Illusive Science - Part 2

(A continuing conversation from my Theory of Everything series of posts)

Maestro, a few more Myths, please...

1. We live with four different Forces around us - weak, strong, gravity and electro-magnetic.

2. Travel to the Past is possible, because Einstein's theory of relativity predicts it.

3. There's this thing called Dark Matter, I mean dark energy, that must exist, because our universe simply cannot be an empty, um space.

4. There's another thing called Anti-Matter, that when combined with its matter-twin exactly annihilates both into nothingness.

Let's review some more areas where scientists have gone too far into the world of fiction...

My Theory of Everything answers the question of the different forces we perceive with the conclusion that they are actually tied together and there really is only one force of attraction. We haven't found the equation of everything as yet, but following my third law will likely get us there. However, this gets me to another brilliant scientist with a neat set of laws. They predict that time slows down and that there are places where time can be traversed backwards to some point. Sadly, this is not much different from calling time a fourth dimension and saying that we actually have 11 Dimensions thanks to miniature strings. What actually happens is that the attractive force that's described in my first law tugs at the matter and energy in everything that passes close to it. So, yes "space-time" bends as detected by light - but actually, light is attracted by the pulling gravity of our massive object. The massive object in question can be our moon, the sun or of course a gigantic black hole.

When we get to the point of saying time travel to the past is possible, we've taken Einstein's thought experiment a bit too far. What happens in the presence of an infinitely massive object, such as a black hole, is that all matter and energy compresses to the point where all movement-inducing energy is sapped. At that point, an outside source is needed to kick start our frozen transport ship. And once we get moving again, we will realize that time everywhere else has proceeded without us. Ask astronauts who've spent time in orbit (enough to have traveled backwards in time by mazilli-seconds) if they now experience our past mazilli-seconds after we do? Long answer - no! Are they mazilli-seconds younger than us? Probably, but freezing them in a cryogenics container would have done the same. What about the fact that clocks, like those involved in the GPS system lose time compared to those on Earth? The same phenomenon occurs there as well. The satellites' internal particles get tugged slightly and everything slows down. Clocks never actually travel backwards in time - any more than winding your wrist-watch backwards could ever affect anything/anyone else around you.

Dark matter is a difficult one to address. We want to imagine that there's something between the objects we perceive in space - just like there's air around us that we cannot "see." If we were sea creatures only, and near the surface we detected the sun, we might not realize that air existed between us and the sun. I will concede therefore, that it's possible for dark matter-energy to exist, but not to the extent that it penetrates everything equally - having very little or no impact. Following my Theory, this dark matter might consist solely of the infinitely small particles that make up all other matter-energy. In that event, like all other such particles, there will be an interaction between other normal bits of the particles. It will show different effects in different substrates. As objects become more dense, we should see them - as we see hydrogen atoms in ice. And as objects become less dense, we should see them by themselves (in space for example) as we see hydrogen atoms in the atmosphere.

On the other hand, like the spacial separation of hydrogen as it becomes slower, more compact in ice, it is also possible that there is no extra "dark matter" at all. All the tiny particles that make up other matter might have clumped together to form the normal matter that we know exists. And then, thanks to gravity, it compresses just enough to leave an empty space where it once was. We see this behavior with clouds in the atmosphere, but they leave air molecules behind. We see it even better with our water experiments on the space station. Put the water in space, far enough from Earth and there will definitely not be anything else around it - except for stellar photons from every direction of course. In any case, we still haven't proved that some super invisible stuff does not exist.

Taking Dark Matter into the realm of anti-matter, however, is taking our thought-experiments too far again. From my Theory of Everything, our infinitely small duo-particles behave in such a way that different concentrations of matter and energy can build up. When we see the object-thingy we call anti-matter annihilate matter, we might actually be seeing a neat "explosion" with energy dissipation at such a rapid rate that we forget that something does escape... What might be happening is that our duo particle splits apart or that the orbiting particle hits another of the same "mass" orbiting in an adjacent duo-set, but in the opposite direction. As both fly apart in different directions (thanks to Newton's law of opposite forces) we end up with a separation of our orbiting particulates from there respective bases. The result will be particles that are smaller in stature than our original particle pairs. The originals at least had the energy/orbital interaction that we could detect as some sort of sub-electron/photon mass. So, now what do we do? Build an even bigger particle smasher of course!