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Seeing Dark Energy:
A Tale of Enlightenment
“New evidence has confirmed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating under the influence of a gravitationally repulsive form of yet unseen energy (Dark Energy) that makes up two thirds of the cosmos.”
R. R. Caldwell
“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
William Blake
I
“Steve sees dark matter!” Ethan’s exclamation was overwhelmingly loud considering the small confines of his colleague’s academic office. Ethan was a pudgy, round man, so his excited hops from one foot to the other appeared to be more like bounces than hops. As a result of his body’s ball-ish attribute and to his general disappointment, at these types of moments Ethan looked more like the beach ball the kid would be playing with rather than the excited kid at the sea shore which he felt himself.
On the other hand, his colleague Tony was tall, thin and always seriously somber. Tony thought this was the proper manner of behavior for a professional Physicist. To aid in maintaining a professional appearance, Tony always wore a bleached white, starched lab coat, even when it was alone in his tiny cluttered office.
Tony was always starched and straight even without the lab coat. Ethan was always round and bouncy no matter what he wore. Tony and Ethan couldn’t be more different. Tony thus frowned at his opposite, Ethan. Tony frowned at Ethan much too often. Ethan, in general, was too much of almost everything in Tony’s judgment, both professional and personal. Specifically here, Ethan was much too excited and childish. As a result of the bounciness, Tony replied with excessive somberness to Ethan’s squealed declaration. “Steven has been blind since birth. All he sees, if that is an appropriate verb, is dark. Whatever else it is doesn’t matter.” Tony snapped his fingers loudly, as both an imperative and a termination of the discussion.
“Hey! That’s a good one.” Ethan bounced with undiscouraged delight. “Well, matter or energy, I don’t know which for sure, but it’s dark and he sees it even though we don’t!”
Tony’s professionalism expressed itself in a prolonged sigh. He then held up his right fist for purely demonstrative purposes. The index finger popped up. “One! Dark matter or energy is only inferred. It’s thought to compose eighty percent of the Universe true, but still that is only inferred.” His middle finger popped up to accompany the enumerating index finger. “Two! And most importantly, Steven’s psychological condition now, after the lab accident, precludes taking anything he says as an accurate depiction of reality.”
Ethan bobbed as he continued to bounce; movement accompanied excitement for him. He was getting more excited. “Yeah, he babbles like he’s on an LSD trip. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know, I sure do.” He thought about twirling around in his glee but the office was too small and cramped. He just bobbed a bit more. “That’s what they called it in the 1960’s, A TRIP. T. R. I. P. Trippin’! My grandmother told me all about it when I told her about Steve’s reaction after the accident. Granma and I talk a lot, you know. Granma is a good friend. She used to be a hippie herself. Dropped a few Tabs in her day, she said. Good Ole Granma, always experimenting with life. My inspiration, Granma, anyway. I’ve been reading up on it since. Ah, since we talked that is, Granma and me. About drug induced bad trips and any resulting flashbacks or psychosis.”
Tony picked up a scientific paper from his cluttered desk and skimmed it as he spoke. “Is this leading to something important? Your actions imply that, although your speech does not.” As he spoke, Tony read quickly and judgmentally.
“Yeah! Yeah, drug induced psychosis, descriptions, thereof. I even read Huxley, his experiments with mescaline. All reported experiences are very similar; bright flashes, colors intensified disjointed images. Yeah, it would make anyone think their nuts with all that constant strobing of colored lights and extreme brightness, especial if you’ve been blind your entire life, thus Steve is just human and thinks he’s nuts too, so he acts nuts; thrashing and flailing about.”
“But he’s not, ah, nuts?” Tony spoke calmly. Be calm, to instill calm. Tony had read that in a professional management magazine a few years back. “If I’m following you, he’s just seeing a different, ah, version of reality? A reality that no instrument that we have available can detect, though?”
“Yeap! Dark energy. Yeah. Dark energy is better.” Ethan’s continued bouncing had set up a harmonic vibration in the floor that now rattled the windows. Ethan’s excitement was contagious to almost everybody and everything around him, except Tony, that is.
Tony calmly put the judged paper back on his desk. He strongly disagreed with its conclusion. And then he reached out abruptly, grabbing Ethan by the shoulders. “Stop bouncing! You look like a furless Tigger!” Tony shouted in a manner no one could consider somber.
“Sure. Sure. Sorry. I get giddy when I think I can help a friend.” Ethan stopped bouncing but he still bobbed and then started a weave. Motion was conspicuously mandatory in Ethan’s expression of emotion.
