Word: alcock
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Imagine a Chinese leader being arrested for past human-rights violations while shopping in London. Let's cut out meddling in another nation's sovereignty. Besides, I want peace at home--I am British and have a Chilean wife! DAVID ALCOCK Johannesburg
WHEN CHARLES ALCOCK PEERS UP at the nighttime sky, he wonders not at the luminous stars but at the blackness that enfolds them. The Milky Way, Alcock knows, is like a sprinkling of bright sequins on an invisible cloak spread across the vastness of space. This cloak is woven out of mysterious stuff called dark matter because it emits no discernible light. A sort of shadow with substance, dark matter dominates the universe, accounting for more than 90% of its total mass. Yet scientists, struggling to interpret just a few sparse clues, know virtually nothing about it. The dark matter...
Over the coming decade, Alcock and others believe, this collective ignorance may at last be dispelled. Small bands of determined researchers are embarking on elaborate hunts for the hidden side of the cosmos. Some, using telescopes, are taking aim at the dark halo that rings our galaxy, searching for large, dim objects like burned-out stars. Others are positioning electronic detectors in underground tunnels, hoping to entrap phantom particles that may be so prevalent that they drench the universe like invisible drops of rain. "Someday soon," predicts University of Chicago astrophysicist David Schramm, "one of these groups is going...
...eventually be counteracted by the force of gravity. The universe would ultimately cease its expansion and begin to collapse under its own weight, imploding in a catastrophic finale that theorists have dubbed the Big Crunch. But the presence of so much dark matter also has implications for the question Alcock ponders: What is all this stuff made of? The more dark matter there is, the less likely it is to resemble ordinary matter...