An award winner at NASA for his research and teaching, and an internationally acclaimed pioneer in research on gravity, Richard Hammond, Ph.D., reveals the truth about dark matter and energy.

By Dr. Richard Hammond

It is the Roaring Twenties and the great telescopes of the day open a new window to the universe revealing strange and unpredictable behavior across the vast space of our cosmos. Astronomers discover entire new galaxies as we come to realize our majestic Milky Way is no more unique than a tree in a forest. Stranger yet, these great “island universes,” as galaxies were once called, millions of light years away, are speeding through space.

By the end of the decade, in 1929, the astronomer Edwin Hubble made an extraordinary discovery, bringing some order to flying galaxies as they rocket through space. He found that all of the distant galaxies are moving away from us, and equally intriguing, the farther the galaxy, the faster it moves. The only sensible interpretation of these bizarre revelations is to assume the universe itself is expanding.

Before this, for century after century, it was believed that the universe was a static, unbending framework. Although planets and other celestial objects may move, the cosmos, on the whole, is as rigid as granite. In the preceding decade Albert Einstein developed his famous General Theory of Relativity. He even went so far as to apply his equations to the entire cosmos, giving a mathematical structure for our universe as had never been done. But he failed! Unable to let go of the abiding model of a static universe, Einstein went so far as to alter his theory, adding a “cosmological constant,” so that his theory could accommodate a frozen universe. But Hubble’s observations destroyed this age-old notion, as we finally came to understand our universe is growing every day.

In the decades following Hubble’s result, the evidence piled higher and higher, and Hubble’s ideas were validated. The only debate that remained dealt with the rate of expansion. Since gravity is an attractive force, it was realized that all of the countless galaxies pull on each other, and so, the expansion was expected to be slowing down. Astronomers were so confident that the expansion was slowing down they coined the term deceleration parameter, which would describe the quantitative rate of deceleration. The biggest remaining debate was whether the universe, though slowing, would expand forever, or at some future time reach a maximum size and stop, and then begin its inevitable journey to final collapse—the big crunch.

Astronomers continued making careful measurements of the most distant galaxies in the universe, using every scrap of physics and ingenuity to calculate the speed of these distant worlds. Nothing shocked the community more than a paper published in 1998, describing the results of these meticulous measurements: the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing!

All of the mass and energy in the universe should act like cosmic brakes, slowing the expansion and pulling all of the galaxies together, but now we had to wonder if some new, mysterious force could be pushing everything apart. All of the mass and energy that we have ever observed tends to pull things together, and no one has ever observed the kind of energy that could push our far-flung galaxies apart at ever increasing rates. This was so shocking that even the deceleration parameter was misnamed, so now we find that this number is in fact negative, the mathematical way of saying we are suffering a positive acceleration.

This is not the first time we were caught off guard. When astronomers began measuring the speeds of galaxies in clusters, and later, when they measured the speed of individual stars in the outer regions of galaxies, they were hit with another bombshell—the outer stars were moving too fast. These scofflaws were not just a little out of line, like speeders ticketed on the freeway, they were zipping along at ten times the speed limit, ten times what the theory allowed. This precipitated an explosive program of experiment and theory, where the basic laws of gravity were put under the microscope of scrutiny, and our entire concept of what a galaxy is, and what matter is, were put on trial.

To reconcile these extraordinary observations with our theories, we have begun to believe that a galaxy is filled with another kind of matter, a new kind of matter that does not interact with light as ordinary matter does—dark matter. For decades we have been looking for this baffling new form of matter, whether it be theoretically predicted particles like axions, or remnants from string theory. For a while, some thought this to be biggest problem in all of physics and astronomy. But then came dark energy.

When we say dark matter, we are being literal: We do not see it, and perhaps we can never see it. Dark energy is a bit metaphoric, we cannot see what it is, but more, we cannot understand what it is. We understand, through the famous formula,, that energy is equivalent to mass, and from this we conclude that all forms of energy in the universe, like mass, tend to pull our myriad galaxies together.

But recent observations are telling us this is false. Something is causing the galaxies to push themselves apart like prisoners in a jailbreak. Flying apart at ever increasing rates, the galaxies reveal that the universe is expanding faster than ever before, but we cannot understand why. In desperation, we invent the concept of dark energy, an inscrutable substance that gives rise to a cosmological repulsion causing the cosmos to grow faster than ever before.

