unknown" can be quite misleading if not properly qualified. It actually applies only at very large length scales (way beyond the largest structures in the Universe), and at a specific time (now) 1/5
In the local Universe things are different: in a sphere centered around the Sun and radius equal to the Earth's orbit, the Universe is ~100% ordinary matter. In a sphere surrounding our Galaxy, the dominant component is dark matter, while dark energy is irrelevant👇2/5
Then there's time dependence: the contribution of dark matter and dark energy varied enormously during the history of the Universe, going from irrelevant right after the Big Bang to the current ~95% 3/5
Even looking at relatively recent epochs, the "dark" to "known" universe ratio has kept increasing, and will keep increasing in the future up to ~100%, due to the emergence of dark energy... 4/5
The simplest way to avoid confusion is to show the evolution of the physical density. Matter (bright or dark) gets diluted as universe expands. DE is (equivalent to) a form of energy that does NOT get diluted by expansion 5/5
References: Universe pie chart from sci.esa.int/web/planck/-/5…; ratio DM to baryons in MW extracted from arxiv.org/abs/1805.01408; all other plots created with #astropy astropy.org
More information about the astropy.cosmology sub-package at docs.astropy.org/en/stable/cosm…
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh.

Enjoying this thread?

Keep Current with Gianfranco Bertone

Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!