Part of my relaxing self-care is to examine the things that occupy the universe we occupy--from the tiniest photon to the largest groups of superclusters of galaxies. This is because ALL BARYONIC MATTER follows strict rules that can be predicted in other parts of the universe.
OK I just opened up a can of worms with describing the matter we can see as "baryonic." There is another type of matter that we can't see, and the only way we know it exists is through its exertion of gravity--which is in itself a misnomer when you look at what makes gravity. /2
OH hell and then I mentioned gravity which is one of the four fundamental interactions of the universe. Or at least of baryonic matter. I suppose I must explain what gravity really is, according to Einstein's Theory of General Rela---
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Damn it, now I have to explain what a theory is, and its relationship to science and other concepts in science. And yet science is really actually very simple. It just requires you speak its language first. /4
In science, a theory is one of a few pinnacles of knowledge that an idea can attain. Another is a law, which is equal in gravity to a theory. Laws tell you how things work in a concrete manner, such as Newton's Laws of Gravity. Theories explain WHY the law works. /5
This is why Newton's Laws regarding gravity weren't thrown out when this einstein named Einstein explained what makes gravity in the first place. One of those things that makes gravity is mass. /6
Einstein's Theory of General Relativity explains that gravity is a feature of mass when it interacts with the space-time continuum. Mass in a location causes a dent in the continuum. Think of it as stuff piled on a trampoline. /7
Those dents in the trampoline are 2-dimensional representations of the 4-dimensional dent that mass causes. Those dents are gravity. They are expressed in length, width, height, and time. /8
Here's a problem: Of all the gravity that we can observe going on in the universe--there isn't enough baryonic matter (the type of matter we can see and touch) to make all the gravity we observe. /9
Logically then, there must be another sort of matter making the gravity--a kind we can't see or touch because it isn't made of leptons and baryons. And 85% of all matter in the universe is this sort of matter. This is dark matter, the most abundant substance in the universe. /10
Just think: you, as a squishy carbon-based collective of chemicals clinging to the wet skin of a molten glass marble hurtling through space, are composed of the rarest substance in the universe. /fin
