[Al Tarket]

as you wish to be bias, so be it.

[Admiral_Stones]

Confusion of Dark Energy and Dark Matter - like some guys here did - is happening often. It's not quite the same though.

[Mika]

What's so special with Dark Energy or Dark Matter?

They are explanations for observed phenomena. Think it more like a general term for presently unknown reason that keeps the observed universe together. One could go with "unknown source of gravity / energy that keeps Universe together", but it has been named as Dark Matter/Energy since the actual mass/energy has not been observed yet, hence they remain in dark.

Or that is my understanding of the issue.

There are another explanations for those observations, like localized warping (galaxy level) of space-time. I'm not the right person to comment about the validity of those explanations. What I gathered from that stuff was that it is thought that there are more 'dense' spacetime areas and less 'dense' spacetime areas, curvature of the spacetime causing the observed phenomena in denser areas. This isn't mainstream explanation, though.

Mika

[Mika]

More of that stuff can be found at:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0508116v2
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/darkenergy_3-16-05.html
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0510453v1
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/31910
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/060214_darkenergyfrm.htm

There should be the original Scientific papers and some journalists comments about them (hopefully they got this one right). Anything more than this, you're on your own => I'm off to bed.

Mika

[perihelion]

Confusion of Dark Energy and Dark Matter - like some guys here did - is happening often. It's not quite the same though.

"Not quite" as in not even related in the slightest degree.  The similarity between the concepts of "dark matter" and "dark energy" ends with the names.  "Dark energy" is largely a misnomer.  The name conjures up images of negative matter exerting an anti-gravitational force on the rest of the universe.  At best, that is a misconception.  The theories out there that make even the slightest bit of sense to me would make it an innate property of space-time or the way in which discretized space-time organizes itself, not really "energy" in the classical sense of the word.

"Dark matter" may similarly turn out to be a misunderstanding of how gravity operates at very large (or very small) scales.  However, the operating theory at the moment is that dark matter would be physical matter like normal baryonic matter, but it only interacts with normal matter through the gravitational (and possibly the weak nuclear) force.

[TrashMan]

However you explain it, we can't even master more familiar and "tangible" sources of energy, so I'd put any notions of pulling infinite energy out of thin air into the "fairy tale" category.

[Ghostavo]

However you explain it, we can't even master more familiar and "tangible" sources of energy, so I'd put any notions of pulling infinite energy out of thin air into the "fairy tale" category.

Where does it say in the article or indeed anywhere in this thread except your post, anything about infinite energy?

[Admiral_Stones]

What if we build truly sentient, partially manlike computers? Would they be able to make all research for us by their advanced logic? Like, say, proving/disproving Dark Matter/Energy?

[karajorma]

What you say about using a small fraction of the brain is, as has been pointed out, a myth.

Although when people keep insisting it is true after being told that it's not it does make you wonder....

[blackhole]

You only use 10% of your brain because you can't use your math skills to read a book.