Kanook – Tlingit Nation

April 2nd, 2010

Ever since Fritz Zwicky had a nightmare dreaming about the Coma Supercluster in
1933, scientists the world around have been scrambling to find and identify
something that isn’t there – makes sense to me, one aspect of such a task is that if
they finally find it, how will they know what it is they found. “Dark Matter” is
supposed to be a form of matter that is undetectable by our known sensing
techniques, that is using techniques we have developed here on our home world,
like sensing some sort of electromagnetic radiation, but scholars with grey matter
that is highly evolved believe this “Dark Matter” is there based on the gravitational
laws we have developed, again here on our home world.
In their quest these super-dooper thinkers and science fiction composers call
“Dark Matter” along with “Dark Energy” the greatest mysteries of the Universe.

Is this it?
They tell us that matter as we know and understand only makes up about 4.6% of
the “observable Universe”, whereas “Dark Matter” makes up about 23%, and “Dark
Energy” makes up the other 72.4% of our existence. This according to the
hypothesized “Big Bang Theory”.
 These great minds, existing on Peanut Butter sandwiches and French Brandy,
spend hour upon hour in their attempt to account for the “missing mass” in the
orbital velocities of Galaxies in Clusters, accumulating measurement after
measurement with some of findings supporting that maybe they are finding the
presence of this invisible “Dark Matter”. The problem is, if they don’t find this “Dark
Matter” and/or “Dark Energy”, then the Big Bang Theory begins to fall apart, this
they cannot have simply because these same great minds cannot accept the
possibility that the Universe always was!
Our human psychic is geared to a beginning and an end! Our brain it seems is
structured in some way that if there is no end or no beginning of something our
brain goes into a tailspin, something like grey matter runaway, compare this to
thermal-runaway in an electronic device that loses it cooling mechanism and
continues to heat up until it destroys itself.
As for the Big Bang Theory, everything seems to be in-place until some young
mind, let’s say around 5 years old asks the question, who put the thimble of matter
together in the 1st place? Then these beginning and end minds scurry off into the
night to return the next day and slap the child into a mental institution or force feed
them Prozac to calm their overactive mental process into an acceptable mainstream
thought process. In other words, do as we tell you and don’t get to far afield of
mainstream thinking.
These fellows set a bunch of tennis balls on a flat table, draw a bunch of lines
between them, spin the table on a flat surface and watch the lines twist and turn
according the gravitation forces here on Earth – they setup their measuring devices
detecting the motion of the tennis balls, and how the lines twist and distort as the
balls spin on the spinning table – they then stampede in groups to their radio
telescopes to try and duplicate their findings – Wala! They find nothing! Well I take
that back with a few other “bells and whistles” they detect minute changes in
temperature, and through the use of “gravitational lensing” determine in some
manner or form that “something” is affecting the rotational speeds of Galaxies.
They publish massive papers and textbooks on their spinning table theory, stand on
their Bully Pulpits lecturing newspaper reporters and students in their field – they
don’t dare invite any 5-year olds basically because they get laughed out of the hall.
They tell their captive audience that “Dark Matter” plays a central role in state-of-
the-art modeling of structure formation and galaxy evolution, and has measurable
effects on the “anisotropies1” (now there is a 50-cent word I had to look up)
observed in the cosmic microwave background. They wave their arms about as
spittle spews from their flapping gums saying such things as, “all the lines of
evidence ‘suggest’ that Galaxies, clusters of Galaxies, and the Universe as a whole
contain far more matter than that which interacts with electromagnetic radiation.” I
point you towards the powerful word, “suggests” along with another word that as of
late has captured the world’s attention, “modeling”, whereas Al Gore and his den of

1
Anisotropy is the property of being directionally dependent, as opposed to isotropy, which implies
homogeneity in all directions. It can be defined as a difference, when measured along different axes, in
a material's physical property (absorbance, refractive index, density, etc.)
scientific thugs have modeled to death man’s contribution to CO², making zillions of
dollars from their efforts to scare the be-Jesus out of the man driving his lawnmower
more than twice a week.
