Monday, February 06, 2006

This universe of ours...

is a tricky place. For instance a headline in today's scientific press claims they have finally measured the 24% that's called Dark Matter . The remaining 72%, known as Dark Energy has yet to be accounted for because at present there's no means by which it can be detected. On the way into work this morning I stepped on a paving stone where from beneath more water gushed with more force soaking more of my leg than is proper in a Newtonian Universe. Methinks the hunt for dark energy might profit from a little look under the pavements of Salford.

I'll be on to the Council in the morning.

8 comments:

DCveR said...

There are these people who have an alternate theory regarding why the Universe seems to be expanding. They claim the reason it looks so is because everybody is fleeing from us, disgusted.
And if that is true, who can blame them? I mean, what would you think of a world like ours, if you were an alien, that is...

neena maiya (guyana gyal) said...

You mean you can patent that there dark energy and no more search for oil?

Why 'dark' by the way? Why not navy blue? Or deep purple?

Dan Flynn said...

D,

If I were an alien I'd be a fan of this place, given it's full of geeky little humans clinging to the surface of a not unnatractive blue ball. Hey, and I'd have been catching up on 60 odd years of tv on my way here. An alien aint going to be surprised, no with so many re runs on the telly. What's Portugeuse tv like?

G,

Not sure if it will be the thing (not sure it's a thing) that replaces oil. However it might come in packets, something in cellaphane and a nice label. And why dark? Tsk, those scientists, don't know a thing about marketing.

Cream said...

Dan, call me pedantic but, 24% Dark Matter, 72% Dark Energy...so what happened to the other 4%?
Is it too dark to find or is it a complicated council issue?

Dan Flynn said...

Cream, ah ha! Fell into my trap. Apparently the 4% is everything we can see and measure, light, matter, radiation etc. Seems the physicists have long known that the structure of the universe is made up of more than what we can so far see. The models that most correspond to the current universe suggest we can't measure 96% of it, until the other day of course. Apparently they can measure the number of galaxies, detect their speed and density and also the way they cluster. However there isn't enough of the stuff we can measure to properly account for the way it all hangs suggesting there's loads going on which we can't detect. And lo, the've just found the 24% bit they theorised was there. Pretty sharp bit of calculating I think. And so there I was looking for a explanation that could explain how so much water could burst with so much force from such a tiny place when ipso facto, the dark energy explanation comes to the rescue. A mystery solved, methinks.

Anonymous said...

Certainly.

DCveR said...

When GH is away I don't even turn the TV on unless I am watching a DVD.
She is the one who turns it on for her daily news fix.
Guess from this you can get my opinion on TV: it sucks.

Dan Flynn said...

D,

I'm watching less and less tv because it steals time from me. There's nothing worse than returning home from work, flopping in front of the telly then suddenly it's midnight and time for bed. A terrible waste of a life. So I'm putting a stop to it. Give myself time to do important stuff, like blogging!