Tag Archive

Dark Matter: The Dark Mystery

By Shlomo Maital  

     Think about it.  There could be an entire cosmos, universe, co-existing with our own,  but – entirely invisible to us, because its own laws of nature are utterly different from ours, and the stuff it is made of does not interact in any way with the stuff WE are made of.

      This is not science fiction. It comes from a leading theoretical physicist at Cal Tech (California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena),  Kathryn M. Zurek, writing in The Economist (March 18). 

          Here is an excerpt:    “.dark matter might not be one particular particle – it may be a whole hidden sector of dark particles and forces.  In this dark sector, particles would interact through their own independent forces and dynamics, creating a hidden world of cosmology running parallel to our own.  There could be dark atoms…held together by dark electromagnetism.  [there might be] huge dark atomic nuclei…helping form supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies.  [Note:  There is such a huge black hole in the center of our galazy,  the Milky Way].”

        Professor Zurek concludes: “The fundamental nature of the dark matter that pervades our universe is still unresolved.”

         Conclusion:   We don’t really know what the universe, i.e. we, the people, is made of.  We know 5%.   One in twenty.  70% is dark energy.  25% is dark matter.  So our ignorance embraces 95% of our universe.

          So – I am an economist.  We claim to know everything, while knowing basically zero. 

          The physicists happily, gleefully, joyfully, admit to knowing almost nothing. 

           If I were starting college again, I would probably become a physicist.  It is better to know some of the key questions, James Thurber wrote, than to pretend you know all the answers.