Google Offers $20 Million to Moon Explorers

RE:

GOOGLE'S "MOON"
---------------

IN THE DEPTH OF THE UNKNOWN,
THERE ARE NECESSARY CONQUESTS

LETTER TO DOCTOR CARL SAGAN
AND
LETTER TO PRESIDENT CLINTON in
http://www.contact-canadahaiti.ca
PLEASE, SEE: " BILL A RI AND THERE WAS LIGHT !"
By Lucien Bonnet
in http://www.contact-canadahaiti.ca
------------------------------------

The well-known NASA scientist and author of popular scientific works,
Professor Carl Sagan, together with his wife Linda, among other people,
wrote the famous Space Message engraved on Pioneer 10 and meant for possible
extraterrestrial civilizations which might be discovered - who knows? -
somewhere in our Galaxy. Professor Sagan is a master of the art of using
humor, and he is fond of allegories. That is why Lucien Bonnet wrote to
himin the form of a parable on April 10, 1978.

Montreal, April 10, 1978

Dear Dr. Sagan:

It sometimes happens that a dream becomes a reality. That's the case today.
Through Mr. Emil P. Ericksen, Economic Officer of the Consulate General of
the United States of America in Montreal, I am in communication with the
American scientist whose works and research I most admire.

I would like to address a simple message to Professor Carl Sagan and his
wife, who feel, as the year 2000 approaches, that the time is ripe to make
our presence known by sending signals to other possible intelligent beings
in the Universe. The message, which is the result of my patient research, I
formulate as follows:

On the cosmic scale, as on the terrestrial scale, blackness is an integral
part of color and light processes.

My purpose is to inform you of this particular subject and the reasons that
have led me to carry out my research, in the context of the problems of the
very small country, whose history is as tortured as its geography, where I
was born and grew up: Haiti, whose name means "land of mountains". This
country has been faced for years with the difficulties inherent to any
collectivity confronted with a problem of identity. In Canada, where I live
and to which I have become acclimatized, this subject still motivates my
research, propels my efforts and explains the audacity of my words. In the
particular context of a centuries-old conflict, where personal interest and
racial origins confront each other, it is essential that we get to the
bottom of things. At this point, it would be as well to point out that
branch of energy physics, namely optics, where scientific taboos concerning
color, darkness and light are furthered and maintained by trade secrets,
patents and vested interests. A rational search for original, and even
avant-garde, answers on a scientific and intellectual level would seem to be
a necessary prerequisite to establishing a balanced situation.

Not being a "scientist", - (Sometimes, facts are so obvious that they hit you in the eye” but, like ostriches, people bury their heads in the sand) - but rather, perhaps the most obscure of all obscure researchers of
all obscure ages, I am asking a special favor from Professor Sagan. I would
like him to agree to examine my modest results and the demonstration there
of, backed up by photos and films. Needless to say, they may be freely used
for any purposes deemed necessary to the success of my undertaking. On one
film, I wanted to assemble in my own way the elements and conditions that I
think are indispensable to the analysis and synthesis of colors. I
am submitting four films called "color separations" and the color proofs to
support this finding.

The sentences I quote below are yours. They are taken from an interview that
you gave to a French magazine reporter:

".after Apollo, scientists were discouraged. Do you know why they were
disheartened? Because the sky above the Moon is black. That made them
depressed. Do you think this is a joke? Not at all. Scientists are more
fragile than they look. But the sky above Mars is rose-colored and that gave
them hope."4

4 Delaprée, Catherine " L'homme clef de Viking: Et maintenant il faut tout
revoir.",
(Le Point, August 16, 1976, pp. 48,49) [our translation]

I can see you and Mrs. Sagan smiling, seeming to say, "Roses live the life
span of a rose, the space of one morning."

The solution to the enigma of Space is not a "one-morning" task. Its
darkness of an extraordinary depth, always so secretive and so intriguing,
bordering on despair and insanity, fear and disgust, hatred and damnation, a
consequence of ignorance or indifference, jealously hides incredible
resources that would be of benefit to science, perceived only by such
advanced, and wise, researchers as Professor Sagan.

