Do our bodies, like our universe, contain dark matter?

Today’s question: If we are made up of the same stuff as the universe are we also made up of dark matter?

Gee, thanks. That’s really an easy one that I should be able to explain in this limited space even though it goes back to the very roots of the universe and nobody really understands it.

So, yes and no.

Let’s start at the beginning. We know that galaxies are held together by gravity, and that force depends on the amount of mass a galaxy contains.

And galaxies also spin, which creates a force that should cause all that mass to fly apart. Obviously, they are not flying apart, presumably because gravity prevents that from happening.

Ah, but there’s the rub.

Astronomers can pretty much see how much visible mass there is in a galaxy. They can figure it all up and there just isn’t enough gravity to go around. So there has to be some other glue holding everything together and keeps us from breaking apart. And that’s dark matter.

The problem is that no one really knows for sure what dark matter is, although some scientists say they have found evidence that our solar system is just stuffed with the stuff in unimaginable quantities.

So this mean we are spinning merrily along through a vast cloud of dark matter, and we are constantly exposed to it. It has been estimated each of us is hit by 100,000 particles of dark matter a day.

Does this affect us in any way? Probably not, but since we don’t quite understand dark matter we can’t say for sure.