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The following is a tale of two physics: Two scientists work
in different fields at the same university. One studies massive
objects far away from Earth, the other studies tiny things
right in front of him. To satisfy their curiosities, one constructs
the world’s most powerful telescope, while the other
build’s the best microscope. They then begin to observe
structures they had never seen before and become frustrated
because their findings didn’t match their existing theories.
They decided to talk to each other about their observations
and discovered they had been looking at opposite ends of the
universe and seeing the same phenomena.
The above situation is one that physicists and astronomers
find themselves involved in today. Physicists use high resolution
"microscopes" to study objects so small they can’t
be seen by the human eye and astronomers use super-sized telescopes
to study the same tiny particles. This strange marriage of
unrelated phenomena has made great leaps of understanding
the past.
After realizing how much astronomers and physicists could
learn from one another’s insight, a presentation was
scheduled to show the converging agendas of the two sciences.
Findings from the report resulted in 11 profound questions,
some answers might be found in the next decade and if they
are, it will be considered one of the greatest leaps in history
for science.
Until that time comes, here are some of the questions that
beckon answers:
What is dark matter?
The temptation is to say that the reasons for dark matter
are the dark clouds or dead stars, but persuasive essays
suggest this isn’t the case.
First, nearly every attempt to find missing stars and clouds
has resulted in failure.
Second, based on precise calculations after the Big Bang,
cosmotologists found that the total amount of ordinary matter
was much less than the total mass of the universe.
What is dark energy?
Cosmotologists made two discoveries that proved ordinary
matter and dark matter are not sufficient to explain the
structure of the universe. There is yet another component
called dark energy.
The first piece of evidence for this mystery came from
measuring the geometry of the universe and the other line
of evidence suggested the mystery component was energy.
Where do ultra high-energy particles
come from?
The sources scientists suspected are the Big Bang itself,
shock waves brought on by Supernovas collapsing into black
holes and accelerated matter that is sucked into gigantic
black holes at the centers of the galaxies.
Science
News March 9, 2004
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