With all due respect to the biblical Genesis, which from generation to
generation teaches those who wish to hear it their way that "God divided the
light from the darkness" (Gen. 1:4), and with all due respect to Sir Isaac
Newton, who showed us all the colors of the rainbow with his prism, but who
left us in the dark about the greatest unknown of all times, darkness
itself, I insist that darkness - "the black rose of space", arbitrarily
denied as a positive value, always perceived negatively, discreet, hardly
envious of the light which it absorbs, the better to conserve it - has
passed for the absence of light, while in reality it is the extension of
light.

Since the beginning of time, a harmonious and complementary state has
existed between light and darkness, whose equivalent effects are carefully
balanced at the cosmic level, making us think, as sages of all ages have
suggested, like Lavoisier, that in this coherent universe, "nothing is
created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed".

The question we ask ourselves most often is this: "What would our lives be
without light?" All things being equal, and according to the Law of
Conservation of Matter and Energy, we might ask, "What would life be without
darkness?" Whether we say "darkness is an absence of light" or "light is an
absence of darkness", is this not a simple question of semantics?

Reconciling light with darkness is a simple message that any future human or
extraterrestrial space traveler should be able to grasp without too much
difficulty. In the interests of any advanced civilization, obtaining a
workable combination of visible and invisible forms of matter or energy is a
chance to surpass ourselves by extending our own limits.

The so-called luminous part of the Universe, be it ever so brilliant, so
forceful, that it seems to eclipse all the rest, while left in the shadow of
its over whelming radiance, cannot by itself constitute a whole. The latter
is left to the perception and investigation of scientists-but again, we must
have the courage to get to the bottom of things.

The bottom of things is often veiled by mentalities. Mentalities depend on
the human brain. It is interesting to note that the thing we are most proud
of, this wonderful human brain - physically, without our realizing it - has
always functioned in utter darkness. Man's skull constitutes, without a
doubt, the best model of a dark room which has ever been conceived. On the
optical as well as the psychological plane, one can easily imagine what
roadblocks are likely to be encountered. When we wish to refer to the
superior abilities of man, we use the term "gray matter". Gray matter in a
dark room, with or without a prism - what a delicate situation! Isn't it
where all the subtlety lies?

From the gray lunar soil of the Moon and in the concerted harmony of
constructive forms, visible and invisible, of channeled light energy, the
white rose and the black rose of the Cosmos and the possibility of roses in
all color shades - enough to make the sky of Mars blush red - represent the
true challenge of space and the spaceship in modern times. Inertia, spectral
speed, speed equal to or higher than that of light, and the scientifically
controlled reversibility of the phenomenon, what a new synthesis, but also
what a liberation! To compare is not to prove, but the dark hidden side of
the Moon, however mysterious it may be, is not a path of no return.

At the edge of light, there is darkness. At the edge of darkness, we can
find light. Reconciling the "Children of Light" (I Thess. 5:5) - of the
zenith, the rising sun and the setting sun - with the "Children of Darkness"
(I Thess. 5:6) could perhaps one day become a question of scientific
mentality.

"And there was evening and there was morning." (Gen. 1:5).

Could this, Professor, be one of the most harmonious aspects of the vital
cycle of space?

Thank you for your attention to my letter.

Yours very truly,

Lucien Bonnet


NEWTON'S THEORY OF COLORS IS FALSE

Following the article I published in the Montreal daily newspaper Le Devoir
on February 26, 1986 concerning anti-Black prejudice in the West, the
newspaper received reactions from all over Canada, both from the Black
community and from scientific circles. Most people who reached me, while
completely agreeing with me in my analysis of the deep causes of those
prejudices, stated that they were not fully satisfied with what I said about
the harmfulness of these prejudices in the scientific field, especially when
I mentioned, as an example of that contagion, Newton's Theory of colors.

Since not enough space was available in the paper, I could not express my
point of view in detail. So I will now give a concise demonstration of why
Newton's Theory of Colors is false.

