[dark matter] and the limits of science

Electromagnetic radiation is often optical - the visible light you see with your eyes. But this is just one type of light energy. Electromagnetic radiation comes in many wavelengths: radio waves (the longest), infrared, optical, ultraviolet, X-rays and short gamma rays (the shortest, and also the highest form of energy. Galaxies, nebulae, stars, trees, microscopic bugs and anything else that can be observed glows with energy at one of these wavelengths.

In recent decades, researchers have become increasingly convinced that there is a vast amount of material in the universe that does not glow at all. This mysterious "dark matter" is believed by most scientists to be the most common stuff in the universe, perhaps making up 90 percent or more of the total mass. Researchers say the Coma Cluster of galaxies shows effects of gravity that can only be explained by the presence of some unseen dark matter.

Dark matter does not emit enough energy to be directly detected. But indirectly, researchers note its presence. Anything that has a mass exerts the force that we call gravity. Dark matter - or something that we have yet to find - exerts a gravitational pull on objects in and around distant galaxies, and even on light emitted by those objects, say scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

By measuring these mysterious effects of gravity, researchers determine how much "extra" gravity is present, and hence how much extra mass, or dark matter, must exist. In large clusters of galaxies, for example, scientists say that five to 10 times more material exists than can be accounted for by the stars and gas they find.

What is dark matter made of?

Normal matter - you, your computer and the air you breathe - is made of atoms, composed of protons, neutrons and electrons - "baryonic" matter. They suspect some dark matter is of the normal, baryonic variety. This might include brown dwarf stars and other objects that are simply too small, or too dim, to be seen from great distances.

But most dark matter is thought to be non-baryonic.

Glossary of wavelengths of light

Radio: Wavelengths longer than infrared and very low energy.
Infrared: Wavelengths longer than the red end of visible light and shorter than microwaves (roughly between 1 and 100 microns). Little infrared radiation reaches Earth's surface, but some can be observed by high-altitude aircraft or telescopes on tall mountains.
Optical/Visible: Electromagnetic radiation at wavelengths visible to the human eye. We perceive this radiation as colors ranging from red (longer wavelengths about 700 nanometers) to violet (shorter wavelengths about 400 nanometers).
Ultraviolet: Wavelengths shorter than the violet end of visible light. Earth's atmosphere blocks most ultraviolet light.
X-rays: Very short wavelengths and very high-energy; X-rays have shorter wavelengths than ultraviolet light but longer wavelengths than gamma rays.
Gamma rays: The highest energy, shortest wavelength electromagnetic radiation. Usually, they are thought of as any photons having energies greater than about 100 keV (kiloelectron volts).

[Robert Roy Britt, Understanding Dark Matter and Light Energy, 05 January 2001]

Science is the observation and explanation of the observable and recordable. The hegemony of science in most people’s minds is a desire to replace the eternal verities of the Judaeo-Christian tradition with that of another eternal verity – Science.

The ‘dial-in’ mentality, so beloved of the middle-aged male, especially one involved in the technology field, has inherent flaws if it does not take into account the dark matter, the metaphysical, the non-observable and unrecordable.

Someone said to me recently that if you don’t argue from within the laws of physics, you can argue anything you like without having to support it.

Well yes, that is so. If 90% or so of the matter in the universe is dark, then why can’t 90% or so of what actually exists out there, including G-d and Heaven, also be so? Why can’t it?

Our technophile rails against that because he finds terminology like ‘G-d’, ‘the heavenly host’ and ‘the holy spirit’ so unscientific that it has to, ipso facto, be:

WRONG.

By what logical process is something wrong if it is couched in distasteful terminology? If DK, for example, couches his arguments in an ocean of swearing, does that make them any less valid?

So, all power to the ‘giant lizards’ and ‘shape-shifters’, I say. The notion that the deity Science is omnipotent is now being so seriously eroded [see climate change and evolution] that even its most ardent supporters are being forced onto the back foot.

In an age where science and technology are attempting to stamp out the last vestiges of ‘superstition’, which they like to lump under one all-inclusive header ‘religion’, a pejorative term for verities and idiocies all thrown together on one funeral pyre, unfortunately for the technophiles, questions unexplainable by Science are appearing more and more.

This is the basis for Armageddon, as it was for Hesse’s war between men and machines in Steppenwolf. The technophile disciple of the indifferent god Science, the one who feels he is the most rational of all creatures, blindly denies the existence and influence of the metaphysical in the universe.

If he was a true scientist, he’d try to take it into account in his modelling of the cosmos, instead of spitting out the word ‘religion’ as some sort of logical end to all speculation over that which we cannot understand. Where does the Logos fit into his model, for example?

Man is not G-d – he’s just a very clever bunny, that’s all, with distinct physical and mental limitations, who’s learning all the time. Technological advances are wonderful, especially in the solution of problems in medicine, transport, provision of resources and so on. No argument there. But to provide a solution without taking into account disagreeable phenomena – that is a recipe for the ultimate failure of that solution.