Cute, Cuddly, and Lethal
You never know
Hi All,
There is a meme going around the Internet that says something to the effect of: "the probability of your cat killing you is very low, but it's not zero."
If you live with cats, you can think of a lot of ways your cat could turn murderous:
trip you at the top of the stairs
claw your wrist while you take a bath
barf in a spot where you can slip and split your head open
Now, we can add a new way—micro black holes:
Scientists have suggested that tiny primordial black holes with the power to hollow out planets could be passing through everyday materials here on earth — rocks, glass, metal, and maybe even you or your cat.
https://www.space.com/primordial-black-holes-cat-big-bang
Primordial black holes are theorized to have been created during the Big Bang. But… we haven't actually seen any yet. And, to their credit, they are really small. If one of these tiny black holes passed through you or your cat, you probably wouldn't feel it. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
These weird celestial objects that we've never seen are also one of the suspected sources of Dark Matter.
Dark Matter is another one of those theoretical things in space physics. Basically, when astronomers look up at the night sky to estimate how much stuff there is (how much matter we have), they all agree that there is stuff missing.
A lot of stuff.
When physics folk do the maths, they estimate we see less than 20% of the matter we need to sustain the universe we have.
This idea is based on the motion of space objects—stars, planets, and galaxies. In order for space things to move the way we observe, there just has to be much more stuff in space. Therefore, our universe includes a bunch of material that we can't see—thus, dark.
Imagine that you've laid out a complete spread on the dining room table for Thanksgiving, and you return to the kitchen to get extra napkins before ringing the dinner bell. Now imagine that while you are gone, a mob of hungry teenager quietly enter the room, see the meal, make themselves plates of food, and return to the den to eat and watch football.
You would come back with your extra napkins and see that half of the food was gone. Effect with a missing cause.
Your teenagers are dark matter. And one of them could even be a primordial black hole (depending on how much food they eat).
Something has happened (or is happening) and you didn't (or can't) see it.
No wonder the ancients made up stories and myths about occurrences they couldn't explain. That is really all we're doing today when we theorize about things we can't see.
The Greeks and the Romans used to imagine the god Apollo carried the sun across the sky in a giant chariot. Now we have seen evidence that there is no chariot, but rather the Earth spins around the Sun under the influence of a force we call gravity, giving us the appearance of the sun's movement across the sky.
And, when we try to explain why, in our universe, galaxies appear to be accelerating away from each other and we don't know why, we create our own Apollos—dark matter and dark energy—as being responsible.
In astronomy, there is a math factor called the Hubble Constant.
It's basically a fudge factor that is used to explain how what we see doesn't match what we calculate. It was named after Edwin Hubble, an astronomer from the early 20th Century who is also the namesake of the Hubble Telescope.
The funny thing, at least to me, about the Hubble Constant is that scientists can't agree on its actual value.
Which means that the number we came up with to account for the fact that we can't explain what we're seeing is, itself, unexplainable. I'm not sure how this is any different from plain old bullsh*t.
But, still, we send things into space with amazing accuracy. I mean, we landed on an asteroid.
Apparently, not knowing things hasn’t stopped us from doing things. And, as I write this, I think my cat, Shale, is giving me the stink eye. Low, but not zero.
Happy reading and happy writing,
David