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The Hunt for Dark Energy and DARK Matter by the DiRAC Institute & Vera C. Rubin Observatory or Mapping Resonance "Yellow Jello" By Mark Anderson ______ Why Read: In deep physics, there is a question much more important and more interesting than the current focus on whether a language model can be called intelligent, and that is: What is space made of? The answer, gathered from record distances just seen across the universe, will affect everything we do, everything we know. What things are made of; how they work and interact; the nature of light, matter, and energy - all are waiting to be discovered in this exploration, and all will add to the sense of wonder we feel when we look at the night sky with new eyes ... and a new telescope. In this issue, we describe the hunt, and perhaps the answer. - mra
SNS members know that we love to pepper our discussions with quizzes, and I thought there would be no better way to begin this week's issue. Question 1: What is space made of? A. Blue cheese. B. No one knows. C. Nothing, by definition; it's a vacuum. D. Spacetime, of course. E. A substance that evinces both electrical and magnetic capacities, as well as mass properties. Answer: Not A; that's the moon. Not B, as you are about to learn. Not C, which is what everyone thought until around 1980, but were wrong about. Not D. (See C.) We identified "Einstein's Biggest Mistake" in our piece of the same name (6/17/03) as the denial of a physical aether. Later, after I shared this with Einstein biographer Walter Isaacson, he confirmed that Einstein himself also believed this. The answer - which James Clerk Maxwell put into his light equations as early as 1865, and which Einstein came to later in life (1921) - is E. To keep things interesting, we at SNS call this "Yellow Jello," when among the right crowd; otherwise - say, when the NASA guys are around - we straighten up and call it "spatial density." Why big-science physicists missed this point until string theory came along ca. 1980, thanks to Michael Green, is part of the story of what's wrong with big science today. Question 2: Can a physical wave exist without a physical medium? A. Of course - just look at light passing through a vacuum. B. If you jumped rope on a space walk, it would. C. Surfers get there a few times in their lives, mostly in Portugal. D. No, of course not. Answer: Not A, B, or C. So, D. It is impossible to have a physical wave without a physical something waving. For lack of a more exotic reason, this would violate the law of conservation of energy. In summary: Space is not empty; it is made of stuff with well-described properties. From the last line of my first paper on Resonance Theory, in 1979: "The laws of physics arise directly from the physical properties of otherwise-empty space." Now, that's a powerful idea ... In fact, it's so powerful that after an initial rejection of that first paper by Physical Review D (on the basis that everyone knew space was empty), I waited for 10 years to resubmit the same paper. The reason: concern that it would lead to a horrible new category of weapons. I knew that if I published it, it would almost immediately fall into the hands of someone at, say, the Lockheed Skunkworks. But I eventually did publish, having concluded that the above issue was one of policy, not the job of scientists to decide. Not too surprisingly, within literally about one minute after sending, it was re-sent to all of the top people at the Skunkworks, by name. There is an additional irony to Einstein's role in understanding space and the cosmos: when he published his most important theory, general relativity, he proposed a test of it that would assume that space near a massive object would be denser and act like a lens, bending starlight on its way to the observer. And it did, confirming his reputation forever. So - not empty, right? Oops. This isn't hard. But it could be fair to call this 100+-year blind spot the greatest intellectual failure of modern physics. It was only a few decades ago that various calculations on supernovae expanding with the universe, and on the spiral speeds of Andromeda-like galaxies, led astrophysicists to suddenly realize that something was very wrong with their models of the universe. To put it bluntly, the vast majority of energy and matter - since labeled "dark" - was missing. (See "Upgrades.")
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