Proof of Dark Matter?

See the article: Scientists Offer Proof of 'Dark Matter'

For decades, many scientists have theorized that the universe is made up of nearly undetectable mysterious substances called dark matter and dark energy. But until yesterday there was no proof that the subatomic matter actually exists.

After studying data from a long-ago collision of two giant clusters of galaxies, researchers now say they are certain dark matter does exist and plays a central role in creating and defining gravity throughout the universe.

While the scientists are still not sure exactly what dark matter is, since they have yet to identify it in a laboratory, they said that the workings of the universe cannot be explained without it.

The finding will have potentially great impact on an active debate among physicists and cosmologists about not only dark matter but also the workings of gravity that it helps explain. Indeed, the theory of dark matter evolved largely to explain the finding several decades ago that there was not enough visible matter in the universe to produce and account for the gravity needed to keep galaxies from flying apart. [emphasis added]

Not enough matter in the universe to keep the galaxies from flying apart? What on earth (figuratively speaking) does this mean?

Enlightenment scientists proposed that the universe is eternal, without beginning or end. This of course is in direct contradiction with the Western religions that teach that universe was created by God and will end someday, and indeed, that was most likely specifically why the "eternal universe" hypothesis was created in the first place. It is however, an old theory, going back to some of the atheistic and materialistic Greeks philosophers who lived before the time of Socrates.

Now of course, the question of whether the eternal universe (or steady-state) hypothesis is true or not is claimed to be a matter of science, and if it seems to be highly probable, then that may force the religious to rethink their faith.

Einstein is usually famous for his special theory of relativity, E = mc² and all that, but his most significant theory is that of general relativity, which explains how gravity works. Now general relativity is a heavy-duty and difficult-to-understand theory, but is one which mathematicians call 'elegant' in its basic simplicity.

But this elegant theory didn't give Einstein the results that he wanted: it showed that the universe could not be static and eternal, but instead must either contract or expand, having a beginning, or end, or both. This was unacceptable, so he added a "fudge factor" (the so-called cosmological constant) to his equations, ruining their elegance, but it makes the equations do what he wanted: make the universe static.

Belgian physicist and Catholic priest Msgr. Georges-Henri Lemaître called Einstein on this fudge, and instead proposed the 'primeval atom' theory, which implied that the universe was created at some time in the past; Msgr. Lemaître's enemies coined the term 'big bang' in derision of his theory, but later evidence gave further credence to the creation event. Einstein later approved of this theory (and also had a lifelong fascination with the doctrine of transubstantiation).

By the 1960s, the 'Big Bang' theory went unchallenged. The data implied that the universe began at some point in the past, and will expand forever until the entropic "heat death" of the universe will make it eternally changeless. But some scientists did not like this implication of a Creation. They theorized that if the amount of matter in the universe were large enough, then the big bang would eventually contract again, into a "big crunch", and with some hypothetical hand-waving theories, would be able to expand again. The universe would then be eternal; if not static, then at least it would eternally fluctuate, and they would not be bothered with the notion of a Creation, or most upsetting to them, a Creator.

But there isn't enough matter in the universe to allow it to eternally fluctuate. All the stuff that can be seen, or can reasonably be expected to exist, falls short of the required amount. Some physicists brought back Einstein's cosmological constant fudge factor to make this eternal fluctuation possible, but that is just inelegant and arbitrary. It shows that they are desperate. More clever physicists proposed instead "dark matter" and "dark energy". It can't be seen in the universe, and has never been seen in the laboratory, but they SO BADLY want to have an uncreated universe, that dark matter JUST HAS TO EXIST. They want, Want, WANT it to exist, and so are scrambling to find it. There is no theoretical necessity whatsoever for it, nor is there any theory that describes what dark matter may be: it is an ideological theory, period.

So they claim to have found this dark matter, and it will be a part of science textbooks, PBS science documentaries, and New York Times editorials for years to come. But not all believe the findings:

Stacy McGaugh, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, has been one of the dark-matter skeptics, and he said yesterday that he remained unconvinced.

