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So-called \u201cdark matter,\u201d already quite mysterious, may have become a bit more so:<\/p>\n
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\u201cDark Matter May Be Older Than The Big Bang, Study Suggests\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For some of my own musings on the subject of dark matter, here\u2019s a column that I published in the Deseret News<\/em> back on 13 August 2015, under the title of \u201cMaterialism isn\u2019t what it used to be\u201d:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Among the notable characters in C.S. Lewis\u2019 novel \u201cThat Hideous Strength\u201d \u2014 the concluding book in his Perelandra trilogy \u2014 is the scientist Mr. MacPhee, a sturdy-minded and skeptical rationalist based on the young Lewis\u2019 own beloved tutor William Kirkpatrick. MacPhee\u2019s intellectual descendants still flourish in atheistic and agnostic circles today. But his simple, stout, commonsense materialism badly needs major revision.<\/span><\/p>\n Although the Greek word \u201catom\u201d means \u201cindivisible,\u201d we\u2019ve known for decades that atoms are actually composed of protons, neutrons and electrons \u2014 and can be split. Further, along with the rest of the universe, they\u2019re being divided into even smaller \u201csubatomic particles\u201d bearing such names as \u201clepton,\u201d \u201cneutrino,\u201d \u201cgluon,\u201d \u201cmuon,\u201d \u201cboson,\u201d \u201chadron,\u201d \u201cbaryon\u201d and \u201cmeson.\u201d Particles called \u201cquarks\u201d come in six \u201cflavors\u201d: \u201cup,\u201d \u201cdown,\u201d \u201cbottom,\u201d \u201ctop,\u201d \u201cstrange\u201d and \u201ccharm.\u201d Many particles have mass. But photons and gluons don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n Moreover, we now know matter not to be solid, but mostly empty space (though \u201cempty space,\u201d too, may be problematic). If, for instance, the nucleus of a hydrogen atom were expanded to basketball-size and placed at the center of the Earth, its single orbiting electron would be somewhere out in Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/span><\/p>\n Further, old models long familiar from school textbooks and classrooms are misleading: Atoms aren\u2019t made up of submicroscopic objects resembling billiard balls. Electrons don\u2019t orbit their nuclei as planets revolve around our sun. Like photons, electrons seem to be both particles and waves. And, according to Werner Heisenberg\u2019s famous \u201cUncertainty Principle,\u201d to the extent that the position of an elementary particle is known, its momentum cannot be known \u2014 and vice versa.<\/span><\/p>\n Such things are difficult to understand, let alone to picture. But one conclusion seems obvious: \u201cThe universe is not only queerer than we suppose,\u201d the scientific polymath J.B.S. Haldane famously remarked, \u201cit is queerer than we can suppose.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019re sometimes advised to believe only what we see. But how many of us have actually seen an electron? And how commonsensical is the notion, from Albert Einstein\u2019s General Theory of Relativity, that space itself (or, perhaps more precisely, \u201cspacetime\u201d) is \u201ccurved\u201d? How much room does Einstein\u2019s Special Theory of Relativity leave for our sense of material things when it says that mass and energy are equivalent? And what of the current cosmological understanding that matter \u2014 and, indeed, the universe itself \u2014 may have arisen from \u201cquantum fluctuations\u201d in a vacuum?<\/span><\/p>\n Consider, too, the new world discussed in Richard Panek\u2019s 2011 book \u201cThe 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality\u201d: Only 4.56 percent of our universe, which seems to have originated in an inconceivable explosion roughly 13.75 billion years ago, is \u201cbaryonic matter.\u201d That\u2019s the matter that we know, the matter that we can often see and sometimes touch, the stuff of which stars, planets, mountains, pine trees, Porsches, buildings and kittens are made. The rest of the universe, we\u2019ve only recently discovered, is \u201cdark matter\u201d (22.7 percent) and \u201cdark energy\u201d (72.8 percent) \u2014 figures that, Panek writes, offer \u201can exquisitely precise accounting of the depth of our ignorance.\u201d \u201cDark matter\u201d and \u201cdark energy\u201d cannot be seen but only indirectly detected, and we don\u2019t really know what they are.<\/span><\/p>\n None of this proves that God exists, obviously, but it surely encourages humility. And it offers some other tantalizing possibilities, too:<\/span><\/p>\n One should, of course, never tie one\u2019s theology too closely to current scientific theories, because they change. But might Mormonism\u2019s notions of \u201cpure\u201d and \u201crefined\u201d matter \u2014 what Catholic philosopher Stephen Webb terms Mormonism\u2019s \u201cChristian materialism\u201d \u2014 have something theologically and philosophically important to say in this new situation?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCould it be,\u201d he asks, \u201cthat (Joseph) Smith \u2026 foresaw a middle ground between Plato\u2019s immaterialism and the secular, atheistic ideology of materialism?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBy arguing that only the physical is real,\u201d he writes, \u201cand that the divine is physical in ways that we can only glimpse in this world, Mormon metaphysics actually has some advantages over more traditional metaphysical schemes that emphasize the immateriality of the divine. Most significantly, Mormonism can address directly and sympathetically the question of materialism that lies at the heart of modern atheism. \u2026 The case can be made that the most serious alternative to fundamentalism and Catholicism in terms of having the resources to turn back the tide of modernity is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n