Not A Blog™

You may have seen that astronomers have recently provided the first conclusive proof of the existence of dark matter. The details get technical, but the thing to know is that they took a number of pictures of one area of the sky containing a large number of galaxies. The idea was that where galaxies were clumping, there would be dark matter pulling them together. Additionally, there was a large concentration of gas in the area which could be measured by other means. It turned out that the gas was acting in a particular way: exactly the sort of way it would act if such dark matter existed.

It’s not an understatement to say this is the most significant discovery in astronomy since extrasolar planets. Not to mention it’s an extremely valuable discovery in the field of physics, as well. Physics has been under fire lately, for such things as brane theory which uses multiple spacial dimensions, with many claiming that the “theory” is nothing more than speculation, as it offers no predictions and there is no practical way of testing it.

Among other things, the theory has attempted to explain small deviations in observable phenomena dependent on gravitation, specifically inflationary cosmology. Neutonian physics does an admirable job of solving large scale gravitational problems—the interaction between planets and soforth—but it falls short by failing to account for very minor, yet observable, devations. Einstienian gravitation improves on this even more. But where Einstien’s space-time constructs deviate from observation is in the inflation of the universe itself. It explains how the inflation could occur faster than light, but does not account for the clumping of galaxies that we observe.

To account for this, scientists have speculated about a dark matter with dark energy. The dark matter model creates enough extra gravity in the right places to account for the problems that Einstien’s equations do not, but it’s weird stuff. To clarify, it’s not the same thing as anti-matter, which has been known to exist for some time. It’s a previously undetected form of light-mass particles which interact strongly with each other, and with ordinary matter not at all. Since it doesn’t interact with “regular” matter, we can’t detect it, but we can infer its presence. To many, this is a cop-out way of doing science. If we can’t detect it, we can’t test it, and if we can’t test it, it’s not really science. It amounts to the same thing as saying “God put it that way”. It might be right, but it’s not verifiable.

But now that scientists have conclusively proven that dark matter exists via its gravitational influence of gas clouds nearby, it becomes a more bona fide scientific concept. The trick is to learn anything more about it. For one thing, the only kind we can detect is far away. Closer dark matter may exist, but it gets lost in the real stuff. Secondly, it’s not very energetic since it’s so light. Dark matter accounts for the majority of the stuff in the universe—about 70%—but only about 30% of the energy in the universe is dark energy. Interestingly, this is exactly the percentage predicted by models which attempt to explain the discrepencies in Neutonian and Einstienian models; yet another indicator that dark matter was legitimate, if ephemeral.

But the biggest, most “mysterious” element relating to dark matter is that we don’t know anything about it, except that it puts out exactly the right amount of gravity to account for certain observed cosmological phenomenea. It’s been speculated that it is light in mass, which leads to the notion that perhaps there are massless particles as well. In theory, a particle without mass would be able to travel infinitely fast, since it would require no energy. Practically, it would be nothing more than a carrier of energy, or a form of energy itself. These particles are completely undectable seeing as how they would not interact with regular particles, nor would they impart gravitational force on anything, although the debate continues as to whether other particles’ gravity would effect them. Suffice it to say that the Stephen Hawkins and Bryan Greens of the world have their work cut out for them.

The downside to all this is that it gives already lazy science fiction authors yet another mysterious phenomenon to pin alternate universes on. That cliche has been beaten to death, as far as I’m concerned, and it’s the last thing we need. In fact, I’ll make a prediction: the amount of time from this post that someone will hijack the concept of dark matter to create some bizarro alternate universe? -1 days.

-Max