"I've been aware of this result some time, and I agree that it is interesting and may make more sense in terms of dark matter than alternative gravity," he said. "However, it is premature to say so."

He said that a definitive detection of dark-matter particles would mean "grabbing them in the laboratory, not just inferring that their effects can be the only possible explanation for an observation before the alternatives have actually been checked."

An Architectural Problem

The other day I posted this photo of a fountain in the Grand Basin in Saint Louis' Forest Park:



The public-private partnership, Forest Park Forever, recently renovated the park, including this lake. The classical balustrade is new, but take a look at this close-up:



Note the modern handrail, and the metal inserts on the balustrade. They were put there probably due to requirements of the building code.

A major problem for those practicing traditional or classical architecture is the modern "warts" on buildings, including sprinkler heads, illuminated exit signs, electrical switches and outlets, and other contemporary requirements. Studying Virturvius or the great Renaissance buildings won't help us much to solve this problem; in fact, Modern architects tell us that we must abandon all of that completely.

However, if we see the building arts as a living tradtion, perhaps there may be another solution. How can these new things and code requirements be integrated into the tradtion, in an organic way?

Why Protestants Can't Write

See this article Why Evangelicals Can't Write from the Protestant journal Credenda Agenda:

[M]odern Protestants can't write. We are devotees of the Word, people of the book. Yet we can't write stories or poetry. This is a scandal and a deep mystery.

Even the very few counter-examples, like William Shakespeare and C.S. Lewis aren't convincing: Lewis was an Anglo-Catholic and Shakespeare was at least highly sympathetic to Catholicism.

Here is a thesis, which I offer in a gleeful fit of reductionism: Modern Protestants can't write because we have no sacramental theology. Protestants will learn to write when we have reckoned with the tragic results of Marburg, and have exorcised the ghost of Zwingli from our poetics. Protestants need not give up our Protestantism to do this, as there are abundant sacramental resources within our own tradition. But contemporary Protestants do need to give up the instinctive anti-sacramentalism that infects so much of Protestantism, especially American Protestantism.

Sacramental theology has universal significance beyond just the Sacraments of the Church. Signs or symbols that effect what they signify are everwhere.

Much of Protestant and secular thinking separates reality and symbol; reality is seen as having no symbolic value, while symbols are arbitrary. We have realism in writing, but it simply portrays meaningless, brutal events. Or we have allegorical writing, which fails to portray realistic people, but are just symbols of say, good vs. evil. It is no accident that the greatest of Hollywood films are overwhelmingly either written or directed by Catholics; these films are neither documentaries nor are they cartoonish depictions of cardboard cut-out characters, but are of realistic characters who symbolize a deeper, spiritual, reality.

Sacramental theology is not just found in Catholicism, but also in the Eastern Churches, and not just in Christendom; a type of sacramentalism can be found elsewhere, too. Perhaps this is found universally because it is true.

Another problem is the very common view that the world is inherently evil, and that only spirit is good. Certainly this view is often seen among Evangelicals, but can be found in Modern art, with a primal 'creativity' triumphing over the representation of nature. But the traditional view is that the world was created very good, and that signs of God's grace can be found in nature. So good sacramental art can both be realistic and simultaneously symbolic.

Catholic theology insists that we come to God through our material senses. The article continues:

If the writer must be open to the manifestation of God in "what-is," she must begin with the senses. Following Aquinas, [Flannery] O'Connor writes, "The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions." Yet, "Most people who think they want to write stories are not willing to start there. They want to write about problems, not people; or about abstract issues, not concrete situations."

A symbol in Catholic art, first of all must be concrete in itself, and not disjointed from creation, and the symbol must not just signify, but also act: it must be an action of God's grace.

This is what we get when we ignore sacramentalism:

A Zwinglian poetics leaves us with three choices: Either a flat mimetic realism that gives literary expression to "the real" without attempting to penetrate beyond the surface; or a flat didacticism that ignores the real in its haste to get to the point; or an allegorism that forges arbitrary links between the real and the symbolic, and in the end swallows up the real in its meaning....