Excessive motion, as well as, emotion annoyed Tony. “You need to develop a professional demeanor. Simply put, you have too much enthusiasm. It detracts from your credibility.”
“But a friend in need?” Ethan stiffened. No one, even the most enthusiastic, liked personal criticism. “It’s not a professional situation, although I think there is a professional implication for physics.”
“Seeing dark energy was it? Both of us saw that plasma stream discharge directly into Steven’s face.” Tony frowned at the memory of the event. He was extremely disappointed at his own extreme fright. “I thought he was dead. He likely did, too. No wonder he was driven mad. Anyone would be from such a fright.”
Ethan nodded along with his bob and weave. “Peed my pants.” He grimaced at his memories. “But the face of death is supposed to make life more sweet, not make it crazy.” Ethan started to hum, quietly.
“So, what are you saying?” Tony had to unbutton his lab coat to sit down. He did both. “Steven is acting crazy, appearing unbalanced because of his new perception of reality? His seeing dark energy. But he’s not crazy?”
“Not crazy? No, not crazy!” Ethan giggled in agreement and started bouncing again. “Yes, a special seeing of reality. Tigger, Tigger burning bright! Yes. The Pooh of physics. He! He! The Tao of Pooh!”
“Stop!” Tony shouted from a sitting position.
Ethan’s body came to an abrupt, startled halt. “Sorry, sorry, well, I’m not nuts either, just being an out of the box thinker, acting out of the box. I’ve been listening and reading Steve’s journals, personal and scientific. Steve was obsessed with gaining sight. He was an eye beater when he was a kid.”
“Eye brutality? Was it anger at their non-functionality?” Tony said a little more flippantly than he intended. He grimaced. Sick people made Tony uncomfortable, the opposite of his goals in live, comfort and comprehension, the two Cs. ‘Tony has no patience for patients.’ Was his answer to his Mother’s repeated question, ‘Why Ph.D. not M.D.?’ Atoms, particles and quanta were relatively easy to count, manipulate, calculate, formulate. Quanta were much more comforting to Tony than the human brain. Tony was a Physicist not a Biologist because the human body and its cellular parts were just too jumbled. Biology wasn’t ordered enough. It was much too complex. There were simply too many parts; too many sources of variability and error. Random error equaled discomfort which brought on flippancy in Tony.
“No, not anger, just flashes from the optic nerve. Blind compression sparks. You can do it even if you have sight. Close your eyes.” Ethan did and put his index fingers to his closed eyelids. “Push hard and release, flash, push, release, light. See?”
Tony hadn’t done it. He just watched Ethan. That’s what most Physicists do, watch.
“It, the flash, is the optic nerve firing. A biological electric discharge, ergo, a flash to the brain. Thus Steve knew that it was working. I mean his optic nerve, not his brain. He knew that worked already. It was his retinas that housed the abnormality. Eye doctors told him they, the retinas, his retinas, just didn’t look right. Cones and rods were more spiraled and most of them way too long. Steve was a retinal mutant.” Ethan closed and pushed on his eyelids again. It seemed to make him dizzy, so he sat down on the paper cluttered office couch.
Tony sighed deeply, but at least Ethan was still for a moment. Tony was getting motion sickness from Ethan’s bouncing. “Even I know about biological variation, natural variation, nothing is identical. We’re all mutants in a way. It’s the way species can adapt to change and survive in a changing environment. Seems like his retinas didn’t stop growing at the correct time; too long and thus dysfunctional.” Tony put his hands over his eyes, but did not push. “No light absorbed, no electric discharge from the retina, no sight, no light. Darkness just dark, no energy involved.” Tony removed his hands from his face in a manner that made the entire motion appear to be a professional gesture.
“He recently, before the accident, had a high resolution MRI done of his abnormal eyes. It showed that his retinas were functioning, firing actually, rapidly firing. Discharging too often. They were way over stimulated. So over stimulated as to become refractory to nerve impulse transmission.” Ethan jumped up but sat back down quickly. He swirled his head. He felt light headed. He giggled from the pun.
“His retinal circuitry was overloading?” Tony shrugged. Bioelectricity was simply ion gradients held separate by lipid membranes. Electron flow followed the sodium and potassium flux. Electrons were particles. This was Tony’s purview, particles, and called for a comforting, professional approach. “That could be as good an explanation for not seeing objects; no resolution, he couldn’t see the edges of things. So he wasn’t actually blind, but simply overly sensitive to light.” Tony picked up his favorite Thinking-Pen and tapped it on the desk top, well, the papers that cluttered the desk top. “He still couldn’t SEE! Okay, so why the Dark Energy off-the-wallness? His eyes are just hyper-sensitive to light.”
