The Invisible Universe

Part 3

Both men sat in silence for a moment, allowing the thick air to settle as Thomas's shocking words bounced around only to slowly fade away and be replaced by the gentle pitter-patter of rain on the windows. Thomas was impressed with his friend, normally he would of trailed off by now, going to get another drink or something to eat in order to get the conversation moving in a different direction, but Thomas could tell by the staring look on Williams face he was deeply invested, how could he not be?

William was sat forward in his chair staring into space, processing, and coming to terms with what he had just been told. This idea that the universe had yet another layer to it. A completely new building block that filled in the gaps between everything else, that until now, had passed by unseen. Suddenly his world seemed even smaller that it had before, a tiny point lost in a sea of matter where even the empty bits had something in them. Thomas took it upon himself to carry on explaining as it was clear William was in no position to retort.

"This device, I won't bother you with the details of how it works, but for explanations sake you can think of it as a special kind of telescope, a "Dark matter" telescope if you will. I did consider calling it "An Invisible telescope" but that doesn't have the same ring to it and sends out a confusing message I feel. However I digress, this Dark matter, as well as having its own equivalent to our atoms, the basic building blocks for anything solid. It also has its own equivalent to our light or photons; the particles that make up all radio, infa-red, visible light and ultraviolet waves. This means there is a complete Dark electromagnetic spectrum out there, unable to be detected by any device except mine. My telescope can detect this spectrum and transfer it into a usable format. Just like a normal telescope would pick up normal light coming from a distant star, my Dark telescope can pick up all the Dark light coming from the Dark stars. It then converts what it picks up into an image."

Concerned that his friend was struggling to follow along Thomas paused, giving William time to gather his thoughts. Expecting a barrage of "What do you mean?" or "Can you explain that bit again?" type of questions to come firing at him. like a verbal machine gun. However William remained deadly silent. Staring off into the void as if he could see all this Dark matter himself. After a few moments he then in a clam, relaxed tone asked a rather simple question.

"And what does this stuff look like?"

This might at first glance seem like a stupid question when you are talking about an invisible substance, the initial response being to say, its invisible! So it doesn't look like anything!" but when you really think about it, its probably one of the most though provoking questions to ask.

This took Thomas off guard, with all the respect in the world, William wasn't the brightest of men and such an unexpected question seemed to be above his normal intellect. It was a fantastic question that Thomas himself hadn't really considered.

Since his telescope's converted images were incredibly basic; having no colour and only being able to show the contrast of light and shade, like taking a rather blurry black and white photo, it was indeed hard to know what this stuff would actually look like if you could see it.

Imagine standing on a block of this Dark matter with a set of eye balls that where attuned to detect the Dark light coming off it. What would you see? Would it look the same as an ordinary piece of matter? Or would it look extremely different? Would a collection of Dark carbon atoms look the same as normal carbon? Would a Dark matter rock have the same rough, hard and unforgiving matt surface of a normal matter equivalent? Thomas had always imagined it would look the same as normal matter, but now he was properly thinking about it, not letting his own excitement cloud his vision, there was no definitive reason why it had to look anything like the ordinary matter he had come to know and love. There was too much unknown about the composition of this substance to make a justified comment either way.