In a Zwinglian poetics, things cannot be both themselves and also—simultaneously, without ceasing to be what they are, for the very reason they are what they are—something else. Zwinglian will not permit something to be both real and symbolic, to be both wholly itself and yet, because of what it is, to disclose something more than itself. Zwinglian poetics does not permit Southern customs to be Southern customs and yet, precisely because they are Southern customs, to be haunted by Christ.

This article also goes into depth answering the question "What is art?" which is certainly a central component of the renewal of culture.

More Fountain Photos

It has been another brutally hot week here, with daily high temperatures exceeding 90° F. Here are more photos of fountains, which may remind you of the refreshing coolness of water.




A newer fountain, in Grand Basin, in Forest Park, which is one of the Nation's great urban parks. Beyond is the Saint Louis Art Museum, atop Art Hill (a favorite place for sledding after a snow).




Another fountain in Grand Basin. In disrepair since the late 1960s, Forest Park was completely renovated in the past few years.




Fountain below the World's Fair Pavillion.




A fountain and map of the Louisiana Purchase, in front of the Jefferson Memorial building of the Missouri Historical Society.




A large fountain in Round Lake, also in Forest Park.




Across Skinker Boulevard from the Park is Washington University. This is, as far as I know, the only fountain at the University. A slight trickle of water comes from the lion's mouth.

Chain of Rocks

The City of Saint Louis was founded on the banks of the Mississippi River, near the confluences of that river with the Missouri and Illinois Rivers. This location allowed easy river navigation throughout central North America, from the Gulf of Mexico to western Pennsylvannia, and with an easy portage, to the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean. The Missouri River, which was far more dangerous than the other rivers, still offered the possibility of transportation to the western interior of the continent, and was hoped to be the route of the fabled Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean.

But about eleven river miles north of the original settlement of Saint Louis, and five miles south of the confluence with the Missouri, is the Chain of Rocks; a bedrock exposure that prevented navigation on the river. Boats had to unload at Saint Louis, and cargo moved overland to Saint Charles, on the Missouri River, via what is now known as Olive Boulevard. Then transportation could be resumed to points north and west.




A water intake structure, built in 1891, sits just upstream from the Chain of Rocks. Directly south is downtown Saint Louis, Missouri, which appears to be to the left of the river; however, the river bends to the west before reaching downtown.

Victorian engineers were not utilitarian in their designs; like much of the technology of that period, this structure has great beauty.




Both water intakes are seen here. These photos were taken from the Chain of Rocks bridge, now a bicycle and pedestrian bridge, on September 1st, 2001. In the background is the Chain of Rocks water treatment plant. This half of the river has water from the Missouri River, there is no significant mixing of the waters until many miles downstream: this is fortunate, since the Illinois River, which joins the Mississippi 27 miles upstream from here, is the sewer for the City of Chicago.

The Chain of Rocks is artificially enhanced, and is also known as Dam #27, the final dam on the Mississippi River. It is open river from here all of the way to the Gulf of Mexico. No navigation at all occurs here, outside of bold or foolish kayakers; the Army Corps of Engineers dug a canal bypassing the Chain of Rocks, and includes a lock. The Mississippi River from this point down to the Ohio River is swift, narrow, and dangerous; by the late 19th century there was on average one steamboat wreck per mile along that stretch of the river. North of here, the river is wide and serene, and is popular with pleasure boaters.

The turbulence from the Chain of Rocks attracts many unusual species of fish, including the gar and sturgeon.

The first European explorers of this area, Joliet and Marquette, were terrified at the confluence of the Rivers: entire forests of trees were washed down the Missouri, forming enormous rafts of wood that made a terrible din. It wasn't until the 1880s that the Federal Government took steps to make the Missouri River safe for navigation, but by that time, the age of the steamboat was over, and the railroads ruled transportation west.