What is dark matter?

Question

can you hold it in your hand?

Answer 1

dark matter is matter that does not influence electromagnetic radiation such as light, microwaves, radiowaves, ect.... Therefore, typical scientific methods for detecting it are not sufficient. However, its presence can be inferred from its effects on other "light" or visible matter (gravitational affects).
For example, in space the trajectory of a particle will be bent if it comes in close proximity to something heavy, by noticing that the trajectory of visible matter is changing and that there is nothing visibly present that could have caused the change, the presence of dark matter can be assumed.
As for holding it in your hand, you would never know if you did. Furthermore, most of the things that we are talking about here are atomic or subatomic in size and therefore talking in terms of holding it is a bit abstract.

Answer 2

Maybe a place for things just waiting to happen. A womb exists but doesn't have a baby all by itself. Perhaps dark matter is just waiting for the dark energy to send out the right vibes. Why can't science be sexy and just as elegant?

Answer 3

OK folks, dark matter for one does not compare to a black hole simply because a black hole is just that: a black hole. A black hole is the remnant of a collapsed star, white dwarf, whatever you think is correct to you all. In a black hole, the mass is equal to many times that of our sun ( and if you are a bit late there is one at the center of our galaxy... no were not at the center of our galaxy ) but just the gravity remains spiraling anything that gets to close into tiny point before it spits it back out, but not after it stretches its very atoms. Dark matter as I understand it is only detected because of the visually noticed bending of light from entities that get to close, but it has also been seen to draw these entities close to it meaning that it had mass and a gravitational pull, but noticing that it does not have a stationary postition in space rules out the possibility of it being a black hole. If it were a black hole then you would also note that B.H.'s thrive off of pulling in and spitting out "things" that get close enough. After time B.H.'s expire and are theorized to float off into space as " dead". Dark matter acts differently as it has a constant "pull" AHH! Who am I kidding, Im only 21. Guess I couldnt possibly know this stuff.

Answer 4

Astronomers have noticed that the motion of galaxies can't be accounted for by the presence of detectable matter (..stars, gas clouds, brown dwarf stars, neutron stars, etc.,.) After detailed studies and research, scientists determined that the universe has only about 4% of the required matter to cause observed movement of galaxies. So far, the missing matter hasn't been discovered, although there are a number of theories about what it might be, such a WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) and MACHOS (Massive Halo Objects). The "missing mass" is generally known as dark matter, not to be confused with dark energy.

Answer 5

I'm not entirely sure as to what Dark Matter is, but I do know that it exists only in rifts and black holes. if the matter is anything like the pace it comes from it is not safe to touch, nor would I think you could even touch it. Unlike Anti-matter Dark matter does not replace our matter, but it does screw with our physical make-up. I'm pretty sure that it's very, in fact incredibly heavy, and thus is only affected by gravity

Answer 6

Dark matter is something out of our world , we cant use our measures to detect it or see it.. So they call it dark matter not to seem ignorant in front of the big picture of the universe..

Answer 7

dark matter is just non-luminous (cannot be seen because they do not reflect back light) matter that cannot be seen in the universe, something like black holes.. its assumed that there is more dark matter than what comprises the universe..

u can possibly hold it in your hand.. but no one knows yet because they might not even exist except for black holes

Answer 8

Dark matter is what some scientists call it when there is obviously mass but nothing can be seen.

Answer 9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_cluster

no, you can not hold dark matter in your hand because we are made of ordinary matter, and dark matter interacts only thru gravitation. to hold something in your hand, it has to interact with your hand thru electrostatic repulsion of the electrons in the atoms of your hand and the electrons in the atoms of the thing in your hand. it seems that dark matter is all around everyone of us, but it just passes thru ordinary matter undetected in any way. incidentally, no more than four percent of dark matter can be ordinary matter, but the rest is unknown.

Answer 10

We don't understand anything about it, so we call it dark matter! There are parts of the universe where there seems to be mass, but nothing there.