What’s the Matter?

The world spins with violence, turmoil, climate change and political instability. Yet we are clearly the center of the intelligence universe… or are we? When you start looking at the massive size and scope of the entire universe, we are but an indiscernible, microdot of irrelevance lost in the vastness of outer space. And for the most part, even the most sophisticated astrophysicists are only just beginning to understand virtually everything “out there.”

Frankly, when all the scientifically measurable “stuff” out there is examined, what we can see and fully comprehend is a tiny, tiny part of what fills most of the universe. Want to feel really, really small, try this on for size: “Astronomers using a powerful quasar to study an enormous invisible tendril full of superheated gas say they may have finally discovered the universe’s ‘missing’ detectable matter.

“The findings, published this week in the journal Nature, solve a decades-old mystery and could help scientists further probe the structure and evolution of the cosmos… All of the atoms in the planets, stars and galaxies in existence account for just about 5% of the mass-energy density of the universe… That’s dwarfed by dark energy, a mysterious, repulsive force that makes up about 70% of those cosmic contents and is causing the universe’s expansion to accelerate.

“The remaining quarter or so is made up of dark matter — invisible, untouchable stuff whose presence can be felt only by its gravitational influence on galactic scales. Dark matter connects clusters of galaxies with massive tendrils, forming a cosmic web that serves as an unseen skeleton for the universe.

“Scientists have estimated those shares largely using two different methods, said study co-author J. Michael Shull, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Many years ago, researchers calculated roughly how much matter would have formed after the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe. Astronomers have also studied the cosmic microwave background — the oldest light in the universe, which permeates the entire sky — and found roughly the same proportions of normal matter, dark matter and dark energy.

“That small slice of normal matter that we can directly detect, which scientists call baryonic matter, is the most known quantity of the three: It emits light (like the sun) or reflects it (like the moon), making it visible to us or detectable by telescopes. And yet it also presents its own mystery, because for decades, scientists haven’t been able to find all of it.

“‘Over 20 years ago people noted that if you added up all the starlight and all the mass in galaxies that goes with that starlight, you only get about 10% of that 5% of ordinary matter,’ Shull said. So there was a ‘missing matter’ problem going back over 20 years: Where is the gas? Where are the baryons that aren’t collapsed into stars and galaxies?... ‘That’s why we worried about it,’ he added. ‘It really goes to the heart of key predictions in cosmology about the Big Bang.’” Los Angeles Times, June 23^rd.

Feeling small enough yet? And if there is more intelligent life out there… and that just may be a pretty low bar given the behavior of human beings these days… it will be found in that nasty 5%!

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those who unsustainably huge egos, might I suggest that they see themselves in their proper place in the vastness of the universe?