Dark Universe

It’s straight out of MIT: We’re all in the dark; well, 95% dark anyway. 

Now, thanks to the blunt edge philosophers at the world’s leading school of technology, the universe just got a tiny bit darker. Consider the following excerpt from the 5/19/2025 issue of the MIT Technology Review: 

“We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%. That’s how much of what’s floating about in the cosmos is ordinary matter—planets and stars and galaxies and the dust and gas between them. The other 95% is dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities aptly named for our inability to shed light on their true nature... Cosmologists have cast dark matter as the hidden glue binding galaxies together. Dark energy plays an opposite role, ripping the fabric of space apart.”

A brilliant piece of scientific discovery? Must be! It even earned a Nobel Prize (2011 in Physics): We stuck in a thumb and pulled out a plum and said, ‘Oh what a good boy (sic) am I’.

Dark matter is the name given to a mysterious force that seems to be holding galaxies together. Dark energy, on the other hand, is the name given to the mysterious force that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe, based on data showing that the Universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate.

These gravity/anti-gravity forces have been accepted as canonical by the astronomical community for about three decades. But now a new team of astronomers say their measurements show that the expansion of the Universe is actually slowing down, not speeding up. Oh my!

So we have a ‘dark force’ (gravity) working to contract the universe and a ‘dark force’ (energy) working to expand it. By adjusting the values of these two competing forces I can build (or model) virtually any universe I wish to imagine.

There is an old saw in Logic that states: “If I let A = -A, I can prove any proposition whatsoever!” By adjusting the values of dark matter and dark energy I can account for every possible empirical reading. It’s comforting to know that our work here is done: we no longer need to think about cosmology…to the everlasting relief of my readers.

So how did we end up in this mess? Consider the original Dark Universe hypothesis (above). Now imagine this same paragraph written by a theist talking about ‘God’. It might go something like this:

“We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%. That’s how much of reality is knowable via our senses and reasoning faculties. The other 95% is what we call  Mystery. Observation and reason alone are unable to shed light here. Only Revelation can enlighten us re what must otherwise remain dark. Theologians have cast God as the hidden glue binding all things together (logos) and as the force (physis) ripping things apart to make way for what is to come.”

Public reaction would constitute a Tsunami. The Capitol itself would shake. Who knows, SCOTUS might even get involved. Does the 1st Amendment protect nonsense speech? Should it not be a felony to pollute the minds of our youth with such a superstitious clap trap? Is this not a crime against humanity? Perhaps we should skip SCOTUS and bring the matter directly to The Hague. After all, Socrates was sentenced to death on these very same grounds: corrupting the youth (of Athens). 

But as long as we cloak this god-of-the-gaps theology in the language of science, we can escape censure. ‘Dark matter/dark energy’ sounds a lot better to our anti-clerical ears than ‘God’. 

Whatever we don’t know, whatever we don’t understand, we can call science – as if that settles anything. Like preschoolers everywhere, we imagine that giving something a name (dark this/dark that) makes it real. 

This is the hypocrisy of secularism: Science has now replaced Catholicism as the self-proclaimed ‘one true religion’. Contrary to the US Constitution as amended, Science is ‘established’ to the sometimes brutal exclusion (or marginalization) of all other faiths. 

There is no gnosis, and therefore no salvation, outside of the Academy. Even to question one of its doctrines is tantamount to heresy. We are all now self-appointed Grand Inquisitors, reporting superannuated hippies, tie-dye wearing science skeptics, to the proper authorities.   

By the age of 8, we are already rooting out apostasy as pigs do truffles. Like Russian children in the days of Stalin, we are encouraged by our teachers to turn in non-conforming adults to the local ‘science police’; doing so can earn us a Fauci Medal (called the Hawking Medal in the UK), the highest honor a pre-teen can receive.

As parents, we want our children to have every advantage. So…we encourage them to join science clubs at school, and we send them to science camp every summer. Bully! As a young boy, I joined the Scouts (ages 8 up). 

