"dark energy"?

Question

How does this "dark force" effect us? What excatly is it? How does this explain the formation of galaxies?

Answer 1

When astrophysicists took a look at the physics affecting galaxies, they discovered a huge discrepency in the energy they measured (could see) and the energy a swirling galaxy must have to keep from flying apart under centrifugal force. That discrepency was called dark matter/energy because it could not be observed or measured.

The discrepency was not a small one. In fact, further analysis and observations of what can be seen estimates that about 96% of the universe is dark matter/energy. (I use matter/energy to show that matter and energy are equivalent.)

Unitil recently no one has seen dark matter or any direct physical evidence that it exists. But just last year, 2006, a team at Stanford U. observed and photographed dark matter as it was brought to glow by the energy created during the collision of two galaxies. The photos are posted on the web. [See source.]

Of course, dark matter/energy affects us. It keeps our Milky Way from falling apart for one thing. Without dark matter/energy the stars would not have clumped together to form galaxies. Stars, if they formed at all, would be scattered all over...making our night sky quite a bit different from what we now see.

I don't know of any other impacts on us. Search of the web sites also fails to show any impacts other than the effects on galaxies and their clustering.