A Window on My World: Science!

I get really long-winded. I know.

So as a change of pace, at the end of every week - most likely Friday, but I'm going to try and skip out early for the holiday - I'll give you just a little tidbit... a Window on My World.

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I like the little magazine the Museum of Natural History sends me every month for being a member. It reminds me that at least two people in this world still believe in the "theory" of evolution, and it gives me a subway-ride-sized look inside relatively recent, sufficiently generalized scientific issues...

This issue (9/07 for fellow members) had a bit on Dark Matter, the mysterious "stuff" that makes up, well, pretty much most of the matter in the universe. According to the bite-sized article, five-sixths of all the matter in the universe is probably there, but we haven't proved it conclusively yet...

For the skeptics among you, the alternative to the whole Dark Matter theory is that we have no idea how gravity works... of course, even if we prove Dark Matter exists there are still a few question marks around gravity.

I'm no scientist, so I'm not pretending this is a sophisticated discussion of the issues. But I distinctly remember being humbled for a minute or two, struck by the sheer immensity of What We Do Not Know.

Science tells us that we're not only a tiny speck in the universe, but this morning, looking for a light read, I learn we also... um... have no idea what most of our universe is made of. What We Do Not Know is most of what's out there.

No one else on the subway seemed all that concerned. I figured maybe they simply had Faith. After all, most religions offer a convenient punt on What We Do Not Know, at which point you send out the defense, try not to kill anyone (or, alternately, only kill the people your god doesn't like) and simply have faith that it all works out.

Then another thought hit me: maybe we're not even equipped to figure it out.

Maybe we're missing that sixth (or seventh) sense...

Maybe, with our brains, we have as much of a chance of figuring it all out as my cat does of reading the Aeneid in Latin.

(I mean, from what I could tell when I came home one night, he made a game effort taking on the Penguin Classics English translation, but he apparently got frustrated and simply chewed on Book II for a while...)

Undaunted, I resolved to dedicate at least ten or fifteen minutes after lunch today digging into it, trying to figure out just how much We Do Not Know.

While I'm browsing, I'd also like to figure out what, exactly, happened to Blink-182. Man, those guys were the soundtrack to more than a few bitchin' $5 pitcher nights in my early 20's, and then one day that one guy isn't in the band anymore or something...

And that, friends, was a Window on My World.