The Halo Beasts

[Graham Kennedy]

I'm posting this here, but it's something that isn't necessarily going to be part of the Coalition universe. It may. We'll see.

I was doing a lesson today on big bang theory and we got into dark matter. I was telling the kids about the dark matter halo which is believed to surround out galaxy.

For those who don't know, the Milky Way is a spiral of stars, but if that's all there was to it then the centre would be rotating faster than the edges, and the spiral would tighten up on itself over time - like water swirling down a plughole, everything would wind up in the middle. Which it hasn't. One explanation is that the galaxy - all galaxies - are surrounded by a shell of dark matter.

What form that dark matter might be in is somewhat speculative. It has to mass a lot - more than the galaxy itself by some twenty times. It occupies a region something like 100,000 to 300,000 light years in radius, so it's several times larger than the diameter of the galaxy. It's possible that it's diffuse particles, things called WIMPS - Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. But it's also possible that it's made of things called MACHOs, MAssive Compact Halo Objects. That sounds terribly strange, but all it means is that we'd be talking about structured objects. For example, if the halo was composed of housebricks then they would be MACHOs. Same if it is made of planets, or dead stars which don't emit light any more, etc.

I don't think anybody has ever used this idea in science fiction (they probably have, but I've not heard of it). What I want to suggest is that at least some of the halo is indeed MACHOs, compact objects. I'm thinking there's life there, and that it's life of a totally different kind.

There can't be stars, nor anything like them. Nothing so hot that it radiates a lot of energy... so cold life, colder than Earth is. Made of... not sure. Normal matter, or something exotic? And living on something... not planets, too obvious, too samey. Some kind of.... web? Could the halo be a giant web surrounding the galaxy? It has to be very tenuous, because we don't see it. But on this scale, tenuous still allows for a lot of stuff. Strands a mile wide would be utterly invisible at that distance, if each was billions of miles apart.

What kind of creatures may evolve in a situation like that? How would they think, how would they act? What technology would they have? Could great huge dark matter beasts crawl along those webs...?

[Mikey]

I don't envy you the task of creating this invention. It would have to be so alien to our idea of "life" as to be difficult to even conceptualize. Not organic, obviously; but also, very likely not even inclusive of such things we think of as bioelectric neural systems, circulation... probably not even the organization of matter into organs (or even the organelles we have in single-celled creatures.) Likewise, the way we think of life presupposes some system to take in and convert energy from the environment and use for the business of maintaining life. I can't even think about how that would be accomplished "out there."

Depends on what you would posit as the composition of dark matter, I guess - there wouldn't be much electromagnetic radiation, such as is the basis for life in a solar system. Whatever the dominant force is between the MACHO's of your invention would have to be the basis for the "ecological" system out there; do the MACHO's interact primarily through nuclear strong force, weak force, electromagnetic force, gravity?

Geex, could you imagine some form of life fuelled by gravitic interaction rather than solar radiation?

[Graham Kennedy]

MACHOs can be perfectly normal matter, so it could be something biological in the sense that we think of biology... but going in some other direction could be more interesting.

Giant creatures that live out in the void... scuttling along across hundreds of thousands of light years... ageless, like nothing we know...

It feels almost... Lovcraftian.

[Mikey]

What we think of as biological couldn't really exist in a vacuum, unless you posit that some of these MACHO's are massive enough to hold an atmosphere (tough when there's no known gas around, just the dark matter) yet large enough/not too dense to crush anything living on it. I'm not nay-saying your idea; in fact, I love it. I'm just saying that it's a lot more mind-boggling than a cursory reading would indicate.

It feels almost... Lovcraftian.

I could almost kiss you for saying that. The court of Azazoth? Sure, it's just out past the spiral arms.

[Tsukiyumi]

...The court of Azazoth? Sure, it's just out past the spiral arms.

Cool idea, GK.

[Teaos]

While not the "same" idea as this it is the same area, by that I mean it is totally out side our usual perseption of life.

The book was about the end of the universe and the multiple ways it could happen. This was written about 02, before the big freeze became the most accepted idea and ideas like the big rip (my personal favorite) and the big crunch were still being kicked around.

In the section detailing the big rip it have examples on how that might not be "the end" and how life could still continue. I assume you Graham know the details of the big rip but for those who don't. It is basically the idea that the force called "dark energy" that is causing the universe to acceleerate in its expansion is ever increasing. Thus, while now it is only strong enough to over come the force of gravity in objects billions of light years appart, it will one day be powerful enough to overcome the force of gravity holding Galaxies together, thus every solar system will be by its self. Then it will overcome planetary orbital force, sending everything appart from each other, then eventually it will over come the force holding groups of atoms together and stars/planets/everything will disolve in a massive cosmic soup, then even the force holding atoms together, then the force hold sub attomic particals together will be over come, and we'll be left with a quark soup.

The book suggested that in the time period of atomic soup and possibly even sub atomic soup, that life could still exist.

But at a rate we couldnt even comprehend. Everything that would be so slow that the time it takes for information to travel would be massive. In the time it take us to live our entire life, they might not even have time to think about what to have for dinner.

The life forms werent made up of a defined group of particles, but more of a area of space, and anything that traveled into that area, for what ever time they were there, contributed to the life form.

It was all kind of vauge and a bit WTF, but the general idea as far as I can remember was that it wasnt what made up the life form that gave it its character, so much as the area it was tied to, and when differnt particles entered that area the life form slowly changed. It didnt reproduce so much as have bits great of and then grow themselves.

Was very interesting, but also kind of weird. I dont think I've really done the idea justice but it sounded a lot more plausable when I read it. I'll try to remember the book.

But an idea similar to that might be able to be tied into the Dark matter halo.

[Monroe]

I've read an article about that Teaos. Was in a Scientific American about the universe 100 trillion years into the future (See Doctor Who show for more info ).

The Dark Matter realm could be spirtual. Doesn't really fit with the Coalition verse but you could have seemingly spiritual and magical energy creatures there. Maybe that's where Soul reside.