[RightWhale]

Why can't we "see" or experience the dark stuff about us?

We see effects that don't add up to what other things we see. For example, galaxies are difficult to model since it would take a lot more gravity to shape them than would be available from the material (stars, dust clouds, gas clouds, black holes) that appears to our < Boris Karloff voice > scientific instruments < / BKv >. So we postulate something that has gravity like the visible or nearly visible material but that is not visible and call it dark matter.

[onedoug]

I'm aware of your take locally, though clearly it seems that the density at galactic centers is gravitationally bound, almost certainly by one or more black holes which would seem to have been the seeds of galaxy formation (these must be quite old, the black holes having formed somewhat earlier in the history of the universe). And it should be gravitation which is the principle force in galactic clustering as well.

In miniature, at least, it seems to have been gravitation which grave rise to the formation of solar systems, so I'm just scaling it up.

That's certainly not to say however, that there isn't something else about which I'd scratch my head over.

What does seem quite odd though is recent observational evidence that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. If this is true, then the "dark energy" posited to account for it is very odd indeed.

As Hamlet said, "There are many things Horatio, that are not dreamt of in your philosophy." But I'm very curious and hope someday to know something ofthe "mind of God", particularly beyond this life if that's some aspsct of the way He has it figured.