Mysterious Dark Matter: Understanding Universe by Quantum Mechanics

This book introduces one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: dark matter.Dark matter and dark energy are probably the greatest mysteries of the modern universe.According to modern observational cosmology, the universe is filled with 68% unobserved dark energy,27% dark matter, and only 5% of the universe's ``matter'' is observable through telescopes.In 1989, the author prepared and distributed a booklet on the dark matter for Japanese graduate students,which was published as a book for the general public in 2005. Twenty years have passed since then.During this time, the COBE (1990) and Planck (2009) satellites have precisely measured the fluctuations of the 3 K radiation in the universe, and their analysis has enabled an accurate picture of the evolutionary processfrom the Big Bang to the present day. Including this latest data, we decided to present our ideas on the dark matter in English.Perhaps the diagram that most directly illustrates the subtitle of this book, "The Universe as Understood by Quantum Mechanics,''is that of the Ouroboros serpent. This diagram was presented by Sheldon Glashow, who won the Nobel Prize in 1979. The macroscopic head of the snake is joined by a microscopic tail. Here, the head represents the universe, and the tail corresponds to the microscopic world of quantum mechanics.In other words, it shows that the laws of the microscopic world can explain the structure of the macroscopic world.From this diagram, we can see that the macroscopic world is connected to the microscopic world by the dashed line of dark matter.This time we have added two new perspectives to this diagram. In the microscopic world; neutrinos with a mass (m_nu) that had not yet been determined in 1982, and in the macroscopic world, the distribution of galaxies with a bubble structure. The green dashed line connects the two objects.This is the point discussed in the last chapter of this book.It will be my great pleasure if, after reading this book, you are convinced that the laws of the microscopic world are deeply related to the structure of the gigantic universe. Read more