Dark Matter's Afoot

Bolshoi Simulation from UC-HPACC on Vimeo.

Okay. So here is an interesting tiny bit of what is called the Bolshoi Simulation. In this view, you get an idea of what part of the universe would look like if you could see dark matter. (Go here if you want to spend sometime trying to understand dark matter.) This may help a bit, or not, in digesting the news today that the Nobel Prize for Physics went to a three gentlemen whose work demonstrated that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate.

Now trust me, I have no credentials whatsoever to evaluate any aspect of the work of these guys. However, it is my blog, and I grant myself a great degree of latitude in making observations about a lot of things for which I have no credentials. My blog is kind of like the Bolshoi Simulation in that it you get an idea of what part of the universe would look like if you could see it from my point of view. The difference is that there are hundreds of thousands of people with huge resources of money and equipment working on this whole physics/dark matter thing, and there's only one of me.

But here is a question I have always found to be really, really interesting. The universe (and quoting Wikipedia, "the universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all space, time, matter, energy, planets, stars, galaxies, intergalactic space and beyond") is rapidly expanding into what? Expanding into "space?"

Space appears to be simply defined as the place where stuff happens. It is suggested that it may well have been invented in the Big Bang, and while its shape is not known, it's probably expanding. Expanding where? Or it could be that it is already infinite. It might be that space is simply the the relationship between objects, or it could be that space would exist even if there was nothing in it.

The way I look at it is that we don't know where the hell we are, and in our increasingly secular culture, we do the guy thing of not stopping to ask for directions. But I remain hopeful. I do not think that not knowing where you are is the same as being lost. We will get there sooner or later.

I mean, there is a there there, isn't there?