Ensign Kepler Measures Dark Matter Density

2018

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Ensign Kepler is curious about dark matter. What is it? Does it even have density? The matter that we see and are made of, called baryonic matter, only seems to comprise a small part of the stuff making up the universe. Something else appears to be out there affecting the space around galaxies. Whatever it is, the stuff doesn’t interact with electromagnetic energy (such as light), and thus can’t be seen or touched. Its only interaction with familiar matter may be through gravity, due to its mass.

 

The young ensign wants to experiment to find the density (mass per unit volume of space) of this stuff. He knows that if dark matter doesn’t have a means of interacting even with itself, it may not be able to clump together or exert pressure. Density may be the only measure it has in a given locality.

 

This sculpture is a study of density and mass, light versus heavy. The dark elements are made of carbon fiber and acrylic: the lightest, least dense materials with substantive strength that I could find. In contrast, the bright elements are tungsten and/or stainless steel. Tungsten is the heaviest, most dense material that I could obtain. Tungsten is not machinable, at least by me, so it is encased with stainless steel to make it manageable. The ratios of the densities between the bright and dark materials is striking: about 13 to 1.

In this sculpture, the heavy and light elements are paired in mutually balanced rotors: the compact and dense balancing the expansive and light. The rotors mutually interact in their rotation, creating an essentially unpredictable dynamic.

 

Ensign Kepler has his work cut out for him. What will he conclude?