99 YEARS OLD AND STILL WORMING HIS WAY FORWARD...

ONCE upon a time, long, long ago ( it was in the late 17th century, but that doesn’t concern us right now) a young worm was munching his way through an apple and thinking profound thoughts.

“I wonder,” he wondered, “if there is more to the universe than this apple,” for he had lived his entire life in the apple, trying the reach the magical seeds which were said to be located at its centre. “Not that I need anything more than the apple for it supplies all my bodily needs but it would be good to know if there is anything else.”

He paused his munching to consider what he knew about the apple. “It seems to me,” he thought, “that there are two fundamental forces at play. One force lures me towards the centre but when I get close this attracting force is met by a stronger force of repulsion which bends my path away from the centre. I know that because I have sometimes looked backwards and see that my path is not straight.”

The worm resolved to find out the truth and keep a straight path in order to reach the core and this time he reached the mythical pips.

He also discovered something that astonished him even more greatly: an older worm munching on those pips.

“Hello,” said the older worm in an unconcerned sort of way.

“What?” said the first worm, totally flustered. “How? Who? Why?” Then, getting his thoughts together, he asked, “Where did you come from?”

“I’m from what you think of as the antipodes,” the other worm said. “The other side of the apple.”

“So there is a side beyond the core,” said the first worm. “What else can you tell me about the apple universe? Am I right that there are two fundamental forces, one luring me to the core and the other stopping me getting there? I call the attractive force ‘ gravity’ because it’s so grave and important.”

The second worm sighed and promised to tell all he knew. “There are other forces too,” he said. “There is a strong force holding the pips together and a weak force causing the apple to decay. But your gravity isn’t a force at all: it’s a ripple in space time; a bending of the apple- time continuum, more a wave than a force.”

“How does that work?” asked the other worm, a bit bemused.

“Well you know how when you drop a stone in a pond, it sends out ripples in the water?”

“No,” replied the young worm. “What’s water? What’s a pond?”

“Never mind,” said the older worm. “It’s not much like that anyway. But gravitational waves explain everything. Such as dark matter, for example.”

“I thought dark matter was just a sign that the apple was going bad,” the young worm said.

“Not dark in the sense that it looks dark,” the other worm explained. “It’s dark in the sense that we can’t see it.”

At that moment, the apple fell from the tree and landed, kerplunk, on Isaac Newton’s head. “Ow,” said the worms. And that was the last thing they said, because Newton then took a big bite from the apple, cutting both the worms in two. Which was a pity because they could have told him a great deal.