Is dark matter required for life to exist?
We need it for the large-scale structure of the Universe for certain, but the smallest, human-like scales need it, too.
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” –Joseph Campbell
Dark matter is the most mysterious, non-interacting substance in the Universe. Its gravitational effects are necessary to explain the rotation of galaxies, the motions of clusters, and the largest scale-structure in the entire Universe. But on smaller scales, it’s too sparse and diffuse to impact the motion of the Solar System, the matter here on Earth, or the origin and evolution of humans in any meaningful way. Yet the gravity that dark matter provides is an absolute necessity for allowing our galaxy to hold onto the raw ingredients that made life like us and planets like Earth possible at all. Without dark matter, the Universe would likely have no signs of life at all.
Stars make up 100% of the light we observe in the Universe, but only 2% of the mass. When we look at the motions of galaxies, clusters and more, we find that the amount of gravitational mass outweighs the stellar mass by a…
