Recent observation on the Universe made astronomers believe that the Universe is indeed expanding at an increasing rate. They say that the continuous expansion might be caused by a mysterious dark matter that surrounds the stars and planets.

The ever expanding Universe theory comes across another more recent theory which states that gravitational forces are slowly decreasing in intensity and, therefore, the Universe expansion will eventually come to an end. Still, recent observations made by astrophysicists at Harvard University’s Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge reveal that dark matter produces an important amount of energy that accelerates space and pushes it farther away.

Astronomer Alexey Vikhlinin stated that the dark matter will eventually cause such transformations to the Universe as we know it today becuase it will replace almost all visible matter. Yet, according to Vikhlilin, this is a very slow process and it will take approximately 25 billion years to complete.

David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University in New Jersey explained that another striking discovery is that even though this kind of matter could be considered to be empty space or “nothing”, this “nothing” has its own weight and causes space and other matter to dissipate and expand.

The research delivered strong evidence that dark matter exists and, as the study’s co-author, William Forman states, the findings might make the scientific world to update and extend Einstein’s Theories of Relativity.

Evidence about dark matter has been first found back in August 2006. Then, NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory was used by Alexey Vikhlilin to image Bullet Cluster, a group of 86 tightly packed galaxies. The forces inside the Bullet Cluster couldn’t be explained by any gravitational forces ant, therefore, it was concluded that dark matter exists there.