First of all, what is Newton's Theory of Colors? Let me remind readers that
the concept of "color" that stems from scientific experimentation is based
on the demonstration in 1665 by the well-known scientist Isaac Newton.

This experiment consists in running a visible light ray called "white light"
through a prism in a dark room, breaking down that light into a continuous
spectrum encompassing all the colors.

Newton thought he had there by proven that white light is broken down by the
prism into a series of seven refracted rays which produced the colors from
red to violet on the screen on which they are projected. He therefore
concluded that white light contains various lights, each one of which is
darker than the white light itself and each of which is part of the whole.
And the darkest of all (real blackness), according to Newton, is simply an
absence of light.

My point of view, which is shared by many scientists, is that when the dark
room, which is actually black, is penetrated by the "visible light ray", it
turns into an area with a mixture of darkness and white light, so that it is
no longer a "dark room". This is the origin of "Newton's error", which is
the result of an incorrect observation.

In other words, the basic elements of his experiment are not what he thought
they were: in the course of the experiment, we are actually dealing with a
quasi-dark or quasi-white room. Consequently, the prism in that quasi-dark
room reflects the real situation; that is to say, the prism itself is
already under the influence of this mixture of white light and darkness.
That fact escaped Newton's notice.

In fact, the prism in the dark room where the experiment was carried out
receives darkness from one angle and a beam of white light from the other.
The prism thereby puts these two elements into action. The incident light
ray is transformed, softened under the effect of the surrounding shade.
Acting as a wave mixer, the prism integrates the white light and the
darkness. It synthesizes them in vitro based on a given degree in the
well-known "Gray scale" used in photography and color television. Under the
effect of the incident ray, which acts like a projector, the refracted, very
subtle gray ray passes through the prism. The continuous spectrum of all the
colors is formed in a quasi-dark room on a quasi-white screen, given that
the spectrum was born of both white light and darkness.

We therefore find that the continuous color scale, as we know it, is
constituted by the breaking down, not of white light, but a mixture of white
light and darkness - that is, of "gray". As the German scholar Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: "This is the proof of the existence of the law
where by light is nothing else than a mixture of light and darkness, to
different degrees." [our translation] Thus, Newton's theory of colors proves
to be completely false.

Nevertheless, the techniques used in industries dealing with photography,
cinematography and television are still based on that erroneous theory.

In photography, laboratories are quick to discover in their work that the
sum of the colors of the spectrum is gray, not white. That is why they are
compelled to introduce the black color to obtain the white. There you have a
demonstration in reverse that black is an integral part of light and color
processes. Remember that this fact completely escaped Newton's notice.
Unfortunately, even though, in their use and application of the color scale,
photo labs notice Newton's error and correct it in practice, they still do
not make the error more widely known.

Why ?

Some people might say that big industries using color processes - printing,
photography, movies, television and even microprocessors - keep to that
erroneous theory for the sake of major financial interests, especially
concerning patents and trade secrets. In addition, certain anti-Black
prejudices, deeply rooted in Western culture as well as in the field of
optics, have to be taken into account at this "phase of rest and almost
stagnation, rather than theoretical progress".

It is then up to the scientific world today - researchers, university
professors, etc. - to overcome such hindrances and correct Newton's theory,
in order to free the way for progress.

Lucien Bonnet

Article published in the Montreal daily newspaper Le Devoir on April 15,
1986. The author of the article, a
Haitian-born Montrealer, has made a movie entitled "Où vas-tu, Haiti?"
("Where are you Headed, Haiti?").

COLORS, OPTICS, AND RACISM

What if you were asked to upset all the painfully learned laws of optics?
What if you were presented with the hypothesis that white was the absence of
all colors, instead of the accumulation of all colors?

Mr. Lucien Bonnet, a Haitian-born Montrealer and a self-made specialist in
the field of optics, states with conviction that blackness is an integral
part of the light and color process; he has had a lot of trouble getting
laboratories to give him exact copies of photos in which the superposition
of films (yellow, magenta, gray and cyan) produces a black contour, even
though the picture was taken in broad daylight.

