Produced and directed by Corey Eisenstein. Click here for transcript. (video link)
Greetings, Arsians! We have something special for you today: the premiere of a new science series we’re creating, called Edge of Knowledge. We’ve recruited physicist and author Dr. Paul Sutter (Google Scholar link) to be our host and guide on an eight-episode romp through the mysteries of the cosmos, touching on topics that we at Ars find fascinating. This means we’ll have episodes on black holes, the future of climate change, the origins of life, and, one of my favorite topics for our premiere: dark matter.
Dark matter: The universal majority
As Ars readers, you’re all probably familiar with Douglas Adams’ “Space is big” opening to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but “big” only tells part of the story. You might assume that, as a corollary to all that bigness, space should also be generally vast and empty, with just an occasional stray hydrogen atom whipping its way through an otherwise perfect vacuum of nothingness—but nothing could be further from the truth.