I found this picture last night on MyConfinedSpace.com and laughed pretty hard. Being a lolcat and Cthulhu fan, I just found it hilarious.

So I’ve been pondering some theoretical physics and astronomy lately and have had some thoughts on the matter.

For those of you who don’t know, the universe is enormous. But the mass we can see only accounts for a small portion of the mass we expect the universe to be. Scientists have dubbed this missing mass as dark matter. Dark matter has a counterpart called dark energy. It’s energy and matter that is invisible to our current technology.

I find all of this fascinating and for the life of me cannot understand why dark matter and/or dark energy would exist. I have another explanation that I will try to verbalize.

Astrophysicists have discovered that the universe, since the big bang, has expanded. This inflation is not uniform. Thus space must be expanding in between objects as well. This is the only way that objects can speed up as they move away from the singularity of the big bang. That’s all well and good.

The interesting thing is that the universe is very ordered. Gasses coalesce into solids. Solids coalesce into planets, asteroids, comets, and stars. These all coalesce into galaxies. Galaxies coalesce into clusters. What scientists have found is that these clusters fall into what they describe as the cosmic web.

This web of galaxies and matter are held in place by the elusive dark matter and dark energy.

When I hear scientists talk of this dark stuff, I am reminded of how we (humans) used to think the air was the ether. And stars were close, and so on.

So I have two thoughts/theories on this:

1. Dark matter and dark energy is/are a dimensional phenomenon. Since it is, we won’t, as four dimensional creatures, be able to ever comprehend its nature. Just as a point cannot comprehend a cube. It may be forever elusive.

2. Dark matter and energy are a force that is exerted upon our universe by the structures on the other side of the fabric of space time. This theory is a little more complicated in my mind. It really boils down to anti-gravity. If the fabric of space time is like a sheet. And objects with mass distort the sheet thus causing gravititational pulls on other objects (they fall into the holes) then it stands to reason that there may be an equal and opposite force being exerted upon the fabric from the other side to balance it out. In my mind I think of the cosmic web tendrils as tube socks. The mass of the contents distort the outside of the tube. Perhaps the dark stuff is merely the universe balancing back.

Nature always seeks a balance. Where is the balancing force for gravity?

Anyway, it’s quite clear in my mind and I thought I’d share.

If you haven’t heard, Charlton Heston died yesterday at the ripe old age of 84. While I don’t revel in his death, he did kind of sort of go nutty with the whole NRA thing.

While most of the world remembers him for Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments, CH will always be remembered by me as Taylor, the wayward astronaut lost on the crazy mixed up ape planet. Talk about monkey love…

Anyway, I guess we can pry that gun from his cold dead hands now.