Google+ A Tangled Rope: Dark Matter and the Nature of the Universe

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Dark Matter and the Nature of the Universe

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All of this is pretty much about all of the thing that it is... unless there is some of it lost down the back of the sofa cushions – what is known to astronomers, cosmologists, and that nice lady down at the chip shop, as dark matter.

Dark matter is dark which is why it doesn't show up very well in the dark. Light matter is another matter – this accounts for over 98% of the stuff in the universe that is beige.

The rest is just stuff.

Planets, we know, are made mainly out of dirt, except of course for the Earth a lot of which is made out of rain.

Moons, of which the Earth has only one, but other - more showy and insecure planets - have many, are, of course, made out of cheese.

Saturn has rings – which is only to be expected really. Uranus exists only as a place for schoolboy jokes to get a punch-line. Pluto is made out of cartoons. Mercury gets bigger the closer it gets to the sun and smaller as it moves away. Mars is made out of nougat and caramel covered in thick, thick milk chocolate, although recently scientists have discovered that the surface of Mars is not as thick as they once believed.

The rest of the universe is made of stuff, with a few billion holes, where the light from the universe next-door shines through, which we call stars.

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