Continuing on with their lecture about the Heavens they throw another (this time
75-cent) word out into the people caught up in their rapture, “baryonic dark matter”
a ‘small’ part to “Dark Matter” telling the people sitting on the edge of their seats –
“the largest part of “Dark Matter” which does not interact with electromagnetic
radiation and is NOT only “dark” but also by definition is utterly transparent.
Now undetected a couple of 5-year-olds have gained entrance to the hall, the
young girl leans over and whispers her companions ear, “see I told you this was a
lecture put on by Barack – he is talking about our transparent economy that Dad
has been screaming about over the last year.” Her companion shakes his head, and
being the male in a male dominated society tells her to “get a Crip” and turns his
twinkling eye back to the Bully Pulpit waiting for a new revaluation in science.
Naturally he is sorely disappointed, but as mentioned he has a little more patience
than his wise-ass sister and sits awhile longer.
The man at the podium with the coke bottle glasses and pin-striped suit is
replaced by a short fat guy with more hair sprouting from his ears than on his
cranium peers out into the smoke filled room and says, “you’ve got to realize how
difficult our task really is, we’re looking for something that has no “atoms” and does
not interact with ordinary matter via electromagnetic forces – and it quite possibility
has in its make up (here he throws in the word hypothetical, which being disciples
of Al Gore, flies over most of the crowd – who translates it into fact) of entities such
as axions and supersymmetric particles, and keep in mind that “dark matter” does
not contribute to the formation of the elements in the early Universe.”
The boy turns to his sister, “see I told you they’re on to something.”
His sister looks at him, “what is an axion?”
He replies, “I think, according to the crazy next door neighbor, that it is another
hypothetical elementary particle that some dudes invented to solve a math problem
they had.”
She screws up her eyes, actually crossing them—“and what is the difference
between symmetric and super-symmetric?”
The boy shrugs his head, “well according to Mom, again it is something that we
only have ‘indirect evidence’ of its existence, in other words another Alice in
Wonderland term.”
His sister then asked him, “and what is this ‘does not contribute to the formation
of the elements’, I was taught in Sunday school that everything that was anything
was created during the Big Bang?”
Big brother smiles smugly, “well dummy, don’t you remember the part of about
when shortly thereafter the spark was ignited and light isotope of hydrogen was
created, which has only one proton, that another event took place just a few
minutes after the Big Bang and as I was told, that the formation of another heavier
isotope of hydrogen was formed, I think these brainer types call it deuterium.” At
this he raised his finger to his lips signaling his sister to put a plug in it, as the fat
guy continued on.
Because “Dark Matter” doesn’t contribute to the elements, the only way we know
it is there is by gravitational attraction, and in addition “if” the particles of which it
is composed are “supersymmetric” they can undergo annihilation interactions with
themselves resulting in observable by-products such as photons and neutrinos, or
what we call “indirect detection”.
At this the smart-crackin sister leans over to her stern but goofy brother, “so let
me get this straight, this little chub has gone to school, went onto some
distinguished institution of higher learning, got a piled-higher-and-deeper degree
and is now looking for something he can’t see, which doesn’t have any atoms and if
he finds it, it can only be found if two other items that might not exist, really exist
and destroy each other – and he gets paid to do this….I want a job like that!”
Translation of “piled-higher-and-deeper” for us slow learners is PhD.
Her brother looked over at her, “Put a plug in it! He’s making millions and millions,
of which Al Gore gets 25% and does nothing. I want Al Gore’s job!”
Little sister puts her hand over her mouth to stifle the laugh coming from her wise-
acre head, “this is better than any comedy show I’ve seen.”
