Dark Matter?

What holds the universe together?

1440 Daily News on 5/13/24 posted a piece from “The Conversation” on dark matter. Dark matter has never been seen; that’s why it’s called dark matter.

“One of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics today is that the forces in galaxies do not seem to add up. Galaxies rotate much faster than predicted by applying Newton’s law of gravity to their visible matter, despite those laws working well everywhere in the Solar System.

To prevent galaxies from flying apart, some additional gravity is needed. This is why the idea of an invisible substance called dark matter was first proposed. But nobody has ever seen the stuff. And there are no particles in the hugely successful Standard Model of particle physics that could be the dark matter – it must be something quite exotic.

…the same problem is found in scales larger than galaxies: it cannot explain the motions within galaxy clusters. Dark matter was first proposed by Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s to account for the random motions of galaxies within the Coma Cluster, which requires more gravity to hold it together than the visible mass can provide.”

The article includes a link to a youtube video about dark matter and dark energy.

In the video, after saying that matter we can see only makes up 5% of the universe, and dark matter is 25% and dark energy is 70%, it is admitted that “We really have no clue as to what dark matter is.”  And the same with dark energy – “we can’t detect it, we can’t measure it, and we can’t taste it.”

Basically, the reason astrophysicists thought this all up about dark matter, is because they can’t figure out what holds the universe together. Apparently they’ve calculated there isn’t enough visible matter to have enough gravity attraction to keep the universe from flying apart.

Now, I never got past my batchelor’s degree in physics, so I’m not exactly an expert. But that might actually help to have a more holistic view. Astrophysicists are specialized and maybe they can’t see the woods for the trees.

Today, after reading about dark matter and how they’re still trying to figure it out, I had a new insight that I hadn’t thought of before. It has to do with scripture and how these dots could be connected.

In My Testimony, I wrote “One of the things that got me thinking that God might be real and the bible might be true, was something that goes back to my physics training in college. It was in a course on nuclear physics. Electrons have a negative charge and protons are positive. So they attract each other, which is what holds the electrons in orbit around the nucleus. But there is an apparent dilemma: opposite charges attract but similar charges repel. So what holds the nucleus together? The protons, all with positive charges, should repel each other and fly apart. So I went to the head of the physics department after class and asked him. He said “We call that the ‘strong force’.” I said “what’s the strong force?” He said “It’s what holds the nucleus together. O-o-kaaaaaay…  I was not impressed with his answer – it seemed like quite a copout – like he really didn’t have a clue. I also mentioned this incident in “How I Became Convinced the Bible is True” 

The dots that I’m trying to connect today are the similarities between the twin mysteries of what holds the atom together and what holds the universe together. It occurs to me that it may be the same problem, with the same answer, just on different scales.

Atoms, electrons, and dark matter are invisible. Everything we can sense with our five senses is made of things which are invisible. But how could anyone have known that thousands of years ago?

Yet Hebrews 11:3 says “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

Now look at Colossians 1:16-17. The context is about Christ:

“¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

There’s more. It’s in Heb. 1:2-3. Again, the subject is Christ, the Son of God.

² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. ³ The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” (New International Version)

The New American Standard Version phrases it this way: [He] “upholds all things by the word of his power.”

Update: 6/1/24 - I just read in Creation magazine vol.46 No.3 2024 on p.11 about two new studies in early 2024, using different theoretical proposals, that are claiming that dark matter and dark energy may not exist. John Oppenheim, a quantum gravity expert at University College, London, says he can “explain the expansion or the universe and galactic rotation without dark matter or dark energy”. Rajendra Gupta, a University of Ottawa physicist claims in The Astrophysical Journal that dark matter and energy don’t exist, and even says they can’t exist.