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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Form input - by Günter Born

Thursday, December 30, 2021

SF possibilities of "Dark Matter"?

Anyone know of SF books, films or videos that make significant use of the discoveries in physics in the past few decades regarding "Dark Matter"? I've seen a few, but not many. I think the reason for this may be that physicists are very uncomfortable with "Dark Matter". I've had correspondence with physicists online indicating that they'd very much like to "get rid" of Dark Matter. There's an entire sub-industry in physics these days of mathematical "tweaks" to General Relativity, attempting to reconcile Einstein's theory with the empirical observations of "Dark Matter". You see, the fundamental assumption in Einstein's theory of Relativity, Special or General, is that the electromagnetic spectrum as we understand it, is all that there is. That's why light -- the fastest electromagnetic wave -- is the ultimate limit. So, nothing can go faster than light, because, as far as we know, nothing does. But, Dark Matter does not interact with the conventional electromagnetic spectrum, at all. Dark Matter seems to exist entirely outside of the electromagnetic spectrum as we understand it -- doesn't generate or reflect electromagnetic waves, at all. Doesn't interact with them, at all. We can only detect it by its mass, which seems to represent 90% of all matter. So, there's no reason to think General Relativity need apply to Dark Matter, since the electromagnetic spectrum, and light specifically, don't apply to it. So, what exactly, are the SF possibilities of that? Any thoughts?

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