Had I lived in Russia in those days, I might have been a Little Octobrist (ages 7 – 9) and worn a star-shaped badge sporting the image of a young Lenin. Later, if I showed promise and commitment, I might have been invited to join the Pioneers (Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization); my parents would have been so proud to see me wearing the distinctive red scarf. 

Now please don’t misunderstand me: there’s nothing wrong with children receiving an education in the sciences (or wearing red scarves for that matter). In fact, the former is absolutely essential, especially in our contemporary culture. But there was also nothing wrong with my friends and I learning survival skills at scout camp; nor was there anything wrong with Russian children learning to campaign for what they believed was social justice.

The problem comes when we substitute dogma (“rite words in rote order” - Joyce) for discovery. Dogmatism breeds intellectual laziness. It was dogmatism that condemned Galileo, not religion; it was dogmatism that undermined Glasnost, not justice; and it is dogmatism, not science, that’s placing the intellectual promise of the 21^st century at risk.

Dogmatism encourages us to accept easy answers, even when those answers make no sense. We are no strangers to such dogmatics in the US. For 60 years, we lived under the spell of a race based ‘separate but equal’ education system (de facto and de jure). Then in the 1950’s a doctrine known as ‘my country right or wrong’ became part of our national identity. Today it’s ‘follow the science’. 

What’s interesting is that these dogmas all have something in common: they are not just moronic, they’re oxymoronic. How can two things be equal once you’ve invested even a quantum of energy to separate them? How can any country be right if it’s wrong? 

Worst of all, how can I trust something that I cannot verify? I can verify certain propositions within the scientific canon, but I cannot verify the canon itself. The essential nature of good science is to question everything and accept nothing solely on another’s authority: experimentation is to replace revelation. The only exception to this is Science itself.

I hear you, dear reader: “You seem very sure of yourself. How can you be certain that the Dark Universe hypothesis won’t turn out to be true?” Ok, I’ll see your cynicism and raise you: “It will turn out to be true!” But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong either. Huh? How so?

Scientists invented the Dark Universe hypothesis to give a name to things they don’t understand and can’t explain. Based on what we know, the Universe shouldn’t work. There’s not nearly enough mass to hold galaxies together. In fact, however, galaxies do exist, 100’s of billions of them with more forming ‘every day’. 

So something’s wrong and the Dark Universe hypothesis seems to solve the problem. Of course, it is merely ‘solving’ one unknown in terms of another. But the headlines are already in the can: “Dark matter confirmed!” 

It will be confirmed because any advance in our understanding of the Universe will now be labeled dark. And why not? ‘Dark Universe’ has no denotative meaning, nothing that might subject it to the risk of falsification. It’s a universal place holder for whatever we don’t know now but may discover later. Like ‘mystery’ is Christian theology.

Once we learn something about the universe that we don’t already know, that will be what ‘dark’ is. It will define ‘dark’. Of course it will. We don’t know what Dark Matter is so whatever turns out to solve the paradox will be quite correctly labeled Dark, and we will say, “Of course that’s what Dark Matter is, we knew it all along.” Except of course, we didn’t. 

Do you doubt me? Don’t! It’s already happening. A recent article by Evan Gough in the February 09, 2026 issue of Universe Today suggests replacing the Black Hole hypothesis with…you guessed it, ‘dark matter’. According to Gough, it may be dark matter, not a black hole, that resides at the center of the Milky Way and holds the galaxy together.

Bully! The Dark Matter hypothesis is living up to its potential. It can explain virtually everything. Now if it can just explain why my toast comes out burnt every morning, we’ll really have something to celebrate.

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Image: Odilon Redon — L’œil, comme un ballon bizarre, se dirige vers l’infini (1882)

This haunting image shows a giant eye transformed into a balloon that floats upward into an empty, infinite space, blending human perception with cosmic ascent. The eye suggests consciousness itself—detached from the body and rising beyond physical limits toward mystery, knowledge, or the unknown. Redon’s work expresses the Symbolist idea that inner vision, imagination, and the soul can transcend material reality and move toward infinity.