“Steve actually thought of that.” Ethan shook his head, gently. It seemed okay but still he remained seated. “The darkest of darkness, a totally photon-less environment, had no effect on the over stimulation.”
“Well, that doesn’t fit.” Tony tapped harder with his Thinking-Pen. It didn’t have any ink in it. It was simply there for tapping to accompany his thinking.
“Frustrated Steve, too. He was trained for things to make sense.” Ethan nodded.
“As we all are. Physics makes sense, even in M-Theory, well, things are close to making sense.” Tony nodded back. He stopped tapping.
“With the inference of Dark Energy canceling stellar gravitation affects.” Ethan smiled nodding vigorously. “Uh, ah.”
Tony frowned. “Just semantics, a coincidence. Dark Energy is only inferred. There could be other explanations to the Age of the Universe problem, that the expanding Universe appears bigger than it should be, for its years.”
“None any good that I can think of.” Ethan’s body was pudgy but his brain was trim and agile. He was a good, although fat physicist.
“No evidence yet, either way?” Tony pulled at his Thinking-Pen. When he was confused he pulled, not tapped. “How can you leap all the way to the conclusion of Seeing Dark Energy?”
“It makes up seventy percent of the Universe.”
“Inferred again, but if Steven sees it and it is most of the Universe?”
“Thus overload.”
“Potential for overload.” Tony pulled his Thinking-Pen apart. It made him angry all of a sudden. “That wasn’t supposed to happen!” And Tony rapidly screwed his Thinking-Pen back together.
“A lot of things do that. Do what they’re not supposed to do.” Ethan stood up slowly, checking for dizziness during his ascent. “That Tesla machine that Steve was continually modifying, generally tinkering with.”
“You mean the one that shot high energy plasma into his face?” Tony put his Thinking-Pen down. He was so upset, he was afraid he might break it.
“Yeah, that one.”
“It doesn’t generate Dark Energy does it?” Tony wanted to stand up but didn’t. “Because I saw a bolt. A bright bolt of plasma, nothing dark about it.”
“No, I think it repeals Dark Energy.” Ethan pointed at his eyes. He was squinting this time. “Steve said when he worked on the machine, that he could see flashes just like his eye beating.”
Tony did stand up. “You’re saying the Tesla gizmo dimmed the Dark Energy around it? This allowed Steven’s retinas to stop overloading?”
Ethan smiled nodding. “Two negatives making a positive?”
“That’s what the squinting is all about?” Tony wiggled his fingers in front of his face.
Ethan nodded squinting. “Tesla wanted to build a power transmitter without wires, wireless energy transmission.” Ethan balled his fist and then looked at Tony through the circular opening of his fingers. “I think the machine actually works, ah a little, it pushes back the Dark Energy and makes a tunnel for the, ah, our energy, not Dark Energy, to move through like a hole in the dike. Sort of like a light energy tunnel through the Dark Energy.”
“Tesla and Edison were always competing to push back the darkness.” Tony waved his arms randomly in the air. “Dark Energy wasn’t around back then.” Tony frowned and started to pace in the cramped office.
“Doesn’t mean Tesla didn’t understand how the Universe worked just because he didn’t know our terminology?” Ethan shuffled close behind Tony. It was a very small office and ‘close’ was the only place to shuffle.
“This seems so much mental masturbation. No facts!” Tony threw up his hands and almost hit Ethan in the eye. “So why, even if we assume all of this is even slightly true, why is Steven seeing things now? I would have thought he’d be back to black. So to speak. Overloading, again?”
“Not if the plasma bolt damaged his retinas.” Ethan dodged another of Tony’s arm gesticulations. “Another negative adding to the positive? I agree.”
“Oh, a permanent Dark Energy squint?” Tony looked up at the ceiling. Up there were, at least, twenty wooden pencils stuck into the acoustic tiles. It looked like an upside down bonsai forest with red erasers. Tossing pencils was another thought thing for Tony. Doing something physical was important to his thinking process. Pencil tossing was like vertical darts. There was a mechanical pencil within the upside down forest. Tony thought it would have fallen out sooner than this. “The evidence indicates, if any of this speculation could be called evidence, that Dark Energy has no respect for eyelids or flesh, in general.”
