Dark Matter

Readers of this blog (whoever and how few you are) may recall that I am a big fan of theoretical physics. Now one of the biggest problems with the Big Bang theory -- which has been proven by remnants of microwave radiation and a red shift in receding galaxies -- is that the amount of known matter in the universe is just a small fraction of what the equations predict. (Perhaps a bigger problem is what was "before" the Big Bang, but that's a metaphysical question, as time was created by the Big Bang so there was no "before.") Physicists theorized that there was a lot of "dark matter" in the universe, perhaps in black holes, that had as yet been undetected.

Well now it has been found. Astronomers Detect First Invisible Galaxy [MSNBC.com]. An entire galaxy that is invisible, 500 times the mass of its visible "twin." As Carl Sagan would have said, "billions and billions" of dark stars is a lot of dark matter. Once again, the theoretical mathematics of Einstein and his heirs has been proven correct, decades later, by experimentation and observation.

It's a weird and wonderous thing, the scientific method. But it works.

 Posted by glenn