{"id":6609,"date":"2013-04-04T07:40:56","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T12:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=6609"},"modified":"2013-04-04T07:40:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T12:40:56","slug":"pretty-dark-out-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/04\/04\/pretty-dark-out-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Pretty dark out there…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Says NASA<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the Universe.<\/em> Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe.” [italics added]<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s all related to the slowing down and speeding up of the expansion of the universe:<\/p>\n

\"http:\/\/imgsrc.hubblesite.org\/hu\/db\/images\/hs-2001-09-g-full_jpg.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And then they offer numerous speculative theories to account for this: from properties of space (ho-hum) to “temporary (“virtual”) particles that continually form and then disappear” (cool), to something called “quintessence,” a “dynamical energy fluid or field” that “fills all of space” but affects the expansion of the Universe in an opposite manner to that of matter and normal energy (??), and finally to a new theory of gravity that would disprove Einstein (gasp).<\/p>\n

Does no one speculate that something on the outside<\/em> of this universe might have put pressure on it to slow it down and then speed it up? Say, another universe, environmental forces, social forces at an inter-universal scale, whatever. (What’s out there, anyway?) Maybe even just a random blip, a massive wind current, the flap of a universe-sized insect’s wings, where the giant insect’s perception of time is on a scale far larger than the time it takes for our universe to burp into existence, expand, and maybe burn itself out altogether.<\/p>\n

Granted, we couldn’t study<\/em> that, given the limits of our tools — and given that we hardly seem to know what the #%$* is going on in here<\/em> (they’ve just admitted we only see a tiny fraction of it).<\/em> But is that a reason to limit our speculations to internalist accounts only? Is there evidence to suggest that the universe is a self-contained and clearly bounded object, utterly isolated from its<\/em> environmental relations? That beyond this universe there is… nothing?<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m afraid this question will stump me for a long time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

See Dark Energy, Dark Matter – NASA Science<\/a> for more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Says NASA: “It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[691847],"tags":[25051,53476,53475,16789,421],"class_list":["post-6609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-spirituality","tag-cosmology","tag-dark-energy","tag-dark-matter","tag-speculative-realism","tag-time"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-1IB","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8355,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/07\/28\/sr-or-morton-on-the-universe-of-things\/","url_meta":{"origin":6609,"position":0},"title":"SR, or Morton on The Universe of Things","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Tim Morton has penned a nice (if thoroughly Mortonish)\u00a0introduction\u00a0to a very nice introduction (by Steven Shaviro) to speculative realism. With lines like these: \"Theory class, in other words, needs an upgrade. Theory class is pretty obviously quite narrow in any case. \u201cTheory\u201d is basically (mostly continental) philosophy or derivatives of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Gallery_Image_10562","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2015\/07\/Gallery_Image_10562-275x206.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5049,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/07\/19\/on-theismnihilism-other-things\/","url_meta":{"origin":6609,"position":1},"title":"On theism\/nihilism & other things","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The Speculative Realist blogosphere has recently been alight with debates over the role of religion, God, theism versus nihilism, the secular and the \"post-secular,\" and other such things. Since these are topics I'm naturally interested, and somewhat invested, in, I ought to participate, but time constraints have made that all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1161,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/12\/01\/%e2%80%98dark-flow%e2%80%99-the-vitality-of-emptiness\/","url_meta":{"origin":6609,"position":2},"title":"\u2018dark flow\u2019 & the vitality of emptiness","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The image of dark flow, described as 1400 galaxy clusters streaming toward the edge of the universe at blistering speed in the ongoing \"afterglow\" of the big bang (or something like that), has haunted me ever since I read about it several days ago. Caused \"shortly after the big bang\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"untitled.bmp","src":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/11\/untitled.bmp","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7713,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/09\/04\/peirces-long-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":6609,"position":3},"title":"Peirce’s “long revolution”","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"As the world's refugee crisis builds -- reminding us that much worse movements of people loom ahead, and much worse wars, as climate systems destabilize\u00a0and the capitalist world-ecology unravels in the decades and centuries ahead -- I can't help\u00a0asking myself what, if anything, philosophy can offer in response. It depends\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"2464","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2015\/09\/2464-275x165.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1083,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/06\/03\/berrys-creative-dynamic-universe\/","url_meta":{"origin":6609,"position":4},"title":"Berry’s creative, dynamic universe","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Another Thomas Berry quote worth spending a bit of time with: \"Acceptance of the challenging aspect of the natural world is a primary condition for creative intimacy with the natural world. Without this opaque or even threatening aspect of the universe we would lose our greatest source of creative energy.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1164,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/12\/07\/subjectivity-impermanence-dark-flow\/","url_meta":{"origin":6609,"position":5},"title":"subjectivity, impermanence, & dark flow","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I think the idea and image of dark flow streaming out of our universe has also been resonating with me because of the work I've been doing using Vipassana teacher Shinzen Young's system of mindfulness training. [. . .] Dark Flow is the (cosmic) Real, the shimmering atomic structure of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"untitled.bmp","src":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/11\/untitled.bmp","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6609"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6629,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6609\/revisions\/6629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}