“Or bandages, I guess?” Ethan ducked under Tony’s gesticulating arms. “If I am correct.”
“An IF bigger than the state of Utah, I would say.” Tony opened the door leading to the hallway. The hinges creaked, reluctant to function. He never used this door. He always went out through the lab because his office was right next to the Men’s Room. Tony didn’t like the flush of a toilet, either. It brought back too many bad memories. He closed the door again to the disgusting remainder of a flush. “So, Steven had connected his partial sight with Dark Energy?”
“No. No. I did that, but . . .” Ethan had to back up as Tony shut the door. “I think he’ll see it, though. That his hallucinations aren’t the result of a psychosis, that they’re not hallucinations at all, but a true perception phenomenon.”
“Your hope is, he will then stop thinking crazy and subsequently stop acting crazy.” The mechanical pencil then dropped. Apparently, the heavier metal pencil was jarred loose by the door’s opening and closing. It flipped over in the air gracefully and embedded itself into the Faux leather of Tony’s office chair. “Standing has its benefits.” Tony said.
Ethan nodded. “Uh ah.” They both watched the leather embedded mechanical pencil fall over on its side. The hole in the leather was thus ripped a little larger.
“Going to talk to Steven then?”
“Talk to Steve. Yes.” Ethan almost bounced but Tony put a hand on his shoulder.
“’Steven! You see Dark Energy. You’re not crazy. Stop acting crazy!’ You’ll say?”
Ethan nodded. “In so many words.”
“A modern day Freud, in so many words.” Tony realized he needed more duct tape to patch the new hole in his chair and put ‘Duct tape’ on his mental ‘To-do’ list. “Luck on that.”
“Thanks, I shouldn’t be long.”
“An optimistic modern Freud, at that.” Tony said reaching out for the fallen mechanical pencil.
II
“’To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol – systems and implicit philosophies which we call language.’” Ethan read to Steve at his bedside. Steve was strapped to the hospital bed. ‘In restraints’ was the only way the doctors would let Steve have visitors. Coincident with the random burst of bright flashes, Steve had random bursts of flailing.
“Random flailing? A lot like Tony does.” Ethan had immediately thought with the doctor’s commentary. Ethan was now reading to Steve to calm him down. The doctor had suggested it. The only book Ethan had on him was ‘Doors of Perception’ by Aldous Huxley. Ethan brought it simply to support his argument but ended up reading it aloud. It did calm Steve. The doctor was right? “See! See! Huxley was saying us, common men like me, not you, have too restricted, ah, a very limited view of the world around us because it’s just too much for us, ah, commoners to handle. ‘Everyone’s the beneficiary in as much as language gives access to accumulated records of other peoples experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.’”
Ethan looked up at Steve. No flailing, random or controlled, no movement at all. A good thing if your goal was calm. No movement was calm by definition, but so was death. Steve’s chest was moving, so no on death.
“Okay, good. Reduced awareness for guys like me, I think the next statement is for special guys like you. ‘The various other worlds with which human beings erratically,’ that’s you, well, ah, not that you are erratic, I mean. This applies to you, just see, ‘which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to mind at large. Most people, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language.’ That’s right, right? Science is always making new terms to define a newly revealed aspect of reality. Expanding the view, not reducing it.” Still, a still Steve, calm by definition. It’s working?
“’Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing value.’ I think this is you. You’re eyes, well, the retinas are special, circumventingly special, ah? You were thinking that yourself, I know. Some folks can do it with hypnosis or drugs or special exercises. Mystics and meditation I’m thinking. But it all gets to the same thing. Huxley puts it. ‘Something more than, and above all something different from,’ blah, blah, blah, ‘what the individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient,’ sufficient is important, ‘picture of reality.’” Ethan shook his head. It was beginning to hurt a little.
“Sufficient reality? Never seemed sufficient to me, anyway. I think, well, to the point, now, well, speculate, but I know you’ll agree when you hear it. That, ah, my theory is, well, hypothesis, no data yet to make it a theory.” Ethan blew air through his pudgy lips. His head hurt more. “Right to it then. I think you were born to see more of the Universe than most humans. I think you can and have been perceiving, ah, seeing Dark Energy and there is so much of it, it blurs out the rest of your sight.”
Steve seemed calmer than the calm before. “What do you think?” Ethan watched Steve’s chest. Was he breathing? Yes. “The accident, well, it did something to let your eyes resolve the Dark Energy better. I don’t really know how. We can talk about that later. The doctors say you see all kinds of things now and they are glowing from within. Much like Blake’s ‘Tiger! Tiger burning bright.’ Like Huxley said here.” Ethan flipped a few pages back. “Here. ‘All of them,’ things he was seeing while experiencing the effects of mescaline. ‘All of them glowed with living light.’ Sort of what you describe, right?”
