Dark Matter Exists. The great accomplishment documented on Chandra Chronicles here (also check Sean's post on cosmicvariance) and the mandatory press release here. As you can read, a fine understanding of the nature of Dark Matter is too much rush but the old hypothesis is no more: we know now what to look for, where and what it looks like. The object that put an end to secular uncertainty is 1E 0657-56, known as Bullet Cluster, a supercluster consisting of two colliding clusters of galaxies and the most energetic cosmic event known beside the big boom. The discovery takes us back firm on our feet and under comfortable old-school experimentalism. The baby inside can breathe relieved.

On the other camp the very people who should give us a draft of the bigger picture, calling String Theorists, are pic-nicking with new languages (again?) and again: enumerating: torsors (a sophisticated new branch of tensors), granular Homotopy (a trendy variant of old K Theory), Lie-3 algebra and topological dualities, one of which contributed by Richard Superman J. Szabo. Some of this stuff smells promising, what it does not is showing the ability to connect any of the many loose mono-poles that String Theory has become. We grant ST the time it takes and the patience but the field is sore in full stagflation. The brilliant connections a decade old are long gone and the road ahead murky. Hope the first few observations at LHC, operational starting in 2007, may shake the tree, for better or worse. The recent discoveries in astrophysics all put growing pressure on ST for a bit of convergence.

Topologically interesting is Russian Grigory Perelman, a 40-year old from St. Petersburg won the Fields Medal, often described as the math equivalent of the Nobel prize, and he declined to accept it. Perelman is famous for a break-thru (papers of 2003) in the study of shapes and for proving the one-century old Poincare conjecture. The Poincare conjecture essentially says that in 3D space you can not transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it. The original papers by Perelman are a bit obscure. Two attempts have been made to clarify the original demonstration, both successfully, the most synthetic by Huai-Dong Cao and Xi-Ping Zhu. The proof presents some prosaic aspects, especially at the intro stage but still is a complete step-by-step proof of a geometrization conjecture. The paper is 328 pages. (linked here courtesy of the insane amount of space MT gives us for 9$ a month) Such extensive undertaking not only depicts a brilliant (and eccentric) mind but also lays down a final verdict on accessibility of science and its model of choice: if the full proof to a conjecture on a fundamental property of space requires something of a soap opera (a space opera, specifically) the connection to social function is lost, dramatically and forever. As each chapter in this brilliant (if tedious) epos sucks from sub-modules underneath of at least comparable complexity the scenario is a world away from General Relativity where some of the big nodes are transmissible and social-able. Here, and possibly in most of future science, accessibility is lost and an army of Brian Greene bots is nowhere to be found.

On Pitchford’s Review a recent post puts out the complain that we lack a handful of those minds that in recent past were able to filter and put art in critical perspective to a big audience. Widening the scene the complaint applies to music, literature and most other forms of expression. Turns out the lack of discriminating capability is related to the heavy role technology plays on these fields and how it affects us. Deeper in the hole we find:

1 We do not like to admit that technology affects the way we perceive reality. We are more lax in admitting the role drugs play, do not like to concede that ubiquitous low-fi (ipods, youTube, google and content at-a-glance) is changing the way we structure our experience.

2 On judging, filtering and disseminating to audience it is critical that we are aware of technology and its role but what do we know about technology? How many phone numbers do we recall without the help of our Blackberry, how many movie plots without the help of imdb.com?

3 And last, what is an audience? Defined by the ritual TV spread on the couch now that setting up your youTube account and buying tracks on iTunes is easier than operating and set up your dolby surround TV center?

My kiddo does that, I’m surely not messing with her VCR.

Science, a human construct after all, is no different. Sorry, you need at least being able to read a few differential equation and have a clue of topological transformation in a Riemann-ish space. We’re so sorry.

It’s easy to make a lemon float. Cut out a square section, remove content and seal it back with silicon. The surprising part is that now people think Sicilian lemons float because they have a bigger oxygen core. How disappointing is that.