Post by Mr. Jon Donnis on Apr 26, 2013 19:21:43 GMT
Hi. Higgs here. Today I’d like to expound upon the nature of faith and science. The idea came to me while my human companion and I were reading about new advances in the search for so-called dark matter. First was news of an ambiguous but interesting signal from a detector aboard the International Space Station. Then, even more exciting hints emerged from a detector 2000 feet underground.
Our scientist friends tell us dark matter may lurk all around us. It doesn’t emit light or form atoms. And they say there’s five times as much of this weird matter as the familiar kind that makes up rocks and stars and cat food. It got me pondering the fact that scientists believe in dark matter strongly enough to expend considerable effort chasing it.
The Bible defines faith as “the conviction of things not seen,” and dark matter seems like a good example of the unseen. And yet, a number of physicists and astronomers are quite convinced dark matter is out there, and equally convinced there are no such things as auras, psychic energy fields, ghosts, or past-life regression.
Our friend Mark Trodden, a physicist from the University of Pennsylvania, explains that he doesn’t have to blindly believe in dark matter because scientists see its effects—kind of the way we see there’s wind when the trees sway. Through their telescopes, astronomers see galaxies (and whole swarms of galaxies) moving as if they’re being pulled by the gravitational tug of something unseen.
A somewhat analogous situation came up in the early 1800s, when scientists didn’t know the planet Neptune existed. But a few clever astronomers predicted it was there. The laws of physics told them exactly how the other planets should be orbiting the sun, and Uranus was moving in a different path, as if disobeying the law of gravity. It was possible that scientists were wrong about the way gravity works, but another explanation was that some unseen planet was pulling on Uranus and altering its orbit. When they found Neptune, it turned out the planets were all obeying gravity after all.
This was not quite enough to satisfy my cat curiosity, however. I still wanted to know why scientists are sure the dark matter isn’t made of planets, dust, flying kibble, or something else that’s simply hard to see. Instead, they keep insisting it’s made of some kind of particles they haven’t discovered yet – particles that can pass through us and even through the entire Earth.
Our friend Dave Goldberg, a physicist at Drexel University, told us that, first of all, they’ve looked for various forms of hard-to-see ordinary matter and not found it. Beyond that, they’ve calculated how much ordinary matter should exist in the universe based on what kind of atoms got cooked in the primordial soup right after the big bang.
According to the big bang theory, the universe expanded from a fireball of protons, neutrons, and electrons that eventually cooled off enough to form atoms. Which kinds of atoms got cooked up depends on the density of all the building blocks of matter. The big bang cooked a little bit of helium, some lithium, and a heavy form of hydrogen called deuterium. (Stars were required for more cooking before kibble and other edible forms of matter emerged.)
The scientists’ calculations show that the density of the atom-forming kind of matter in the universe isn’t enough to account for all the stuff that appears to be pulling galaxies around the sky. So they proposed that swarms of some ghostly kind of matter are to blame. They’ve even proposed a couple of types of such particles that could exist, in theory.
Since this is science, people have to do experiments to test claims of this kind. So scientists built a couple of devices capable of detecting signals from such particles. One is called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and is flying on the International Space Station, and the other, called the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search II, is more than 2000 feet underground in a mine in Minnesota. So far there are just hints, but stay tuned.
Thank you for letting me express my thoughts. Can I have a treat now? — Higgs
Higgs is a cat and an armchair scientist, who is fascinated by astronomy, physics, evolution, and human behavior. He also enjoys scratching the arms of the couch. You can keep up with him on Twitter here. His caretaker and agent, Faye Flam, has written about science for The Economist, The Washington Post, Science, and more
www.parade.com/6041/fayeflam/why-scientists-believe-in-dark-matter-and-other-invisible-things/
Our scientist friends tell us dark matter may lurk all around us. It doesn’t emit light or form atoms. And they say there’s five times as much of this weird matter as the familiar kind that makes up rocks and stars and cat food. It got me pondering the fact that scientists believe in dark matter strongly enough to expend considerable effort chasing it.
The Bible defines faith as “the conviction of things not seen,” and dark matter seems like a good example of the unseen. And yet, a number of physicists and astronomers are quite convinced dark matter is out there, and equally convinced there are no such things as auras, psychic energy fields, ghosts, or past-life regression.
Our friend Mark Trodden, a physicist from the University of Pennsylvania, explains that he doesn’t have to blindly believe in dark matter because scientists see its effects—kind of the way we see there’s wind when the trees sway. Through their telescopes, astronomers see galaxies (and whole swarms of galaxies) moving as if they’re being pulled by the gravitational tug of something unseen.
A somewhat analogous situation came up in the early 1800s, when scientists didn’t know the planet Neptune existed. But a few clever astronomers predicted it was there. The laws of physics told them exactly how the other planets should be orbiting the sun, and Uranus was moving in a different path, as if disobeying the law of gravity. It was possible that scientists were wrong about the way gravity works, but another explanation was that some unseen planet was pulling on Uranus and altering its orbit. When they found Neptune, it turned out the planets were all obeying gravity after all.
This was not quite enough to satisfy my cat curiosity, however. I still wanted to know why scientists are sure the dark matter isn’t made of planets, dust, flying kibble, or something else that’s simply hard to see. Instead, they keep insisting it’s made of some kind of particles they haven’t discovered yet – particles that can pass through us and even through the entire Earth.
Our friend Dave Goldberg, a physicist at Drexel University, told us that, first of all, they’ve looked for various forms of hard-to-see ordinary matter and not found it. Beyond that, they’ve calculated how much ordinary matter should exist in the universe based on what kind of atoms got cooked in the primordial soup right after the big bang.
According to the big bang theory, the universe expanded from a fireball of protons, neutrons, and electrons that eventually cooled off enough to form atoms. Which kinds of atoms got cooked up depends on the density of all the building blocks of matter. The big bang cooked a little bit of helium, some lithium, and a heavy form of hydrogen called deuterium. (Stars were required for more cooking before kibble and other edible forms of matter emerged.)
The scientists’ calculations show that the density of the atom-forming kind of matter in the universe isn’t enough to account for all the stuff that appears to be pulling galaxies around the sky. So they proposed that swarms of some ghostly kind of matter are to blame. They’ve even proposed a couple of types of such particles that could exist, in theory.
Since this is science, people have to do experiments to test claims of this kind. So scientists built a couple of devices capable of detecting signals from such particles. One is called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and is flying on the International Space Station, and the other, called the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search II, is more than 2000 feet underground in a mine in Minnesota. So far there are just hints, but stay tuned.
Thank you for letting me express my thoughts. Can I have a treat now? — Higgs
Higgs is a cat and an armchair scientist, who is fascinated by astronomy, physics, evolution, and human behavior. He also enjoys scratching the arms of the couch. You can keep up with him on Twitter here. His caretaker and agent, Faye Flam, has written about science for The Economist, The Washington Post, Science, and more
www.parade.com/6041/fayeflam/why-scientists-believe-in-dark-matter-and-other-invisible-things/