Steve stayed calm. Ethan wasn’t certain if that was good or bad. Still, still? Maybe Steve was asleep? No snores perceived though.
Ethan cleared his throat loudly. “Remember that Dark Energy repulses, ah, regular energy. It should kind of reflect or refract maybe bounce back is better? Something like that, but the experience, it should make things glow, it’s the same thing that LSD, ergot derivatives do, meaning, make people have colorful visions, experience other worlds, other planes of existence, are actually the drugs affecting all of the Drug-Taker’s nerves, even the retinas. It’s not other worlds they see. It’s just the actual world in total. All of reality, not just us common man’s limited, restricted view.” Ethan looked up at the ceiling. It was totally forestless and simply sound absorbing.
Steve laughed loudly. “That’s just nuts!” He said it calmly, though.
Ethan was startled by the comment, that Steve made any comment at all. “Maybe but, the point is you’re not.” Ethan smiled. Steve was quiet again.
Until Steve said. “But it won’t stop.” Steve pointed with his retrained hands at his bandaged eyes.
“That’s why I talked to Tony first. He’s a pompous ass, but he has insight.” Ethan giggled. “Sorry for the punning. He said wisely, ‘Dark Energy has no respect for light matter, ah, regular, our stuff.” Ethan wanted to bounce but didn’t. He was in a hospital. He had respect for things, even if Dark Energy didn’t.
“But it’s too much.” Steve whispered, obviously trying to maintain control. His restrained hands reminded him of his need of control. Also, maybe, just maybe Ethan was close to correct.
“Actually, unfortunately, I think it’s just enough for you to notice it.” Ethan stumbled with the words. He needed new terms here. New terms for this new territory. “I think you were way over sensitive before and the nerves were constantly refractory, thus no seeing at all.”
“Seems close to over loading, now.” Steve’s voice strained for control.
“But it used to be so much more. Guess your eyes were protecting you in a way, ah, from too much reality?” Ethan stayed seated so he wouldn’t bounce with excitement because he was making progress. The Steve talking was regular Steve, not crazy, needing restraint Steve. “I figure the accident actually damaged your eyes in a way that you now see much less Dark Energy than you did before.”
“Too much is too much? Still seems too much.” Steve was strained but calm. “Hard to take it.”
“You know what humans are like. We can get used to anything, given enough time.” Ethan had to bounce soon. Everything was coming together. It was actually starting to make sense.
“Maybe? Hard to believe.” Steve whispered. “Not blind just seeing an unperceived, to you, component of reality.”
“Yeah, that’s the best part, well for you, for your career. Your eyes are Dark Energy sensors, well, the retinas are. We can do a higher resolution MRI series of their configuration and. . . .”
“Build an artificial Dark Energy detector.” Steve laughed again. It was a regular Steve laugh.
It was working. Ethan couldn’t hold back any longer. “Steve, I’ve got to bounce. You know I’m heavy, you’ll notice, everything in the room will notice, but I’ve got to bounce.”
“Bouncing is what Tiggers do.” Regular Steve laughed. “Bounce for both of us.”
And Ethan bounced. Ethan bounced and regular Steve laughed until the Nurse came in and yelled at him to stop. Everyone, but Steve, always told Ethan not to bounce. It was why Ethan had to help Steve. It was why Ethan did help Steve. Ethan didn’t stop bouncing nor did Steve stop laughing.
Steve even called out. “I’m not crazy! I just see Dark Energy!”
This comment, of course, made no sense to the Nurse and she rushed off to get as many doctors as she could find.
“It’s still hard though.” Steve coughed. He had strained his throat from the laughing.
“What?” Ethan hadn’t hurt himself yet, so he still bounced.
“Not being crazy. Too much Dark Energy, too much Reality, is not a good thing.”
“That’s the next thing.” Ethan bounced more. “Blocking Dark Energy! Hurrah!”
“To see or not to see?” Steve giggled. “A literary question?”
“That certainly is a literal question.”
R. R. Caldwell (2007), Dark Energy, http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/17/5/7
Huxley, A. (1954) The Doors of Perception. Harper & Row Publishing Inc. NY.
THE END
Copyright 2008
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Just to be perfectly clear!
All Rights to this piece reside with the Author