To read the tribute to SFC Marcus Muralles, please click here
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Wrap Your Brain Around This One...
As some of you know, I'm a bit of a science junkie. So, while I don't go out of my way to look for cool science news, I am definitely not going to shy away from them, either.
Way back in the day (high school), I talked my parents into letting me go to a physics seminar at Parks College. Every Saturday morning for 8 weeks, I drove down to Parks for a lecture. Astrophysics. Optics. Thermodynamics. Superconducting super colliders. Avionics. Engineering. Quantum physics. Relativity. Aaahhh.... warm fuzzies just thinking about it.
One of the things that I remember being mentioned was the idea of "dark matter." Dark matter is cool stuff... you can't see it... no idea what it's made of. But, it has to be there. To my sarcastic 16 year-old brain, it seemed like the perfect cop-out. "Hmm... none of these equations make sense. But... it all looks right. So there has to be something else there influencing things. Something we can't see. Or measure. Yeah... that's it."
So, cosmologists and other like-brained eggheads have been researching this mystery matter, and... they found a whole galaxy of the stuff!!!
If theorists are correct, "normal matter" only makes up four percent of all the "stuff" out there. Up to twenty-three percent is this "dark matter". We might want to have a clue before we start running into things we can't see. Just makes sense to me.
Oh? That other 73%? Dark energy. Try wrapping your brain around that one.
Way back in the day (high school), I talked my parents into letting me go to a physics seminar at Parks College. Every Saturday morning for 8 weeks, I drove down to Parks for a lecture. Astrophysics. Optics. Thermodynamics. Superconducting super colliders. Avionics. Engineering. Quantum physics. Relativity. Aaahhh.... warm fuzzies just thinking about it.
One of the things that I remember being mentioned was the idea of "dark matter." Dark matter is cool stuff... you can't see it... no idea what it's made of. But, it has to be there. To my sarcastic 16 year-old brain, it seemed like the perfect cop-out. "Hmm... none of these equations make sense. But... it all looks right. So there has to be something else there influencing things. Something we can't see. Or measure. Yeah... that's it."
So, cosmologists and other like-brained eggheads have been researching this mystery matter, and... they found a whole galaxy of the stuff!!!
Astronomers have discovered an invisible galaxy that could be the first of many that will help unravel one of the universe's greatest mysteries.... The theory suggests that pockets of pure dark matter ought to remain sprinkled across the cosmos. In 2001, a team led by Neil Trentham of the University of Cambridge predicted the presence of entire dark galaxies.What does this mean for us on Planet Earth in the year 2005? Not much, beyond the fact that these guys just got their funding for the foreseeable futue. It's what this might mean for our children's great grandchildren that's cool. At the rate things are going now, humanity will have to reach for the stars at some point. We will either outgrow this home, or we'll need resources, or our innate curiosity will just get the better of us. Regardless of the reason, at some point, we'll launch ourselves into space, not just to orbit our world, but to find new worlds to explore.
If theorists are correct, "normal matter" only makes up four percent of all the "stuff" out there. Up to twenty-three percent is this "dark matter". We might want to have a clue before we start running into things we can't see. Just makes sense to me.
Oh? That other 73%? Dark energy. Try wrapping your brain around that one.
