We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

by Jorge Cham

What amazing technology or understanding could be unlocked by figuring out what dark matter is and how it works? We can’t stay in the dark about it forever. Just because it’s dark doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

I see what they did there

You know that something’s fundamentally changing our understanding of the universe when physicists start getting snarky.

It’s the same with the universe: we know it works, but we don’t know why it works.

In fact, most of the mass of a proton or neutron comes from the energy that’s binding their three quarks together.

Particles—in our current theory—are actually indivisible points in space. That means that in theory they take up zero volume and they are located at exactly one infinitesimal location in three-dimensional space. There’s actually no size to them at all.32 And since you’re made of particles, that means you’re not mostly empty space, you are entirely empty space!

They posited that if you add one more particle (the Higgs boson) and its field (the Higgs field) to the equations then mass as a particle label—and why some particles have it more than others—start to make sense.

Just change the math until it works

But another weird property of massless particles (like photons) in a vacuum is that they always travel at the maximum speed allowed by the universe.

The whole thing also ignores the safety concerns of riddling the sky with chocolate cakes, but in this book, we care only about the physics.

You see, we live in a universe that is like an onion. Not because it makes everyone cry when you slice it or because it’s an essential ingredient in any great soup but because it’s made up of layers and layers of emergent phenomena.