Why does Mr. Bonnet keep on insisting on this point? Behind the scenes at
the 17th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, he kept
hammering on that unorthodox theory, which, if it were adopted, would
condemn to oblivion a number of authors of physics textbooks.

Mr. Bonnet has written to Professor Carl Sagan, a NASA astrophysicist. He
has seen to it that this letter was published and he still believes that the
scientific world as a whole - especially the world of optics - is not
particularly interested in verifying all hypotheses.

Optics, he writes, "is the exclusive preserve of the scientific world, that
beloved field whose seemingly complicated and dangerous approaches are
actually transparently obvious."

We may easily guess that, through his research, Mr. Bonnet is trying to set
right people's perspectives, to get to the very bottom of anti-Black racism.
He says, "The bottom of things is veiled by ways of thinking" and
"Sometimes, facts are so obvious that they "hit you in the eye" but, like
ostriches, people bury their heads in the sand."

Will Mr. Bonnet's persistence overcome what he calls "aberrant scientific
taboos"? He is, of course, aware of Asimov's work on Black Holes. Professor
Sagan had already let it be known, in everyday language, that scientists had
felt depressed when they found out that the lunar sky was black. So they had
better base their work on Mars with its pink sky!

"Thinkers like Jacquard may praise differences, but the impact of such
statements does not succeed in shaking the scientific and industrial
establishment - who can measure the true influence of Kodak? - which is
quite comfortable in its Newtonian strait jacket," says Mr. Bonnet. However,
he pays tribute to the researcher's mentality of his former teachers, the
Fathers of the Holy Ghost, who did not hesitate to give him high marks, even
though his work ran counter to the official teachings.

Clément Trudel
Article published in the Montreal daily newspaper Le Devoir on Saturday,
August 25, 1979.

THE SPACE AGE, OPTICS, AND RACISM

Racism, more particularly anti-Black racism, shows itself in many ways. But
the general public is only aware of the visible tip of the iceberg: race
riots, various kinds of segregation and obvious racist remarks. The other
part of the iceberg, while less visible, is fundamentally more important and
never ceases to affect human life. It constitutes, in short, a heavy
handicap in inter-human relations and even blocks the road leading to
scientific progress.

One scientist who has found this to be true is Professor Carl Sagan, the
famous astrophysicist from NASA. Through the careful study of cutting-edge
research in astrophysics, among other areas, he was able to detect a set of
anti-Black prejudices which, in his opinion, hinder progress and represent
brakes on the pursuit of new discoveries in the Space Age.

Professor Sagan's astute observation provoked a positive and yet critical
reaction on the part of Mr. Lucien Bonnet, a member of the Black community
in Canada and a specialist in optics, that "exclusive preserve of the
scientific world, that beloved field whose seemingly complicated and
dangerous approaches are actually transparently obvious".

The Western world, accepting Newton's theory, has declared that white is the
synthesis of all the colors; actually, according to Mr. Bonnet, the reverse
is true: white is the "visible" analysis or breaking-down of light or
colors, where as black is the "invisible" synthesis or compounding of
colors.

In other words, according to the author's thesis, darkness or blackness and
thus, by extension, "Black Holes", are a source of energy and light.

This raw material of light energy culminates, at its highest degree of
radiation, in the neutralization of all the colors of the spectrumin the
form of "white light", to use the common term.

Consequently, "absolute blackness", the absorption of all colors, is a
divisible compound of light. Without any doubt, Newton's theory, in
excluding black, provides only a partial interpretation of the concept of
light. Lucien Bonnet's thesis is intended to show that black is not only an
integral part of the light process but the true synthesis of it. In this
view, the concept of light is thus seen to be a "divisible" whole including
a range of intensities (or colors), where black is the "invisible" (or
absorbed) form of light energy.

It was in order to introduce this new scientific vision of optics that Mr.
Bonnet addressed the above-mentioned, particularly relevant, letter to
Professor Sagan.