So, what can dark energy be? Many believe this is the most pressing issue in physics today, but gather up a horde of physicists in a room and ask, “What is dark matter?” and we will argue like politicians at a convention. One idea actually goes back to Einstein himself. His idea of the cosmological constant seemed superfluous when we consider an expanding universe, and Einstein even called it his biggest blunder, but “one decade’s blunder can be another decade’s salvation.” This term can act like a cosmic repulsion, but we no longer think it is really constant, and we have no other evidence of its existence.

Another idea comes from vacuum itself. According to quantum theory, vacuum is not the empty ghost town, as we used to think of it, lifeless and devoid action. The vacuum is bustling with as much energy as a boom town: Particles are created and then destroyed, and even the real estate is changing, as space and time are whipped to a foam-like frenzy at the very small scale. The “vacuum energy” may be part of the solution, but there is a long way to go before we have sufficient evidence to know.

Or, perhaps our theories are wrong. Long ruling theories of physics have been dethroned before, when they are pushed to new realms where they have never been tested. It is possible that Einstein’s theory must be modified again, or maybe a whole new theory is necessary. And perhaps it is nothing we can think of, and we will have to wait until future observations will give us the clues necessary to solve this riddle. Time will tell.

I often wondered that with my mother’s cat, who jumped onto the couch to peer out the window, moments before I heard my mom’s car pull up to the house. My father told me about a family dog that followed them halfway across the country to be with them on their vacation. I can easily explain away the cat’s behavior–exceptional hearing or an awareness of time. But the dog? How would she know where to find my father’s family, especially at such a great distance?

Rupert Sheldrake has written a book about such cases, entitled Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home. Sheldrake believes that domestic animals can communicate telepathically with people and other animals with whom they have emotional bonds. That’s putting it simply, without the science speak. He isn’t alone in his curiosity about this phenomenon.

Alex Tsakiris of OpenSourceScience is hosting a contest to see whether dogs have psychic ability. The prize for the dog who can demonstrate psychic talent is $1,000. Find out more about this contest by visiting Dogs That Know.

Paranormal investigator, Ross Hemsworth has placed a £100 bet with bookmakers William Hill that he will provide solid evidence that the afterlife exists before the year ends. “There is something out there trying to make contact,” Hemsworth said in an interview.

“With the evidence we have got we are not a million miles away from proving it. The whole point of the project is to prove that there is something there. More and more people are coming away from religion, there are more and more wars. If we can prove this we hope it will make some difference to peoples’ lives.”

I can’t help but feel skeptical about this man and his intentions. If he really wants to “make some difference to people’s lives”, why place a crackpot bet? This sounds like the latest of many schemes.

Cases of spontaneous human combustion have been reported since the 17th century. Charles Dickens wrote a novel, Bleak House, which involved an alcoholic who died of spontaneous human combustion. This sparked a popular belief that heavy drinking may be associated with this strange and horrifying occurrence. Many of the modern day stories leave police and fire investigators baffled. These bodies have seemingly cremated themselves, leaving behind a limb or a shriveled skull, while leaving the rest of the room virtually untouched.

Interesting enough, many of these victims were elderly females. Most of them were heavy drinkers and/or smokers. However, I found two cases where the victim was young and cigarettes weren’t a factor.

• Maybelle Andrews (1938) was dancing with her boyfriend in a nightclub when flames suddenly erupted from her back, chest and shoulders. There was no other flame in the room. Maybelle died en route to the hospital.
• Jenna Winchester (1980) burst into flames while sitting next to a friend while they were driving down a Florida road. She survived the ordeal with burns covering 20% of her body.

Spontaneous human combustion is extremely rare, since our bodies our made mostly of water. Wild theories as to its cause have sprung up over recent years, including the factors of stress and obesity. These theories proved unfounded and were quickly dismissed. Scientists and criminologists have conducted research and experiments into the cause of spontaneous human combustion.

Dr. John de Haan of the California Criminalistic Institute conducted an experiment, called the “wick effect”, to see if body fat could burn hot enough to cremate a victim by using an ordinary source, such as a cigarette. He wrapped a dead pig inside a blanket, poured a bit of gasoline on the blanket, and set it on fire. Then he closed the door to the room. Five hours later, he found the pig burned exactly like the spontaneous human combustion victims. A National Geographic special tried to duplicate this experiment, but failed because they left the door to the room open.

Dr. de Haan proved that spontaneous human combustion is not so spontaneous. It takes anywhere from two to five hours of a slow burn to destroy a body in that magnitude, and it is usually caused by an agent such as a cigarette or pipe. The victim burns so slowly that no one realizes what’s happening until it’s too late.

As for the two girls above, their bodies may have been overcharged with electrostatic energy, which may have caused a spark that ignited their clothing.