How Not to Solve Another Great Science Mystery

I am on a crusade to link science with life and life with science (you probably noticed that). Thus, using only some common sense, some imagination and a small carrot I have solved yet another of life’s great mysteries. Physicists and blog writers have been pondering this question for many a passing moment.

This is the question:

Does Dark Matter Exist?

This is what happened:

One day man looked up into the night skies. Woman was busy doing useful stuff like feeding babies, growing stuff, inventing crochet and reading philosophy. Man noticed something. That the universe was holding itself together. Man believed in gravity (mostly because they had proved it through the phenomena of falling balls).

The problem was that there didn’t seem to be enough stuff to make enough gravity to hold the universe together. So, and here’s the brilliant part, they invented more stuff. But they couldn’t see the stuff. So they called it Dark Matter. There is still a deal of debate amongst physicists as to whether Dark Matter actually even exists.

This is the digression:

The problem with physicists (and I know because I just made scrambled eggs for one) is that they seldom consult the ordinary woman on the street (or in the kitchen cooking scrambled eggs). Common sense is not a prevailing attribute of this breed of scientist. My physicist, for example, can do some very difficult sums, write a lot of letters and symbols on pieces of paper and strew the aforementioned pieces of paper around the house, she can even do a back somersault on a four inch beam, but ask her to discover the use of dusters, pour water from a jug just into a glass and not onto the table, or make scrambled eggs, and she is completely flummoxed.

These are the answers:

So, Dark Matter – does it exist?
Yes, most definitely. Think coal, chocolate, the insides of Wellington boots and the works of Sartre.

Does Dark Matter hold the universe together? –
No. If it did then
1. We would see it if we used one of those very stylish torches advertised in Sunday supplements that shine a very long way.
2. We wouldn’t understand a word the universe was saying.
and
3. The universe would smell quite different, a bit like warm feet pudding.


Then, if not Dark Matter, what exactly is holding the universe together?

And this is where physicists are really going to kick themselves for never having asked the woman on the street, in the kitchen or me before.

The answer is so blindingly obvious. It is the same thing that holds everything else together, is the answer, is all you need, makes the world go round and is a triumph of imagination over intelligence. Love.

After all, gravity, essentially, is the mutual attraction of two bodies.


Next week: Does Dark Matter? The sex lives of the stars.