This letter, published in booklet form, aroused considerable interest in
Canadian and Haitian circles.

In Canada, two prestigious publications - Le Devoir and Le Québec
Industriel - mentioned it. While the 17th General Assembly of the
International Astronomical Union was taking place in Montreal in August
1979, Quebec's Telemedia Network, including Montreal television station
Télémétropole, interviewed the author, Lucien Bonnet.

In Haiti, the weekly magazine Le Patriote republished in its entirety the
document sent to Dr. Sagan.

Aware that the ideas contained in that document might be of interest to the
Christian world, the author also sent it to the highest authorities of the
Catholic Church, as well as to the Supreme Pontiff, His Holiness Pope John
Paul II.

A full understanding of the elements making up this subject will doubtless
help the reader to consider color problems, like those of optics and racism,
more serenely and objectively from now on.

Article published in the Montreal daily newspaper Le Devoir on June 25,
1980.


The author of this book :

Lucien Bonnet


LETTER TO PRESIDENT CLINTON



Montreal, March 22, 1995

President William Jefferson Clinton
President of the United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.
Washington, DC 20500
U.S.A.

Mister President:

Please allow me to take the opportunity of your visit to Haiti, as President
of the United States of America, on March 31, 1995, to pay due tribute in
all sincerity to you and your distinguished wife, Mrs. Hillary Rodham
Clinton.

You honor Haiti and the Haitian people with your presence and support.

Thanks to you and your allies in the United Nations and the Organization of
American States, the return-to-democracy process has been successfully
carried out. Now that the legitimate President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, has
been reinstated in his official status, it is with legitimate pride, I am
sure that he welcomes you to his country. For you, as well as for us, the
"Uphold Democracy" operation is truly a beautiful historical moment.

Mr. President, I come from Haiti, that underdeveloped country.

With underdeveloped tools - a camera and a few films - I have tried, in
order to serve my country's cause, to demystify the word "light" and
denounce Newton's Theory of Colors.

With that same desire to serve constitutional legitimacy in my country, I
have written the enclosed book entitled Haiti, Let There Be Light! I hope
that you and Mrs. Clinton will accept this privately produced copy,
especially intended for you, while you are getting ready for your trip to
Haiti.

May I make a confession to you, Mr. President? I followed, closely and with
intense interest, your electoral campaign, election, and swearing-in
ceremony as 42nd President of the United States. What a great nation you
represent! Please believe me: your courageous commitment to facilitate the
restoration of democracy in my country has escaped no one. On the very day
of your swearing-in ceremony, I wished to send you my book, Haïti, Que La
Lumière Soit!, which questions Newton's Theory of Colors. I did not do so,
because I felt an English-language version would be more appropriate.

Since I could not send you a copy of the yet-to-be-published English version
of my book, I contented myself with dreaming - dreaming that on one of your
first evenings in the White House, you were seated in the Oval Room with
Mrs. Clinton and your daughter Chelsea. You were reading Haïti, Que La
Lumière Soit! I imagined you carefully examining certain passages of that
work in its English version, which is now in preparation - typed by a
sightless, multilingual Haitian. Those paragraphs deal with the so-called
missing matter, darkness in space, "black holes" - in a word: the invisible
mass of the Cosmos. You notice Dr. Carl Sagan's research on Exobiology and
the DNA found in the dark matter in the universe, and you suddenly remember
a Time article from April 10, 1978 entitled "Black Holes and Martian
Valleys", which contained the following passage:

"A while later, astronomer Carl Sagan (The Dragons of Eden) found himself
lugging his slide box into the Vice President's big new house and, after
coffee, taking the Mondale and Carter families on a journey through the
heavens.

Jimmy Carter is the closest thing to a scientist we have had in the White
House since Thomas Jefferson.

Nixon could not run a tape recorder.

Johnson could not fully figure out his alarm wrist watch.

Not Jimmy. He was fascinated by the discussion of "Black Holes" and the
speculation that they might provide answers to what holds the Universe
together."

