Proof of Dark Matter Existence from a Collision of Galaxy Clusters

[TJ Eckleburg]

Slight hijack tangentially related to the subject matter but not really ... question for Borodog.

Do you believe the universe regresses towards infinitely smaller parts, or do you believe quarks and leptons are fundamental?

I think quarks and leptons are fundamental. I think this because I don't think there's any evidence for anything MORE fundamental.

Even when we thought protons and electons were fundamental, there was evidence for baryons and hadrons that science couldn't adequately explain at the time. Remember we didn't know about neutrons until the 50's.

The proof for the existence of quarks came from postulating that the stuff we didn't know about would do something. And then we experimented and found out that stuff does, in fact happen. Deductively, quarks exist, and they neatly balance all the equations we came up with.

But if the universe does regress towards infinitely smaller parts, then evidence would be in the form of as-yet-unexplained phenomena. Like dark matter, dark energy, et cetera.

We are taxing the limits of my layman's understanding of this field though. I was an honors student, pre-med, and a chemistry major... and then left school to play poker. Then I got bored with poker (and variance probably caught up) and now I'm a real estate agent. Everything I know about subatomic particles comes from wikipedia and www.particleadventure.org [which is definitely the most idiot-proof and goofiest way to learn about subatomic particles].