When nothing makes me happy.

In a recent New Scientist there is an article [subscriber-only link] about a new(ish) way of looking at the cosmos, where the distribution of matter within the universe may be fractally spread and not in the uniform way that we've thought. That is, as you look at galaxies, galactic clusters, super clusters and so on the same patterns repeat -- just at larger and larger scales.

Matter -- light matter -- that of the galaxies we can see, is thought to be uniformly spread throughout the expanding galaxy, with dark matter making up the enormous shortfall. This fractal theory posits that matter is not uniformly spread and evenly distributed, but that it is spread like a cobweb. This is after all how things look to us when observing light matter only, but the fractal way says that even the dark matter clusters around the light matter, leaving vast pockets of nothing.

And I kinda like that model. One where this dark matter fills all the gaps just seems a little convenient, even if they think that dark matter makes up the other 85% of matter in the universe. It just seems...a little too ...nonsensical to me.

But a universe spider-webbed by matter is somehow comforting to me. I'm a gravity kind of guy. Matter attracting matter and forming clusters and stars and planets in galaxies and strings makes an enormous amount of sense. Dark matter neatly filling those voids just doesn't cut it.

I'm all about dark matter and light matter clustering together in galactic harmony.

Peace out.