In the 1930s, a physicist studying the movement of the galaxies noticed something strange. Things were moving much faster than they should, and more strangely, in places where galaxies should be flinging themselves apart with their speed, they seemed to be held together by some kind of gravitational force much stronger than what could be accounted for by what he could see. He assumed there must be some mass or force that would explain what he saw, which would surely be discovered by some scientist down the road with more advanced equipment, so he gave it a sort of hand wave-y name, dunkle Materie, or “dark matter.” ¹

Over the next century, not only was his math confirmed, but the same phenomenon was discovered all over the universe – in the way galaxies moved, solar systems evolved, and the very universe expanded. There are over a dozen independent threads of evidence that confirm the existence of dark matter, but none of them make it any less dark. 

Particle physicists of the last couple of decades have had some hopes. They developed new tools (like the Hadron super collider), and theoretical particles (weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs), but found themselves frustrated, again and again. No matter what hypothesis they tested about dark matter, they seemed to get a null result, meaning whatever they thought it was, it wasn’t that. Which was helpful for a while because it narrowed the possibilities until what was left was… nothing. 

Recently a whole new wave of theories about dark matter has emerged, swapping out WIMPs (heavy, massive, invisible, non electromagnetically reactive particles) for ultra-light particles that move like waves. An astrophysicist described these ultra-light particles acting like waves in the way photons of light can act like a wave, bending around corners, squeezing into tiny spaces. 

When I think of particle physics (which is really only when I’m reading an article about discoveries in particle physics) I have the same image most of us non-STEM types have: particles are teeny tiny parts of everything around us that bounce around randomly and knock into each other. How much and how fast those particles move around can affect something’s temperature, its state of matter, and other properties. Somehow all these chaotic bumblebee particles make up the chairs we sit on, the clothes we wear, and even the cells in our bodies. 

I trust that this is true even though it feels weird and unintuitive to me because as a pastoral leader, I ask for people to believe weird and unintuitive things all the time – life after death, already and not yet, etc. 

But just like the weird, unintuitive truth of Christ in us and among us can sometimes just click for a person, the way this astrophysicist described these ultra-light particles just clicked:

Instead of buzzing around like billions of furious invisible bees in the cosmos, this form of dark matter would slosh back and forth, with waves of dark matter lapping against the stellar shores of every galaxy. An ocean of dark matter, with the galaxies as nothing more than brightly lit buoys bobbing up and down in their gravitational embrace.²

An ocean. When I had imagined dark matter, I had imagined a giant invisible weight. An unnerving monstrous unknown, pressing everything in the universe into the shape we know it now. In its unknownness, its darkness, it seemed precarious, unsettlingly uncomprehended for being so critical to the functioning of the universe. 

This image of galaxies bobbing like buoys in an ocean took my breath away. I was awestruck by the idea that we live in a universe that is shaped not by a giant unknowable force invisibly gripping it as it tried to tear itself apart, but by a vast, ultra-light ocean. Its tiny droplets too small to be caught or measured in any of our tools, but, as a whole, weighty enough to counterbalance the entropic forces in our universe and keep it all spinning. 

It’s just a theory, but I want it to be true. What is faith if not believing that the unknowable chaos, the violent dice roll of living is just shifting sloshing waves in an ocean? That the greater truth is that we are held, known, and not alone. Held together not by force, not by the pressure of something larger gripping us, not even by the uncaring laws of math, but by gentle embrace. It doesn’t make mathematical sense for our galaxy, our galaxy cluster, our universe, to hold together, but it does. Because warm, shifting oceans that move like light, which hold entire galaxies weightlessly, hold us together. And that’s not romanticism, it’s particle physics. 

And it sounds like our God, doesn’t it? 

This week, I have no practical advice. It’s the first week after Easter, you’ve all done enough. Take a moment and ponder what it means to live in the glow of a brightly lit buoy, bobbing up and down in a dark ocean’s gravitational embrace. 

1. This whole blog post was inspired by this article by Dr. Paul Sutter,research professor in astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University ↩︎
2. Quote taken from this article (referenced in footnote 1) ↩︎