Expert: Philip Stahl - 9/12/2008

Question
i am curious to know if dark matter is the shadow of something and lack of light creates density due to decreased temperature also i was wandering when particles collide if it were two drops of liquid you get fusion if two solid objects collided they would smash apart is there a speed at which solids could fuse and if so what is there an equation for this. i am just curious after hearing about the switerland experiment i don't have a back ground in physics but am interested and don't know under what topics to search for information could you please answer my questions and head me in the right direction thank you for your time lee

Answer
Hello,

Dark matter has nothing to do with the 'shadows' of anything. Your "theory" merely shows you lack a background in basic physics - which you also admitted.

Dark matter (and dark energy!) is a vast subject about which many books as well as articles have been written. However, since you say you have no background in fundamental physics it would make little sense to recommend them - since they would be like Greek to you.

More profitably, what you might do is use google (www.google.com) to search for 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'. You should bring up hundreds of articles, many of which are likely to be at a more or less basic level. You can then choose to attend most to the ones that you at least partly understand.

This is a better approach than me simply guessing at an appropriate answer level and totally missing the mark. In any case, any basic answer here would require the equivalent of a small textbook (and time to match!) since you are missing the basics. I simply don't have the time (or energy, I admit) to fill in those gaps.

Good luck!