On the Nature of Dark Matter

The Universe as we understand it, appears to be comprised of several distinct forces that act upon all of the matter contained within. Interestingly enough, they can all be represented by the same general equation:

F = k(q₁q₂)/r²

Classically known as "Coulomb's Law," it holds true for all forces. Whatever the force (F) might be, it can be determined by multiplying some quantifiable values (q) together, dividing the result by the distance between them (r) squared, and throwing in a constant (k) to ensure that the answer comes out in the right form.

One example of this is the electrical attraction between two charged masses. Electrically speaking, positively charged particles (cations) attract negatively charged particles (anions) while each repels like charges. If the force between two ions is positive, it is repulsive. If it is negative, then it is attractive.

This "attract" and "repel" effect is also exhibited in magnetism where "North" attracts "South" and repels "North." Again, the same equation is used to calculate the force, but with a different constant (μ/4π).

 F = μ(q_m1q_m2)/4πr²

However, while the same equation applies to gravitational forces, there is only attraction between masses.

F = G(m₁m₂)/r²

There is no "like signs repel and unlike signs attract" when it comes to gravity. But what if there was? What if there was matter that repelled what we know as matter? And, if it existed, what would we call it? Anti-matter?

When I took Physics, we were taught that the Universe was expanding, but at a steadily decreasing rate. This was widely understood because of the gravitational attraction between all matter pulling everything back toward the Origin of the Universe. However, as happens to many scientific theories, this was later shown to be false and the Universe is actually expanding at an ever-increasing rate. This begs the question: What is it that's pushing it apart?

It's easy to imagine this anti-matter clumping together in their own galaxies, but it's not so easy to determine what we would sense in looking for them. Would they produce visible light? Radio waves? Radiation of a sort that we can't detect?

At the moment before The Big Bang, some theorize that everything in the Universe was contained in a single locus of no dimensions. When it suddenly went SPROING!, whatever anti-matter that existed would have repelled the "normal" matter and be somewhere far, far away by now, but still providing the expansive force to accelerate everything outwards. No one knows for sure, especially me, but the presence of other-matter that repels our normal-matter brings a bit of symmetry to my view of the Universe. It's definitely food for thought.

Read "Raising Miss Ellie" for an alternative explanation of the Universe!

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Second Verse (A Five-Minute Short Story)

 

"WAKE UP!"

Harold was jolted out of his sleep and rolled off of the couch and onto the floor. He looked around and realized that he had been dreaming. Even as he tried to recall the dream, it had almost immediately faded away. He got up and made his way to the bathroom where he relieved his nearly-full bladder before washing his hands. He splashed some cold water on his face, the icy sting shocking him fully awake. He smiled at himself in the mirror and the face in the mirror smiled back. He had stayed up late studying for his Physics exam and he was as ready as he would ever be.

---

Four days later, he was rudely awakened again. This time it was his sister calling.

"Hi, Sis! What's up?"

"Turn on your TV! Now!" she said, the excitement clearly showing in her voice.

"Do you know what time it is?" He fumbled around for the remote and turned on the television. "What am I looking for?"

"It's on every channel, Harold. We're under attack!"

He stared dumbfounded at the World Trade Center as the two towers burned. The chyron said something about the Pentagon. "What's happening?"

"No one knows, but Mom and Dad are at work today." Her voice caught in her throat, "I can't get hold of either of them!"

He watched blindly as the first tower collapsed into a heap of billowing rubble. He was dimly aware that it was the one in which his parents had their offices.

His sister was still on the phone. "Harold are you there?" she asked.

"Oh my God, Sis! They're gone!"

---

Harold, like many others, spent the next few weeks in a daze. Classes were cancelled, but he was unable to fly to New York to be with his sister since all air travel had been suspended. The deaths of their parents had not been officially confirmed, but there wasn't much doubt as to their fate. During a phone call, his sister triggered a thought in his head that suddenly pushed itself to the forefront.

"It's really too bad someone can't go back in time and warn everyone," said his sister, somewhat wistfully. "We know who to look for and when and where to find them. Prevent them from getting on the planes and it would prevent the whole tragedy."

"That'll never happen, Sis." However, even as he said it, he asked himself, Why not?

Harold quit going to classes, although he met several times with a number of the professors in the Math and Physics departments. None of them took his idea of time travel seriously. Even if it was possible, they pointed out, there was no known way to make it happen.

For the next few months, Harold read everything that he could about time travel and was finally ready to concede that the professors had been right. It was at that moment when it dawned on him that he had been there. His brain and its particular waveforms at the moment had experienced everything. They were still part of his organic being and, he theorized, they could be linked to his present self. All he had to do was reproduce the brainwaves he experienced at some point prior to that day.

Over the next year, he developed a hairnet of sorts that contained 1,024 powerful electro-magnetic coils that were wired to his computer. By donning the hairnet and running through combinations of power and frequencies, he discovered that he could induce a dream-state in which he had control over what happened. What some would call lucid dreaming.

He created a program that would cycle through billions of combinations of settings within this narrow range of power and frequency and spent twenty hours each day, seeking a match to a pattern in the past. For the next year, he dreamed his way through many of his past lives, but never stumbled across one that was suitable.

Then came the day when he finally made contact. It was firm and solid and rooted in the studying he had done for the Physics exam. He could feel himself lying on the couch, with a light REM state going on. He took over the dream and detailed to himself what needed to be done. As the contact weakened, he finished up by yelling as loud as he could:

"WAKE UP!"

Harold was jolted out of his sleep and rolled off of the couch and onto the floor. He looked around and realized that he had been dreaming. Even as he tried to recall the dream, it had almost immediately faded away. He got up and made his way to the bathroom where he relieved his nearly-full bladder before washing his hands. He splashed some cold water on his face, the icy sting shocking him fully awake. He smiled at himself in the mirror and the face in the mirror smiled back. He had stayed up late studying for his Physics exam and he was as ready as he would ever be.

