Note the look of satisfaction on nibbler's face.
Any questions?
Posted on 04/27/2012 4:12:19 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Invisible dark matter particles may regularly pass through our bodies, and dozens to thousands of these particles may be colliding with atoms inside us every year, according to a new calculation.
However, radiation from these impacts is unlikely to cause cancer, investigators added.
Dark matter is one of the greatest scientific mysteries of our time — an invisible substance thought to make up five-sixths of all matter in the universe. Scientists think it might be composed of things called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, that interact normally with gravity but very weakly with all the other known forces of the universe.
Its ghostly nature makes it exceedingly difficult to directly prove whether dark matter really exists or what its properties really are. Dark matter is largely thought to be intangible, its presence detectable only via the gravitational pull it exerts.
Still, although dark matter particles are thought to interact only very rarely with normal matter, Earth and everything on it should be hurtling through a dense sea of dark matter, with billions of these particles rushing through us every second. Though the large majority of these particles would pass straight through us without hitting any of the atoms that make up our bodies, a few collisions would be likely. And the aftermath of such impacts could shed light on dark matter's nature. [Gallery: Dark Matter Throughout the Universe]
Scientists calculated how many times dark matter particles ought to collide with atomic nuclei in adult-size bodies — lumps of flesh about 154 pounds (70 kilograms) in mass largely composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen.
Dark matter should most often collide with the hydrogen and oxygen nuclei in the body — the former makes up 60 percent of the atoms in the body, while the latter makes up about 60 percent of the mass of the body. Given the most common assumptions regarding what dark matter is, roughly 35 impacts between dark matter particles and atoms in your body should happen annually.
However, if the latest models are correct and dark matter interactions are more common than previously thought, there might be about 100,000 collisions annually for each human on the planet.
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I thought I just needed some TUMS....
Pardon me...
He is definitely a WIMP — Weakly Interacting Man-child President
Dark matter from what I understand acts as an anti-gravitional force, causing matter to push apart rather than accumulate as in the case of gravity, which would explain why it doesn’t accumulate and form dark matter galaxies and so forth.
Scientists theorized it as an explanation for why the universe appears to be ramping up its expansion instead of collapsing back in on itself.
Ehh.. scratch that. That was dark energy, not dark matter. I keep getting the two mixed up.
Interesting question.
No. I don’t.
I do not think satan is that pervasive in the least.
There’s the Scripture about people looking on the measley personage who was satan and being shocked that such a puny bloke could do so much damage.
His major power is getting people to believe his lies.
And there’s the Scripture about God hiding Himself in darkness—a real mystery that one.
I suspect that dark matter will turn out to have been one of those things God threw in to mystify mortals so we didn’t figure out too much too quickly.
But that’s likely amiss, too.
Thx for the honor of your question.
I recently heard on the John Batchelor show that an experiment to detect dark matter on a galactic scale failed to do so. It may well be that dark matter does not exist and we don’t fully understand physics yet.
I quite frankly am annoyed at how physicists (and worse, science journalists) natter on about “dark matter” as if they were certain it exists. It is a hypothesis proposed to explain differences between observations of the universe on a large scale and what our current understanding of gravity (general relativity) would predict. It is quite possible the differences are entirely explained by quantum corrections to general relativity (which the same physicists also expect, but can’t calculate for lack of a completely viable theory of quantum gravity).
Thanks for the response. :-)
If dark matter existed you’d be shoveling it off your driveway in June.
I don’t see the problem. Executive order banning dark matter. The prince has already banned gray matter from his administration.
Not quite. If the current concept of dark matter is correct than it would be able to pass clean through regular matter (for the most part). In which case a particle of dark matter on a collision course with the earth would start out (before impact) traveling at some speed greater than the planet’s escape velocity. The dark matter would be influenced by earth’s gravity, likely being deflected into a new trajectory. But it won’t crash onto the surface like regular matter would and so will not lose its energy, so it just keeps going, traveling though the earth’s interior and emerging from the other side still traveling faster than escape velocity.
I hope that was clear.
In their defense there is usually a reporter between the scientist and us, and they could screw up the the spelling of their own names.
Dark matter is accelerating the expansion of the Universe.
If gunslinger Roland Deschain doesn’t reach the Dark Tower and defeat the Crimson King, preventing him from completing his destruction of the Beams that pierce the Dark Matter and hold everything together, well—screw the Mayans: we’re all `dead meat’ by Memorial Day. Go Ro!
Don’t mean to get you all worked up or anything, but it is what it is.
Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding. Well, not only expanding but increasing the rate of expansion. It's expanding faster (accelerating).
Theory goes that when mass accelerates towards the speed of light, gravity increases and the material gets more massive, requiring ever increasing amounts of energy to accelerate less and less.
No one has calculated this energy investment.
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