ChrisIB
Honorable
Mystery of dark matter may have been solved by Oxford scientists
The mysterious dark substances are not covered by the existing mathematical model of the universe - known as LambdaCDM - but they are known to exist because of their gravitational effects.
Now scientists have proposed a new model which unifies dark energy and dark matter into a single phenomenon - a fluid which possesses "negative mass".
Dr James Farnes, who led the team at Oxford's e-Research Centre, said: "We now think that both dark matter and dark energy can be unified into a fluid which possesses a type of 'negative gravity'.
I get that tensors are just scalars and vectors but negative gravity? how does that relate to the curvature of space time?The idea of negative matter was previously ruled out because it was thought the material would be less dense as the universe expanded - something which observations involving dark matter did not support.
However the Oxford team applied a new "creation tensor" to the model which allowed for negative masses to be continuously created.
The tensor demonstrates that when more and more negative masses burst into existence, the new material - the negative mass fluid - does not become diluted due to the universe's expansion.