This is you made from
ordinary atoms and molecules.
And this is you if you were
made out of dark matter.
That's how it works, right?
No?
Everything that we can see in the Universe
is a massive mash-up of electrons,
protons and neutrons fused into atoms.
It's what is called baryonic,
or just ordinary, matter.
Your body is made up of it too.
But there is a lot of stuff out there
that we don't see.
Stuff that we call dark matter and dark energy.
If you were to undergo a dark matter transformation,
your existence as you know it
would come to an end instantly.
But as compensation,
you'd get the ability to move
through virtually anything you want.
Before we change your body composition,
let's make some things clear.
There is no concrete proof
that dark matter exists.
And we currently have no technology available
to find that proof.
If you run some cosmic calculations,
based on physics as we know it,
it turns out that the amount
of visible material in the Universe
doesn't add up.
Here's an example.
A spiral galaxy, like the one we live in,
has stars at its outer edges.
According to what physics says,
these stars should be moving
at a much slower pace compared to the ones
close to the galactic center.
But in reality, all stars in the galaxy
seem to be orbiting its center point at almost the same speed.
Scientists think that that's dark matter
influencing the effects of gravity,
and making the stars move the way they do.
Dark matter doesn't interact with ordinary matter at all.
It's invisible to electromagnetic radiation and light.
The only thing that makes scientists think dark matter exists
is its gravitational effects on galaxies.
Scientists also think that dark matter
outweighs visible matter by approximately six to one,
making up 27% of the Universe.
Now, let's go back to your dark matter transformation.
If you're of an average weight of 70 kg (154 pounds),
your body has about seven billion billion billion atoms in it.
Your atoms form molecules,
molecules form cells, and
cells form vitals that you can see with your eyes,
like your organs.
If all of your ordinary matter atoms
switched to dark matter atoms,
your physical body would disintegrate.
Without ordinary matter, there would be nothing
to glue your atoms together anymore.
But this wouldn't be the end of your story.
You'd become invisible,
and your body wouldn't appear as a collective whole, but...
your dark matter particles
would still interact gravitationally.
Trapped by Earth's gravity,
those particles would start an endless marathon
around the center of the Earth's gravity — the core.
They would be circling in an elliptical orbit
at the speed of 3 km/s (1.86 mi/s).
Every 88 minutes, your dark matter
would make a whole circle
back to the place of your transformation.
The dark matter particles that used to be you
would slowly drift over time.
On your first dark matter birthday,
your particles would show up
about half a meter (20 inches) from the spot they were "born."
After ten years, that distance would be
half a kilometer (1,640 feet).
That’s because dark matter you
wouldn’t be influenced by our planet’s rotation.
Dark matter is only affected by gravity.
There would be no energy or momentum loss.
You would never re-form
to become an ordinary matter you again.
You would just keep circling around the Earth's core.
Of course, nothing can turn you
into a dark matter entity in real life.
But that doesn't mean that
there's no dark matter around you.
The mathematics behind it can get somewhat complex,
but scientists have estimated that
the average person has 10^-22 kilograms of dark matter
in their body at any given time.
Throughout your life, approximately
one milligram of dark matter
will pass directly through you.
While technically you can never be entirely made up of dark matter,
it's incredible to think about how something
we don't know much about
could be so close to us, even part of us.
There is so much to learn about the Universe
and how it behaves.
Maybe we would have a better grasp of it
if the Earth had been born
somewhere inside a globular cluster,
and not on the outskirts of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Well, that's a story for another WHAT IF.