Galileo, Newton and Einstein were all believers, although they probably believed in different Gods. I have personally known prof.Abdus Salam, a Nobel prize and Islamic believer, although he belonged to an Islamic minority group and his tomb in Pakistan was defaced by more radical believers.
Tullio

Even in Einstein's time if you didn't support a major religion, you were an outcast.

Well, one of the authors who proposed the expansion of the Universe we a Belgian Jesuit, the Abbe' Lemaitre. Now the international Astronomical Union has proposed that the Hubble constant be called Hubble-Lemaitre constant. Sometimes things get mixed up.
Tullio

---

In this case you would need a creation event for the establishment of the enormous and almost unfathomable amount of energy unleashed.

I can think of no origin for this energy if that were the first event in the Universe. However, if you posit that stars always existed --as the chicken before the egg so to speak-- Then the collapse and rebound could theoretically occur many times with the existence of stars etc. as the uncaused cause that just was. The last rebound was 13.5 Billion years ago. It's a shame we couldn't get a piece of the Obamarama rock to see if it were more than 13.5 Billion years old--probably not since it would have been consumed if it existed by the last big crunch and rebound.

A further thought in support of my hypothesis is dark matter/dark energy--Even though I have put forth an idea that this is simply the result of gravity wells--in counting up the mass needed to cause the universe to contract, I doubt if those doing the calculation included the putative dark matter in the calculation. Since we can't see what is happening now at the edge of the universe we may already be contracting. Perhaps we should look at our clocks just once again.

Chris --why don't you create a new thread since the origin of the universe is somewhat off-topic for dark energy/dark matter.

I am not sure if others wish to jump in and I suppose that I myself might have more to say --not sure of what right now.

In this case you would need a creation event for the establishment of the enormous and almost unfathomable amount of energy unleashed.

Well. It depend on if the result of the Big Bang we live in was the first Big Bang or one of the infinite many Big Bangs that could have been.
There is two different theories but both include a unfathomable amount of energy in a infinitesimal small dot.
If our Universe is cyclic with infinite many Big Bangs then there is no need for a creation event.
A problem with that theory is that our Universe is expanding due to Dark Energy and will probably never contract even with so much Dark Matter in it.
If it was the first Big Bang...
One hypothetical theory is that there is a mother Multiverse that create Big Bangs all the time.
A problem with that theory is that we probably never cannot verify that.
Actually there is one scientist that think she found a navel when analyzing the WMAP:)
However Laura Mersini-Houghton is not the only proponent to the idea of a Multiverse.
And they are not mad scientists.
Well perhaps "Mad Max" Tegmark:)

Anyway. I think we really need the Grand Unification Theory or GUT to really understand our Universe.

Oh. And to understand Dark Matter and Dark Energy of course:)

Oh again. Found this.
Laura Mersini-Houghton - What Do Black Holes and Dark Matter Reveal?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBfo4SNZq7I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87CMqqeS16I

In this case you would need a creation event for the establishment of the enormous and almost unfathomable amount of energy unleashed.

Infinities are like that. However given an infinite amount of time there will be an infinite number of virtual particle events with the possibility of energies up to and past the universe.

Hmm. Virtual particals?
Well they are not a candidate for Dark Matter.
And not for Dark Energy either.

This connection between dark energy and virtual particles has some serious problems: Another explanation for how space acquires energy comes from the quantum theory of matter. In this theory, "empty space" is actually full of temporary ("virtual") particles that continually form and then disappear. But when physicists tried to calculate how much energy this would give empty space, the answer came out wrong - wrong by a lot. The number came out 10^120 times too big. That's a 1 with 120 zeros after it. It's hard to get an answer that bad. So the mystery continues.

I've read of two recent proposal to derive the Hubble-Lemaitre constant, one is based on gravitational waves, the other on quasars as standard candles. in this moment one gets two conflicting values, one based on supernovae as standard candles, the other on the Planck satellite measurements of the cosmic microwave background.
Tullio

---

As this article says.
'It's only going to get more interesting' :)
https://phys.org/news/2018-10-gravitational-universe-expansion.html

A precise new number for the Hubble constant would be fascinating no matter the answer, the scientists said. For example, one possible reason for the mismatch in the other two methods is that the nature of gravity itself might have changed over time. The reading also might shed light on dark energy, a mysterious force responsible for the expansion of the universe.
The LIGO detectors are planned to begin a new observing run in February 2019, joined by their Italian counterparts at VIRGO. Thanks to an upgrade, the detectors' sensitivities will be much higher—expanding the number and distance of astronomical events they can pick up.

I fear that we are getting a bit off topic from the thread title of dark matter & energy. It would be a bit unfair for the OP Lynn have to ask us to keep to the title in a second thread of hers.

Chris, it's OK for threads to wander a bit. I don't mind. :)

---

The LIGO detectors are planned to begin a new observing run in February 2019, joined by their Italian counterparts at VIRGO. Thanks to an upgrade, the detectors' sensitivities will be much higher—expanding the number and distance of astronomical events they can pick up.

"It's only going to get more interesting from here," Holz said.

This is excellent news.

---

The Japanese KAGRA interferometer, underground and supercooled, should start taking data within this year.
Tullio

---

The KAGRA interferometer is really cool, once again I apologize for my poor taste with the pun.

---

Another cool experiment:) The IceCube Collaboration in Antarktis.
Last news from them was in 2017.
IceCube sets new best limits for dark matter searches in neutrino detectors
https://icecube.wisc.edu/news/view/508

There are not so many news about finding Dark Matter.
However Katherine Freese, Queen of Dark Matter, has some new ideas how to find that elusive matter.
Why the Best Place to Find Dark Matter May Be in a Rock
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-best-place-to-find-dark-matter-may-be-in-a-rock-20190107/

A powerful beam of microwaves could be fired into space to detect hypothetical dark-matter particles called axions. That is the proposal of Pierre Sikivie and Ariel Arza at the University of Florida, who hope to record a faint microwave “echo” from the dark matter thought to exist at higher concentrations in certain regions of the Milky Way.
https://physicsworld.com/a/dark-matter-could-be-detected-by-firing-microwaves-into-space/

---

A powerful beam of microwaves could be fired into space to detect hypothetical dark-matter particles called axions. That is the proposal of Pierre Sikivie and Ariel Arza at the University of Florida, who hope to record a faint microwave “echo” from the dark matter thought to exist at higher concentrations in certain regions of the Milky Way.
https://physicsworld.com/a/dark-matter-could-be-detected-by-firing-microwaves-into-space/

How many thousands of light years away are these pockets of dark matter and will humanity be around to get the echo?

Q1 How many thousands of light years away are these pockets of dark matter
A1 The Milkyway galaxy is 100,000 Light Years across

Q1 and will humanity be around to get the echo?
A1 At our present state of evolution it is doubtful

Summary

Another couple of kooky scientists looking for their 2 minutes of fame, supported by people susceptible to tabloid headlines.

Another couple of tabloid advertising sales people looking to cash in on the gullible uneducated masses.

Physics World is scarcely a 'tabloid' publication. It's distributed to members of one of the largest physical societies in the world.

A region of dark matter, called a caustic ring, may be quite near to us in space, enabling informative echoes from a microwave beam sent out from Earth to be returned in a reasonable length of time.

The proposed experiment would not be easy to set up, but could yield important new scientific data about dark matter and the structure of the universe. Noteworthy accomplishments in science require forward thinking like this, and, often, great effort.