---

Doctor Williams led the procession of four interns to a room at the end of the hallway. Standing before the door to 622, he gave them a quick summary.

"You're in for a rare treat today," he said. "In here, we have a patient that has been with us for twenty years now. He's technically in a coma, but we have no idea what's causing it. As you will see, the lights are on and someone's home, but they're not answering the phone."

He opened the door and stepped into the room where the patient lay on the bed. Above him was an array of monitors displaying real-time vitals. Williams waited until they were all gathered around the bed before continuing.

"In a moment, you'll see something that only occurs every two years, twelve days, seven hours, and thirty-seven minutes. For this, we have temporarily removed the feeding tube which has kept his body alive all these years." He glanced at his watch. "Keep your eye on the EEGs. Notice how they're beginning to fluctuate. If this was an electro-cardiogram, we might say that they were going into fibrillation."

"What's happening?" asked one of the interns.

"It's like two separate waves running as echoes, or something," commented another.

All of the interns jumped when the patient's eyes opened and he yelled, "WAKE UP!" His eyes fluttered shut as the encephalograms returned back to normal.

Doctor Williams smiled, "That's it for another couple of years."

"What do you suppose is going through his mind?" asked the first intern.

"Maybe one day he'll come out of his coma and tell us," answered Williams. "However, I suspect that we will never know." He held the door for the interns as they left the room and closed it behind him.

 

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Dear Diary

(originally published in 1997 as Aqualung)

Dear Diary,

I know that it's been nearly a year since I last talked to you, but it's not my fault. Remember when I told you that I thought I might be pregnant? Well, I was right. I had taken the crosstown to the Institute and they had checked me in right away to be tested. Once they had confirmed that I was pregnant, they took me to a small, dark room where they had me watch an orientation video. Most of it was stuff I already knew, but some of the scenes were more graphic than anything they had shown us in school. I knew that it had been bad back then, but the narration and the video was chilling. Did you know that nearly 20,000 people were murdered each year? Murdered, Dear Diary! Just because someone was upset with someone else. And the babies! People were having them in bathroom stalls and leaving them behind. Or throwing them in dumpsters or tossing them down the stairs. What horrible, horrible, people, Dear Diary! There were so many, in fact, that they built massive prisons holding millions of them! Can you imagine that? And even then, there were still millions more roaming the streets, preying on others at every chance that they could. It sounds so terrible, Dear Diary. You know how I enjoy walking in the park at two in the morning. Everything is so quiet and the stars are so bright. I've never ever dreamed that someone might jump me and knock me out. Or worse. The video said people did it because of how they had been raised. Some of them could be helped, but others were hopeless. Every child is the most precious thing that we have in our society and raising a child properly needs care by trained specialists. We all know this now. The task is simply too important to be left to neophytes. When the video had finished, I was taken to another wing of the Institute where I was assigned a room. There were other girls there, too, and we played games and told stories to occupy the time. The food was nutritious, if a bit bland, but we all understood that it was important to make sure our babies had the proper diet. When I finally gave birth, it was a boy, and I named him Billy, after his dad. For the next three months, I nursed him and held him regularly. They said that the biological mother was needed for the initial imprinting. Once that was done, however, they would take over and simulate my voice and my heartbeats. They would look after him until he was sixteen and ready to join society. Last night, they came and took him away for the last time. If I had known then that I would never see him again, I would have held onto him just a little bit longer. Please don't tell anyone, Dear Diary, but when I think about my little Billy, it makes me cry. I know that's wrong, but I can't help myself. Oh, well. Gotta go. Talk to you later!

J.

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Trying to Predict the Future

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we've tried to follow the science, but the science seems to flip-flop every so often. We hear about this model or that model, but most people have no idea what that really means. Some at least understand that it is a computer simulation that seemingly predicts the future. Like the climate models. I came across an article on using a SEIR model (Susceptible | Exposed | Infectious | Recovered) to predict herd immunity. This led me to a Wikipedia entry about "Compartmental Models in Epidemiology" in which SEIR is but one of the models in use. If you're up on your ordinary differential equations, you'll find this fairly straightforward. Each person is in one compartment or another and the diff-e's for each are taken with respect to time (i.e., ~ / dt). You'll also find three assigned constants, "β", "γ" and "N", where "β" is the average number of contacts per person per time, "γ" is the infectious time period, and "N" is the total population being analyzed. "N" is easy to figure out, but the value of "β" is essentially a best guess based on the data at any given time.

The accuracy of the selection of a value for "β" affects the accuracy of the outcome of the model. E.g., if the time unit is a day, then "β" is the number of contacts each person has with someone else on a given day. How many is that? Five? Ten? One? It's only a guess and it may explain why so many models are at odds with each other.

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Aqualung's Paradox

Consider a hypothetical dart and target. The target is defined as a circle that encloses an infinite number of points. The dart is a line segment that pierces the circle at right angles at point P.

You pick point P to aim at and throw the dart at the target. What are your odds of hitting point P?

Point P exists as the intersection of a plane with no thickness and a line of no width. P is a single point out of an infinite number of points so the odds are:

1/∞ = 0

Surprisingly, you have no chance of ever hitting point P. This appears to be contradicted by the fact that the dart does, indeed, hit the target. This is what I call Aqualung's Paradox for historical reasons.

If we can add one to something, it makes it bigger. If we subtract one from something, it makes it smaller. A more flexible calculation of the odds might be:

1/(∞ - 1) > 0

Thus, we end up with a result that is technically equal to zero, but not exactly equal to zero. Since the odds are not exactly zero, you might hit P on the very first try.

But I wouldn't bet on it.😉

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