A guide to the invisible universe.

• Author: Tyson, Scott M.
• Position: Education

BEGINNING WITH the pre-Socratic philosophers, thinkers focused on the components and elements they perceived in the universe. To these individuals, the universe consisted of people: nature; the Earth, sun, and moon: and empty space.

Sir Isaac Newton shared much of this world view first established by the likes of Socrates. Plato, and Aristotle. By the 20th century, scientists and philosophers were convinced that the universe consisted exclusively of what they could measure--meaning ordinary, luminous matter. They became convinced through interpretation of measurements that the universe was expanding. By the 21st century, our instruments provided us with data by which we surmised that regular luminous matter constituted a mere four percent of the mass-energy in the universe.

Enter dark mailer, observed obliquely through the motions of rotating distant celestial bodies. Astronomers and astrophysicists determined that dark matter constituted 20% of the mass-energy of the universe--five times the ordinary matter observed and measured by all previous human attempts. Now, enter dark energy, again observed obliquely by the apparent expansion of the universe, a relentless negative gravity driving matter, dark and light alike, away from one another, expanding the supposed edges of our universe at speeds far exceeding that of light itself.

Yet, empty space represents the single largest component of our universe, far eclipsing any of the other features we observe. Even supposedly "solid" matter contains less than one part of matter by volume for every 500 trillion parts of empty space. Incredibly, little is known about empty space and the role it plays in the physical phenomena we observe in our universe.

Truth can be elusive. Just ask anyone involved in quantum mechanics, the judicial system, law enforcement, management, or parenting. Truth can be particularly elusive in the modern educational system, especially from the perspective of students. In fact, education largely seems to consist of pumping the young mind full of age-appropriate facts, figures, and explanations portrayed as truth, only to be followed by the next teacher's assertions that anything the student had learned previously was wrong and needs to be replaced by a newer, better version. For those whose educational paths included the study of physics, there is no more relevant example than the difference between Newtonian and Einsteinian physics.

As astounding as it seems, there have...