A statement in tonight's Pneumatology reading led me down this fascinating cosmological rabbit-trail in search of the meaning of dark matter and how it might relate to spiritual things. This is what I found. (By the way, if you, like me, aren't a particularly sciencey person, or if you are just starting to figure out that science might be a little fascinating after all, check out Brian Greene: The Elegant Universe or Fabric of the Cosmos. This guy can write!)
Did you know that scientists are currently thinking that the universe is made up of only "5 percent familiar matter, 25 percent dark matter, [and] 70 percent dark energy" (Greene, Fabric of the Cosmos, 302)? Familiar matter, I have just learned, is stuff made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Dark matter, it seems, is all this stuff out there in space that we know must exist because we can observe its gravitational pull on stuff around it, but it doesn't emit light, so we can't actually see whatever it is. And we don't think it is made of the same "stuff" as regular (familiar) matter. (I'm guessing that's because it doesn't act the same way we think familiar matter acts.) We're not sure what it is. But we're pretty sure it's out there. Lastly, there's dark energy, which is something Greene describes "as being a version of Einstein’s cosmological constant—a constant, unchanging energy that pushes space to expand" (435).
Ok, I can work with that (as much as my non-sciencey mind can wrap itself around it). But here's where it all gets interesting. According to Greene,
That no one has yet detected a dark matter particle places significant constraints on any proposal. The reason is that dark matter is not only situated out in space; it is distributed throughout the universe and so is also wafting by us here on earth. According to many of the proposals, right now billions of dark matter particles are shooting through your body every second, so viable candidates are only those particles that can pass through bulky matter without leaving a significant trace. (433)
If these scientists are right, then there's this stuff all around us that we can't see or touch or smell or taste or feel, and it might be so little that it's going in and out of the matter that is us, unknown and unrecognized. Woah.
So, what if all of this so-called dark matter and dark energy had something to do with God? I mean, I don't know, but what if? Wouldn't it be interesting if indeed the spiritual world could possibly exist on such a plane...not of this material world, yet part of it? Because isn't that what the kingdom of God is? In this world but not of it?
I don't know. As I said before, I make no great claims to be a terribly scientific person, and for that matter, I make no claims to be much of a theologian—and did I mention that most of the ideas presented above are the product of just tonight's research and musings? So I don't mean to sound as though I actually know what I'm talking about. But what if?
3 comments:
Okay, this blog is way too deep for me to even fully comprehend. I do not consider myself a sciency person (but I did enjoy chemistry and physical science more than gross biology). I do think it is fascinating that there might be something out there that is just in and out of and around us that we can't see or detect. Hmmmm . . . something else to ponder.
Go check out The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner (it's Carroll's two Alice books with explanations of all the inside jokes--it's right there in the university's library). In it, Gardner uses Through the Looking Glass to demonstrate how dark matter works...and how eerily prescient Lewis Carroll actually was.
This is just the tip of a huge philosophical, scientific, mind-blowing iceberg! Just wait until you _really_ get going in the works of Einstein, Newton, and Hawking -- You'll never see "things" (and/or the absence of "things") in the same "light"!
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