Scientists in Europe and the US have announced that we’re even closer to tracking down that spooky “dark matter” we’ve all heard so much about. You know, the magical, mystery, mad stuff that happens to make up at least a quarter of the whole universe, but which of course has never been seen, and which NOBODY TALKS ABOUT for that matter. Seriously, dark matter should be on the news. It should be the single biggest matter of all the things that matter. Because it is so, so, so weird.
As well as taking up so much room yet being totally invisible (’til now, ha), sneaky dark matter also gets weird points for its unusual gravitational pull, which actually affects the formation of galaxies. It’s literally the bully of the universe, as it spends its free time pushing visible stars and planets around. But we can’t complain, because that’s how we caught the crook.
Finally, we mere, visible, kind humans, are squaring up to the big, bad, matter by tracking it down and pinning the tail on the weird donkey. Yep, we’re one weird step closer to identifying what dark matter is made of, hereby solving one of the biggest mysteries in science, in the universe, and well, in the whole wide weird. And if you didn’t already guess, I’m talking weird with a capital weird. If we figure this one out, we could be bumping up our chances of discovering whole new universes. I know.
The brave guys who decided to pick their fight with the darkest matter in town, initially discovered what seems to be the very first physical trace that has been left by the stuff, when they were casually studying cosmic rays that have been recorded on the International Space Station. I prefer to kick back with an episode of 30 Rock, but hey, everyone’s different – I guess someone’s got to study that cool cat Cosmic Ray.
Heading up the clearly stoked team is Dr Samuel Ting, an MIT prof and Nobel physics prize winner, who announced the findings at a convention in Switzerland. He told the audience that his team had found some leftover positron particles, which he calls a ‘surge’, that may well have come from dark matter. Or something else, but for now we’re assuming we’ve nailed it.
So, not ones to waste time when there’s dark matter to be slain, over the past few months Sam’s team have quickly put together a positron particle detector to happily live on the space station and look out for more surge traces, to confirm what we’re all thinking. We got the fella.
Us Earth-dwellers have been trying to find evidence it exists for years, including missions to dark caves (I guess we figured dark matter liked cold dark places) that have so far come back empty-handed. And now we’re so much closer to the big, bad, bully we can relax a bit. Or can we?
With dark matter thought to make up over a quarter of the total mass-energy of our universe and yet normal, accountable, VISIBLE matter – like galaxies, planets and 30 Rock box sets – only claiming a tiny 5% of everything, I’m on edge. I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that.
But either way, we humans are awesome, clever, totally-visible (yolo, dark matter) and we may be small but we are ready to stand up to the big, bad, bully that is dark matter.* If you’re listening dark matter, we know you’re there. And you need to know that we may be small, but we OWN this universe.
*Just to be sure, dark matter isn’t actually bad. Well, we don’t think it is. Oh yeah, we don’t know anything about it yet, we’re still trying to prove it’s there. But when we do prove it, boy are we going to party like Cosmic Ray.
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Image by Hubble: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) via Slate.
Filed under: Mind, Science, Technology
