If the universe is the answer, then what is the question? On Tuesday, December 9, 2025, at the Omni Hotel on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, Science Synergy Science Chair Dr. Noah Bray-Ali will present a poster on the life cycle of the universe at the 33rd Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics. Using Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the presentation will sketch how the nature and internal dynamics of dark matter determine how the the universe begins, how it develops, and how the universe will end.
“The universe ends when dark matter dissolves,” says Bray-Ali. “And it starts at the moment when dark matter forms.” The expansion of the universe that began with the Big Bang comes to an end at what relativistic astrophysicists refer to as Future Infinity. “Beyond our future infinity, and before the next big bang, the universe shrinks.”
Laboratory astrophysics tests of the underlying physical picture of the nature of dark matter are currently underway at Science Synergy. “The matching of the shape of light cones at future infinity with their shape at the Big Bang pins down the rest-mass energy of dark matter to better than one part per million precision,” Bray-Ali explains. A dedicated search for dark matter using a near-infrared Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a custom-built 1.2 Tesla strong, 1.0 meter long, custom-built permanent magnet assembly in the “sensing arm” promises to confirm or deny the prediction for the dark matter rest-mass energy within the first 10 minutes of data-taking using a tunable 1 MHz line-width, 3 mW near-infrared laser, tuned to the dark matter resonance near wavelength 2458 nm, and a lock-in amplifier that is locked into the frequency modulation of the laser within the 65 MHz wide resonance window.