Dark Matter
Category archives for Dark Matter
The Last Refuge of a Science-Denying Scoundrel
Posted by Ethan on January 11, 2013 
“Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.” – Samuel Johnson I have a six-sided die. I’m going to roll it ten times, and record each roll. And when I’m done, I’m going to have an incredibly rare, bet-you-can’t-reproduce-it result!…
Yes, we really, REALLY need Dark Matter!
Posted by Ethan on December 7, 2012 
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe.” -Carl Sagan The Universe is a lot like an extremely intricate cake. We view it today as a snapshot in time, now that it’s complete. We can view the whole thing from one point of view, determined by where…
So much more than an Atom Smasher
Posted by Ethan on December 6, 2012 
“Forget it. I didn’t have that thing inside me where I wanted to smash against somebody and watch them break. I was too sensitive for that and disliked being that sensitive.” -Josh Brolin How do you figure out what something is made of? You take it apart — cracking it open if necessary — and…
So just what is out there beyond the Standard Model?
Posted by Ethan on November 16, 2012 
“Other than the laws of physics, rules have never really worked out for me.” -Craig Ferguson Earlier this week, evidence was presented measuring a very rare decay rate — albeit not incredibly precisely — which point towards the Standard Model being it as far as new particles accessible to colliders (such as the LHC) go.…
The Halloween Horror of the Dark Universe!
Posted by Ethan on October 31, 2012 
“A cosmic mystery of immense proportions, once seemingly on the verge of solution, has deepened and left astronomers and astrophysicists more baffled than ever. The crux … is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.” -William J. Broad Despite the wondrous, luminous sights of the night sky, we’ve…
What does the Universe look like beyond our Galaxy?
Posted by Ethan on August 9, 2012 
“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” -Carl Sagan Our night sky, quite literally, is our window to the Universe. Well, it’s kind of a…
How Big is the Entire Universe?
Posted by Ethan on July 18, 2012 
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” -Stephen Hawking The Universe is a vast, seemingly unending marvel of existence. Over the past century, we’ve learned that the Universe stretches out beyond the billions of stars in our Milky Way, out across billions of light years, containing close to…
Why Should There Be Dark Matter?
Posted by Ethan on April 27, 2012 “And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn’t have answers. In fact, where we didn’t even know the right questions to ask.” -Donald Johanson You can learn an awful lot about the Universe by asking it different questions than you asked about it previously. If all…
The Whole Story on Dark Matter
Posted by Ethan on April 19, 2012 “Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.” -Vera Rubin I want you to think about the Universe. The whole thing; about everything that physically exists, both visible and invisible, about the laws of nature that they obey, and about your place in it. It’s a daunting, terrifying, and simultaneously beautiful and…
A Cosmic Smashup and a Dark Matter Mystery?
Posted by Ethan on March 5, 2012 “I soon became convinced… that all the theorizing would be empty brain exercise and therefore a waste of time unless one first ascertained what the population of the Universe really consists of.” -Fritz Zwicky You very likely know that there are four fundamental forces in the Universe: gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear…
