Since 2001, business developer Richard Berrebbi has imported Chinese medicinal herbs, building a network of over 100 sales professionals as a partner in American Healing Technologies. Richard Berrebbi has also provided venture capital for companies that focus on alternative and traditional medicine. In his spare time, Rich Berrebbi maintains an abiding interest in astronomy.
To their puzzlement, scientists have found that visible matter (planets, stars, and galaxies) accounts for only 5 percent of the mass of the universe. What makes up the other 95 percent? Researchers are only beginning to understand.
An invisible substance called dark matter is thought to compose 20 percent of the universe. So far, dark matter has remained undetectable, but scientists infer its existence from the effects of its gravity.
According to traditional astronomy, stars at the edge of galaxies should move slower than those at the center. But they don’t. Regardless of galactic location, stars orbit at about the same speed. Gravity from an unseen source must be acting on the outer stars, slowing them down. Scientists labeled this source dark matter. Possible explanations for dark matter range from exotic particles that don’t affect ordinary light and matter to differing forms and intensities of gravity itself.
The other 75 percent of the universe, it is theorized, is composed of something called dark energy. Physicists had previously supposed the attraction of gravity slowed the expansion of the universe. But in the 1990s, they discovered that it was expanding at an ever-faster rate. So far, no one can adequately explain dark energy, although some scientists postulate that it is a fundamental force called quintessence. Still, no one yet knows why it exists.
