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“Perhaps the Universe is trying to tell me something”

Francisco Miraval

During a recent conversation with my son about a certain issue he was trying to solve, he suddenly told me “Perhaps the Universe is trying to tell me something about…”

I must confess I don’t know what my son said after that, because I immediately focused my attention on two thoughts. I wanted to know if my son truly understood what he was saying (probably yes) and if I understood the meaning of saying the Universe has a message for each of us (certainly not).

In all seriousness, the idea that the Universe is trying to tell us something is far from being just nonsense, as some readers may assume. In ancient times, people spoke about the music of the spheres (planets) and about a cosmic soul as indications of the connection between humans and the universe.

And just a few weeks ago, Dra. Lisa Randall, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University, presented in her new book a new theory about the connection between humans and the Universe, saying that the mysterious and unseen dark matter is the reason why we humans exist.

It is said that dark matter occupies 85 percent of the Universe. It has not been detected directly. Its existence is inferred from the immense gravitational impact it generates.

According to Randall, in the Milky Way there is a disc of dark matter, something alike a giant flat pancake, so to speak. That disc affects the movements of the solar system, which at times is close and at other times not so close to the dark matter.

Randall says that every 25 to 35 million years, our solar system (earth included, of course) crosses the region of space where the disc of dark matter is. Because of that, the gravitational impact of the dark matter sends some of the icy objects in the Oort Cloud (outside the solar system) in the direction of earth. (When they are near the sun, we see them as comets.)

In fact, according to Randall, the gravitational changes cause some of the rather large Oort Cloud objects to impact on earth, such as the one that hit Yucatan 66 million years ago, put an end to the dinosaur era and allowed mammals to take over, which eventually led to the appearance of humans.

If this theory could be verified (but, so far, nobody has been able to “catch” a particle of dark matter), that would mean, according to Randall, that “not only was dark matter responsible for irrevocably changing our world, but also that some of it played a crucial role in allowing our existence.”

It’s interesting to think that what we can’t see nor detect (dark matter) could be the real reason for our existence. I must admit there is nothing meaningful I can say about that possibility, except that this is a good time to listen to whatever the Universe is trying to tell us. Perhaps it is time to realize, as Carl Sagan said, that we are just stardust.

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