In February our good friend, Charles, a retired U. of
Pittsburgh professor sent me an email talking about black hole and dark matter,
a problem that has occupied his mind for a while. He wonders dark matter may be related to black holes, as both are
invisible and the invisible black holes swallow heavenly bodies that come close
by.
To which I responded with the following email.
(I decided to post this in my blog after our friend, Dr.
R.C. Liu sent me the work (現代俳句 & 變奏, 系列 1) of his friend, 何康隆, in which I read,
「 最近好嗎 ? 都想些什麼 ?」
Black Hole,
Dark Matter, Supernova…
到遠方自成一個宇宙
It made me feel that I am not the
only one thinking about black holes and dark matter.)
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Glad you mentioned the dark matter
and black hole. I always wanted to write something about black hole in my
blog, but never did, lest people would say my blog is too “dry” (I mean 乾燥無味).
I do not know enough to write about dark matter.
Several Nobel prizes in physics are related to black
hole, none about dark matter. It probably will never happen as the lady
(Dr. Vera Rubin) just passed away (12/27/2016) at age of 88. She should
be the one to get most of the credits in pointing out that they are much more
“matter” other than the matter that made up our universe (we, the people, all
the stars in Milky Way). The so-called dark matter has no atom, electrons
and cannot interact with lights, thus invisible to us.
It never occurred to me that black hole and dark matter
are related (I will pay more attention when I read these topics later). I
think the connection to you comes from the fact that both are invisible to us.
I am always more religious when the discussion turns
philosophical. Something we cannot see is not necessarily non-existent,
such as we cannot see God. Once someone asked Bertrand Russell (an
atheist) what he will say when he went to see his Maker, he said he will ask
“why didn’t You give us more evidence”?
All things are made by the God All Mighty. Does that
include dark matter? There may be ten times (or more?) more dark matter than
the matter that we came to know.
An article in 2/25/2014 issue of Scientific American talks about the “surprised and important”
discoveries in physics, such as quantum mechanics, atomic nucleus and quantum
theory of atom, special and general relativity, nuclear fission, etc. It
also includes black hole, but not dark matter.
This may also explain why Nobel prized never considered
dark matter, as Nobel committees are known to be very conservative, an idea, a
concept or a discovery was awarded only after standing the test of time. 2015 Nobel Prize in chemistry is for DNA
repair, a field that is opened in 1950s and pursued in 1970s. In his Nobel Biography, Dr. Aziz Sancar [2015
Nobel laureate in chemistry] wrote,
“Dr. Rupert [Dr. Sancar’s memtor’s at the University of Texas at Dallas in
1974]is
the scientist who discovered the enzyme photolyase; this discovery, in 1958,
marks the beginning of the scientific field of DNA repair.”
There is a book called “The Dark Lady of DNA” which is the biography of Rosalind Franklin,
who should have been awarded Nobel Prize with James Watson and Francis Crick
had she not died of ovarian cancer in her late 30s a few years before the Nobel
glory.
I call Dr. Vera Ruben the Dark Lady of the Dark Matter!
In an email to my daughters a few days ago, I wrote,
“Mary
Ann Evans actually took ‘George’ from her ‘husband’ (she always claimed, ‘my
husband’), ‘Eliot’ was simply ‘good mouth-filling’, easily pronounced (very
smart). Subramanyan Chandrasekhar was a Nobel Prize laureate, quite an intellectual.
People wonder why he is so less well known. It is the name that does it.
Speaking of black hole, one
cannot escape Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, whose Nobel Lecture is all complex
math from the beginning to the end, explaining black hole. But, it ends
with,
The
mathematical theory of black holes is a subject of immense complexity; but its
study has convinced me of the basic truth of the ancient mottoes, and
The
simple is the seal of the true
Beauty
is the splendour of truth.
Many years ago
before his passing Chandrasekhar gave a lecture in Chicago, the title of
the talk is,
“Shakespeare,
Newton and Beethoven.”
John Wheeler is
the one coined the name of “black hole”. Richard Feynman (one of the
books I am reading is letters of Richard Feynman), who once said of John
Wheeler (his mentor at Princeton),
“Some people think Wheeler’s
gotten crazy in his later years, but he’s always been crazy.”
How can one find dark matter and
black holes not interesting?