The newly named PhD, “Chub” continues, “we believe that there are three types
of “Dark Matter”, we have one we call ‘Hot Dark Matter or HDM’, ‘Warm Dark Matter
or WDM’, and ‘Cold Dark Matter or CDM’ and also believe that there are some
combinations of these is possible. Most of our studies are based on the Cold Dark
Matter hypothesis, and the particle that is most commonly assumed to be we call a
neutralino. We have imagined that Hot Dark Matter consists of massive amounts of
these neutrinos, whereas Cold Dark Matter would lead up to a ‘bottom-up’ formation
of the invisible structure in the Universe while Hot Dark Matter would result in a
‘top-down’ invisible formation of the Universe.”
Sister leans over, “come let’s go get some popcorn, and chat a bit.”
They sneaked quietly out of the chapel of science and went across the street to a
local Internet Café – with the sister’s arms wildly about as her uneducated, almost
clear brain drives her voice box issuing questions that an educated religious person
would never dare to ask.
“Tell me, who is supposed to have provided the match that set this thing called
the Big Bang into motion, and was it the same person or thing that stuffed the
material into a small place in the 1st place?”
“Didn’t you pay any attention in Sunday School?” her brother asks, “when the
teacher was telling us that God was getting lonely, and decided he wanted some
company?”
Sister raises one eyebrow, “But Sam told us later on that God has a host of angels,
was he getting tired of just fooling around with them, and why?”
“I’m not sure, but remember this happened in God’s time about 13.7 million years
ago according to Sam, remember he told us that one of God’s days equals 1,000
years – so even for Sam the reason why God created the Universe is only a theory,
because God stopped talking to us a couple of hours ago, his time.”
 “So, a couple of hours ago God clammed up and is just sitting around watching
what is going on in the Universe he created, but I thought we are his only creation?”
Big brother a mouth full of popcorn mumbles, “Well we are according to some,
while there are more than a few who are asking questions about that part of the
story…albeit in dark lecture halls like we just left.”
“So, when it comes right down to it, all of this is a theory, Big Bang and all?”
“Right, but don’t bring it up at the dinner table or our Presbyterian mother will
turn your lights out!”
“Gotcha!”
Big brother took his sister over to one of the terminals, “Come on, we’ll go on-line
and see if we can find some answers – you fire out the questions and I’ll poke
around and see what we come up with.”
Finding an empty terminal they sat on one chair as the ever curious sister began
her questions.
“What is this other thing they call Dark Energy?”
Big brother poked the keys, “Well according to our scholars it is another made up
form of energy that is supposed to run wild in our Universe and is increasing the
size of it – in other words it is one way that our scientists and scholars can explain
why our Universe is expanding, and its acceleration rate is increasing on a daily
basis.”
“So they really don’t know what it is?”
“No, but they can’t seem to find out why the Universe is expanding, so I guess
they figure this energy is expanding and pushing the Galaxies and their system
further apart.”
“Pretty powerful if it’s driving the Universe apart.”
“Yep, but we can’t really find it, again its existence is only guess work or
speculation and if it does exist it can’t be very dense – some great minds or
scattered minds guess its density at roughly 10 to the minus 20 grams per cubic
centimeter – its existence is only speculated because science needs to fill in the
gaps we have in our Universe – in much clearer words, since science hasn’t yet
found out why we’re speeding apart and defying the laws of gravity as we
understand them – they’ve come up with this Dark Energy…seems to me when
science can’t find an answer they invent another substance and march on spending
billions and billions attempting to prove their invention. You and I do this, say
spilling a glass of milk and trying to invent a baby brother and we’d be in deep you
know what! Yet when you go to school and get a PhD, you’d get to do this every
day.”
“Let me ask, what was here before that spark that set off the Big Bang, I mean
how big was the space, and what if anything else was there and if it was where did
it go?”
“Well, there are some off-the-wall-5th graders who think, or speculate, that maybe
there are multiple Universes and that our Universe is a product of the other end of a
Black Hole in another Universe, but you’ll only find those types usually smoking
Afghanistan tobacco in some dark cellar in New York City.”
 “They might have something, after listening to the people in the lecture hall, it
looks like they have about as much, theory this and theory that – and then add it all
up and put it in a text book or two and then teach this stuff to those who
understand about as much as it all as they do, and now society brands others as
misfits – who is kidding who here?”
