Ghosts

 With Halloween only a few days away, I've of course been thinking about ghosts and other dark matters. 

Specifically, I've been thinking about dark matter. There's been some advances on a modified gravity theory that seemingly eliminate the need for dark matter. You can read about it here. 

I'm certainly not a quantum physicist, just a science fiction nerd. I like to read about this stuff, and misunderstand it just enough to warp it into semi-plausible mumbo jumbo. I'm milking the heck out of parallel universes in my current work in progress, Dragonsgate: Spirits, with a lot of the action taking place on a parallel wilderness world where humans never evolved. 

All the "wizards" in my Bitterwood/Dragonsgate setting use nanotech for their magic. Effectively, nanotech is magic dust. A little sprinkle will heal wounds, change hair color, or even turn you invisible. Current nanotech does none of these things! But, if you say, "In a thousand years, the technology will be able to do this," well, you've given yourself a buffer before anyone can legitimately say, "Nuh uh!" Accurate science is the bane of science fiction writers. The sweet spot is in the gray area where ideas are definitely not right, but not completely wrong.  

Over the years, I've used some passing references to dark matter in my science fiction. In one book a character mentions that the existence of parallel universes has been proven because dark matter is the gravity from these other universes leaking into our own. It's not at all a serious attempt to explain dark matter, or parallel universes, but linking two scientific ideas that readers don't really understand somehow makes both sound more plausible. 

This morning, I've been thinking of a new way I can abuse dark matter for story purposes. In coming up with my fictional explanation I've stumbled onto something that seems weirdly viable to me. I completely lack the expertise or tools to know if it's possible. So, what I'm presenting is more speculation than science. Still think it's an interesting idea. 

The biggest obstacle to understanding dark matter is that we can't see it on either a large scale or a small scale. We see gravitational effects that hint that there should be clouds of massive particles surrounding galaxies, but the dark matter itself can't be seen. Of course, there's nothing special about outer space. If dark matter is the majority matter of distant galaxies, then it should be the majority of all matter here in our own galaxy. At least some of it should be found on Earth. Yet, after decades of building ever more sensitive detectors searching for these theoretical particles, nothing is turning up. 

But: What if dark matter is ghosts? I'm not talking about dead humans that flutter around in sheets telling people to change their wicked ways. Instead, I'm thinking about the theoretical vacuum particles that are said to constantly bubble up and instantly vanish in a vacuum. The thing about empty space is there's a great deal of it. So, what if, in any given square kilometer of empty space, at any given second, one of these vacuum particles bubbles up and turns, for the most fleeting fraction of a second, into a massive particle. If it has mass, it has gravity. Then, the particle vanishes. But, would the gravity vanish? Gravity takes place over universal scales. The tiny gravitational pull of the particle would still be spreading out from the point of origin at the speed of light, even though the particle itself would no longer be there. This happens again and again and again, trillions of time every second throughout space, particles arising, vanishing, but the gravity sticking around. 

Then, we look through a telescope and see light being bent by this gravity. We know that there must be some particle generating the gravity, but the particles are long since gone. New ones are still arising, of course, averaging out so that the gravity seems to have a consistent, persistent mass, but if you actually wanted to see one of these particles, you're out of luck. They'd be too widely scattered and far too fleeting to ever be detected in an area of space and time that humans could monitor. We'd need a building the side of a planet to hope that one of these particles might pop up during the decade or so we can devote to looking for it before funding gets cut off. 

I'm sure that some physicist can explain the hole in my thinking here. The biggest hole is probably that I'm thinking of gravity like a radio signal, transmitting out from a new particle in a wave, with the wave remaining after the particle is gone. Gravity doesn't actually transmit like a radio wave, it's more like a dent in space, and once the particle is gone, the dent is gone. Yet, I don't think gravity acts faster than the speed of light. Something links the gravity of my own body to the gravity the Jovian moons. If I were to somehow vanish by falling into a parallel universe, subtracting my mass from this solar system, would an observer on Europa detect the gravity change instantly, or would they not discover that until 45 minutes later, the time it would take for this altered information about the universe to reach Jupiter? If that's the case, wouldn't a vanished particle from a thousand light years away have tickled the detectors of every planet it passed through during those thousand years? What am I missing? 

My other problem with my own idea is that I don't know how you'd ever prove it. How do you find the ghost of a particle that no longer exists? 

Anyway, it might be useless as science. But, don't be surprised if one day soon I write a book about a cosmic dragon explaining dark matter. In fiction, an idea doesn't have to be right. It just has to be interesting!