The following is a tale of two physics: Two scientists work in different fields at the same university. One studies massive objects far away from Earth, the other studies tiny things right in front of him. To satisfy their curiosities, one constructs the world’s most powerful telescope, while the other build’s the best microscope. They then begin to observe structures they had never seen before and become frustrated because their findings didn’t match their existing theories.

They decided to talk to each other about their observations and discovered they had been looking at opposite ends of the universe and seeing the same phenomena.

The above situation is one that physicists and astronomers find themselves involved in today. Physicists use high resolution "microscopes" to study objects so small they can’t be seen by the human eye and astronomers use super-sized telescopes to study the same tiny particles. This strange marriage of unrelated phenomena has made great leaps of understanding the past.

After realizing how much astronomers and physicists could learn from one another’s insight, a presentation was scheduled to show the converging agendas of the two sciences.

Findings from the report resulted in 11 profound questions, some answers might be found in the next decade and if they are, it will be considered one of the greatest leaps in history for science.

Until that time comes, here are some of the questions that beckon answers:

What is dark matter?

The temptation is to say that the reasons for dark matter are the dark clouds or dead stars, but persuasive essays suggest this isn’t the case.

First, nearly every attempt to find missing stars and clouds has resulted in failure.

Second, based on precise calculations after the Big Bang, cosmotologists found that the total amount of ordinary matter was much less than the total mass of the universe.

What is dark energy?

Cosmotologists made two discoveries that proved ordinary matter and dark matter are not sufficient to explain the structure of the universe. There is yet another component called dark energy.

The first piece of evidence for this mystery came from measuring the geometry of the universe and the other line of evidence suggested the mystery component was energy.

Where do ultra high-energy particles come from?

The sources scientists suspected are the Big Bang itself, shock waves brought on by Supernovas collapsing into black holes and accelerated matter that is sucked into gigantic black holes at the centers of the galaxies.

Science News March 9, 2004