Her big brother smiled at her, “and just think, almost 74% of the Universe is made
up of something we can see, hear or feel – and people far more educated than I
hope ever to be, believe it!”
“As far as I can see,” his sister replied, “is that they have corned the market on
big words, you know like our crazy neighbor said, words like the cosmological
constant and that this is a direct result of the ‘cost of having space’, and that they
all assume that space has some fundamental energy – and that they call this
cosmological constant, are you sitting down, the ‘Lambda-CDM model’. And then
they tie it all together with E = mc2 which is Einstein’s theory of general relativity
and predict that it will have a gravitational effect – and telling us that as light
passes a body the light will bend because of the gravity created by the object. To
top it all off then they created something called ‘vacuum energy’ because it is the
energy density of empty vacuum…according to Eddie’s crazy dad, they say that
most theories of particle physics predict vacuum fluctuations that would give the
vacuum this sort of energy. Which is supposed to be related to the ‘Casimir Effect,
whereas there is a small suction into regions where virtual particles are
geometrically inhibited from forming, like between plates with tiny separation. Yet
when they do the math, a cosmological constant is estimated to be one value while
particle physics predicts a natural value of “1” in reduced Planck units, the constant
says 10 to the minus 120…quite a discrepancy I’d say, which they still haven’t
explained.”
“Yep,” her brother said, “they also tell us the cosmological constant has negative
pressure equal to its energy density and this is what is causing the expansion of the
Universe to accelerate – they arrived again at this conclusion based on
thermodynamics based on our Earth bound laws – that says that Energy must be
lost from inside a container to do work on the container, in other words if you’re a
math whiz you’d see that a change in volume (dV) requires work done equal to a
change of energy (-p dv) where p is pressure. But the amount of energy in a box of
vacuum energy actually increases when the volume increases (dV is positive),
because the energy is equal to pV, where p is the energy density of the
cosmological constant – therefore, p is negative and, in fact, =-p.”
“But what powered the Big Bang?” his sister asked, “all this stuff about Dark
Matter, whatever temperature and Dark Energy has explained that and I think
before we can began, we should at least have some sort of answer for that…don’t
you?”
“Well in truth, no one knows,” her brother answered, “there are a number of ideas
out there floating around – let us throw a few on the table and pick one we’re
comfortable with!”
 The “inflationary Universe” where another key assumption is made, since no one
was around to give it a look, our scientific PhDs can only assume, this assumption is
that just before it all came about there was some form of “unstable energy”,
another unknown. At some particular instant, this “unstable energy” was
transformed into the fundamental particles from which gave birth to “all” the matter
we observe today. This “instant” was the Big Bang! A result of this majestic action
is that, if even a pinpoint of space contained this primordial form of energy, then
the pinpoint of space would expand extremely rapidly, to say the least, I mean look
around you at “all” the matter we’re talking about here. Conservatively there are
200 billion Galaxies with each having at least 100-200 billion star systems, and if
they had hung around each other for even a microsecond they would have all
collapsed into each other and formed once massive spaceball. So this
instantaneous explosion, I mean we’re talking like happening yesterday must have
been some sight, blowing all this matter far and wide in what our scholars believe in
no particular order. Along with this blowing apart of all this energy, the event itself
created more of the “same” kind of energy – what takes some swallowing here is
the concept that “all” matter in the Universe came from a bit of energy weighing no
more than a medium sized pea. They (the PhD crowd) support this theory based on
Einstein’s theory applying it to the “inflationary Universe” model, therefore the
known laws of nature (as we understand them here on our planet) can in principle
explain where the matter and energy in the Universe came from, “provided” there
was at least a tiny seed of energy to begin with.
It turns out this model creates several testable predictions, one of the most
important theories is that the primordial energy must have been “lumpy”, meaning
unevenly spread out in space, due to a kind of quantum noise that came about
when the Universe was extremely small. This “lumpiness” would have been
transferred to the particles that “burst” into existence during the “Big Bang – which
the duplication of the original lumpy stuff would have continued on expanding, in
other words all that matter would NOT have spread evenly. Scientists with grey
matter that weight more than that original pea tell us that if everything had been
even Steven, the planets and stars would never have formed, and neither would
have we.
