Seeing Dark Matter as the Key to the Universe -- And Human Empathy

On the last day of my residence at the artists' colony Yaddo, I shared with my co-residents an excerpt from my book, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs. I read from the first chapter, in which I liken dark matter -- matter present throughout the universe that is invisible to us because it doesn't emit or absorb light -- to other entities that remain unnoticed but influence the workings of the world, from the bacterial cells in our bodies, which outnumber human cells by a factor of 10, to the myriad Internet communities and subcultures that thrive outside our awareness. The goal was to illuminate the gap between our limited observations and the many barely perceived phenomena that permeate our reality. I was gratified to observe the audience's increased comfort with dark matter and its unseen but important influences. But the most surprising and rewarding response came the following day, when Jefferson Pinder, a young African-American artist, stopped me as I was leaving and asked, "I know this might sound like a crazy question, but were you really talking about race?" The crazy thing is that I was. People's attitude toward dark matter is bedeviled by the same instincts that influence their responses to different races, castes or classes whom they might not truly see but who are nonetheless essential to society. Jefferson understood that the real issue I was addressing was the transparency -- both metaphorical and literal -- of people, phenomena, particles, and forces that we don'...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news