One-Off: Why Physicists Make Up Stories in the Dark

One-Off: Why Physicists Make Up Stories in the Dark

Dark matter and dark energy are more directly motivated by observations of the real world. Dark matter is apparently needed to account for the gravitational effects that seem to come from parts of space where no ordinary matter is visible, or not enough to explain the tug. For example, rotating galaxies seem to have some additional source of gravitational attraction, beyond the visible stars and gas, that stops them from flying apart. The “lensing” effect where distant astrophysical objects get distorted by the gravitational warping of spacetime also seems to demand this invisible form of matter. But dark matter does not exist in the usual sense, in that it has not been seen and there are no theories that can convincingly explain or demand its existence. Dark energy too is a kind of “stuff” required to explain the acceleration of the universe’s expansion, discovered by astronomers observing far-away objects in the mid-1990s. But it is just a name for a puzzle, without any direct detection.

It seems quite possible that dark energy, and perhaps dark matter too, will turn out to be like Crookes’ “dark space” and “radiant energy”: not exactly stuff, but symptoms of some hitherto unknown physical principle. These connections were exquisitely intuited by Philip Pullman in theHis Dark Materials trilogy, where (the title alone gives a clue) a mysterious substance called Dust is an amalgam of dark matter and Barrett’s quasi-sentient psychomeres, given a spiritual interpretation by the scientist-priests of Pullman’s alternative steampunk Oxford University who sense its presence using instruments evidently based on Crookes’ light mill.

Scientists, of course, are not just making things up, while leaning on the convenience of supposed invisibility. They are using dark matter and dark energy, and (if one is charitable) quantum many-worlds and branes, and other imperceptible and hypothetical realms, to perform an essential task: to plug gaps in their knowledge with notions they can grasp.

From Nautilus, a great publication for all the obvious reasons. This article was perfect. I’d definitely recommend it. If only I could write half as well. 

Some Odder (And All The Better For It) Letters From Kurt Vonnegut

Hello dear reader, this letter to you is, I’m afraid, going to contain a few letters neither to you nor from me. I think they are all the better for it.

The first example is a letter composed by Kurt Vonnegut in response to a classroom of inspired and well-meaning adolescents. I’d urge you to commit to the metaphor of Vonnegut: an iguana. I don’t know if I could poke fun at my own age at any age, much less where I’m old enough for it to be a problem. It is also one of his last letters, seeing as it was written the year died.

If you are anything like myself, the letter has done nothing to your appetite. Perhaps, given this next letter, your appetite will at least be dented. For me every sentence is like another dollop of snow, slowly erasing the divide between full and empty.

The second example comes to us from a PoW camp.

The third example comes to us from the furnaces of Drake.

The fourth examples come shortly after Vonnegut published his first stories.

The last is only a crumb but interesting.

I urge you, dear reader, to take a look at Letters of Note. They’re missing some truly excellent letters, but nevertheless grab quit a few for their readers.

Overcoming a Creative Block

Overcoming a Creative Block

Brian Eno’s Prompts for Overcoming Creative Block, Inspired by John Cage

The Allure of the Map

The Allure of the Map

I enjoy Borges a lot. He gets a reference.

Some days I wake up from a dream where I’m Borges but then, as I get started on my day, I realize I am in one of his books. At that point it becomes a nightmare. I never woke up but just woke up into another dream. It’s almost as if I’m trying to make a dream as intricate and confusing but as beautifully balanced as Borges was.

I wish I could explain it better but I thought I’d share.

Fyodor Dostoevsky Draws Elaborate Doodles In His Manuscripts

Fyodor Dostoevsky Draws Elaborate Doodles In His Manuscripts

As I currently sit in another uninspiring classroom, doing my own doodles, it’s good to know that I’m in good company.

But how depressing is it that Dostoevsky draws more exciting doodles more quickly than I do?

 

Fretting About the Opera

Fretting About the Opera

I don’t know what the actual title is, but I like mine better. I’m not a fan of the opera. I’m so young it’d come off as pretentious. I suppose that assumes I’m not already tirelessly and tiresomley pretentious. Oh well. 

I love a little fretting. There’s nothing better. Goodbye to all that, but at least we should attend the funeral. 

Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Yet More Aphorisms

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.  —C. S. Lewis

“We are all guilty” is actually a declaration of solidarity with the wrongdoers. —Hannah Arendt

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams. —W. Somerset Maugham

History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought. —Etienne Gilson

Technical civilization is man’s conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space…. But time is the heart of existence.  —Abraham Heschel