In support of this theory, astronomers have observed exactly the predicted
pattern, in a spectacular picture taken in 2003 by NASA’s WMAP space probe that
shows what the Universe looked like about 300,000 years after the “instant” of the
Big Bang – so in a nutshell, this “inflationary” model gives us for the 1 st time a
glimpse of now nature may have arranged to create “all” the matter in the
Universe, with only a tiny “seed” amount of space and energy. Where did the seed
of space and energy come from, in other words how did the Universe really begin?
Answer?
No one knows, and moving on scientists and wild thinkers are walking through the
question “if” there was nothing to begin with, then where did the “laws of nature”
come from? How did the Universe “know” how to proceed? And why do the “laws
of nature” produce a Universe that is so hospitable to life?
 Scholars have told us time and time again that a “theory” is NOT a guess or a
hypothesis, but it is a mathematical model that allows us to create predictions
about how the world behaves – unfortunately the two most important theories
known to man, Einstein’s theory of gravity and Max Born, Pascual Jordan and
Werner Heisenberg’s quantum theory we can’t make them play together, basically I
guess because something is missing from one of them or both of them – therefore
scholars and other kinds of brains have spun out a new set of ideas, one of which is
what is called the “string theory” that is supposed to help us understand space,
time, and matter and how the three interact with each other and just maybe give us
a better idea of where, how and why our Universe came into being.
The basic premise behind the “string theory” is that the basic particles in nature
are NOT point particles, but are shaped like strings, the theory requires (and
predicts) that space has more than three dimensions in which we move – and
according to one version of the theory, the particles and forces that make up our
world are confined to three dimensions we see, that is “except” gravity which can
“leak” out into the extra dimension – the 4th Dimension.
Since its inception in 1968, the string theory has done one thing that has been
beneficial, taken a few of our scholars and created a new area of concentration,
such as that the Big Bang could have been triggered when our own Universe
collided with a “parallel Universe” made of these extra dimensions. Pure
speculation of course, but isn’t it all speculation with some creative numbers
assigned to the theories.
One thing about the “inflationary model” and “string theory” is that the Universe
we live in is probably not that Unique – whereas the Big Bang Theory along with the
inflationary model predicts that this explosion is taking place in other regions of
space – and string theory suggest that these other mini-verses may be so different
from our own that even the “laws of nature” and the number of dimensions of space
may be different. This concept or notion that the Universe as we know may not look
like the part we live it may help explain one puzzling mystery about our own, why
are the constants and “laws of nature” just so, and not different? For example, why
is the “speed of light” not faster that it is? Why are electrons so much lighter than
protons they orbit in atoms? What we do know is that “if” these fundamental laws
and constants were even “slightly” different from what is observed, then life as “we
know it” would not exist – an example being if atoms were less stable, our stars and
planets would not have form.
Traditionally, physicists have sought some logical explanation for why the
Universe is as it is – but the likelihood of “multiple Universes” raises the possibility
that “nature” is merely playing dice: where some Universes might have the right
conditions for life, while others (some say the vast majority) do not.
It is evident that our Universe has expanded as our ability to view its mysteries
has developed, consider that a few years ago our Universe was the stars the human
eye could see in the midnight sky, then along came Galileo with his magic tube and
Wala the panorama of stars increased, giving us a good snapshot of our own Milky
Way Galaxy, and a mere century ago we had still not discovered that our Galaxy
was just one of billions, now today it is said we can peer back over time and space
and see the moment of the Big Bang itself. Year by year, month by month, day by
day and hour by hour our Universe is getting larger and larger, in two ways one by
expanding the other to understand the concept behind it.
I have no doubt that soon, maybe not in our lifetime that there will be “laws of
nature” that will change as we move out into space, mixing it up with time, gravity
and empty matter.