"Well," you exclaimed, "O.K. for former President Carter. It is normal for
the President of a star-spangled republic to choose between "Star Peace" and
"Star War". As to the former President's inclination toward Einstein's
physics and/or Planck's Quantum Theory, there is a great temptation to apply
certain laws of the Cosmos to politics and diplomacy. Consider the "Tunnel
Effect", the way that energy escapes from black holes.

"Carter goes back to the sources and draws inspiration from them. That makes
me think about Aristide - both of them are well at ease in both the Western
world and the Black world: the visible and the invisible. However, there is
one difference: the Haitians follow Aristide everywhere, like a comet's
tail. If Aristide is considered as a "Black Sun", then the Haitians are
"space refugees".

"Yes, Haiti! We are pulled down to earth. Democracy. the exodus of the Boat
People. with the Law of Probabilities, whether we think about Planck or
Carter, it doesn't seem that a solution will be found tomorrow.

"What business did the Haitians have in that "boat"?"

"Say, there above, the Black Twin! Is it still broad daylight in the shadow
of the "Black Sun"?"

"Oh God," you say aloud to Mrs. Clinton: "Eureka! I have found it! Fiat lux!
Let there be light! Que la lumière soit! Black holes, black sun, tunnel
effect, Aristide effect, boat people, space refugees, Carl Sagan, Jimmy
Carter, six of one and half a dozen of the other."


There is loud laughter in the Oval Room.


Bill a ri Bill laughed
Hillary a ri Hillary laughed
Chelsea a ri aussi Chelsea laughed too


Humor is American, Mr. President, and so are dreams. Let my book Haïti, Que
La Lumière Soit! be the "dark matter", arguing in favor of the development
of the Black world - visible and invisible!

In the area of science, high technology, creative innovation, and space
exploration, I think there is nothing that America cannot deal with. That is
why, in that spaceship of universal energy, I dare sail with a dream.

In my dream, it is your first trip inside your SPACE AIR FORCE ONE,
propelled by the energy of invisible and concentrated dark matter, like
black holes. A mini black hole of an avant-garde design whose motor sequence
develops inertia, spectral speed, speed equal to or higher than that of
light, and scientifically controlled reversibility of the phenomenon.

What a new synthesis, but also what a liberation!

Synthesis and analysis are two wings of the same bird - contracted and
unfolded at the same time, following the heartbeat of the Universe tamed
inside the infinitely small: "One small step for man, one giant leap for
mankind!"

This would be the natural and constructive counterpart of Newton's Theory of
Light and Colors, which slows down that impulse. This is a necessary change
in the name of development and progress humbly submitted on behalf of Haiti:
a testimony of gratitude toward mankind. Let us go further, to the other
side of the Universe, as suggested by an eyewitness: the Hubble telescope,
with its camera.

". Hubble focused on the centre of the galaxy [M87], an area 500 light-years
across. The pictures revealed a spiral structure formed by fast-moving gas
clouds being drawn toward the centre, rather like water going down a drain."

Dr. Harms said the Hubble spectrographic camera was then focused on points
60 light-years across on opposite sides of the spinning disc. This camera
breaks down light into its wavelength parts, rather like a prism separates
colours in sunlight." (The Globe and Mail, Thursday, May 26, 1994)

Let us in the long run, replace the camera by a motor run by the ENERGY OF
THE YEAR 2000, transforming the DARK MATTER from the invisible to the
visible and vice versa. We would there by take advantage of the sequence of
colored and colorless light speeds, so as to better visit the Universe,
where law and order are transcendent, just as in democracy.

I have decided to write this letter because your leadership, Mr. President,
like an inevitable and immeasurable energy, has practically absorbed me,
allowing me to express myself.

On October 4, 1994, in the General Assembly of the United Nations, a voice
echoed the power of your leadership. In new words, on March 31, 1995, that
same voice will repeat:

"Even now, with the peaceful launching of the operation "UPHOLD DEMOCRACY"
on 19 September last year, a tropical smile has shed light upon the faces of
those who espouse and love peace - Peacemakers, Peacekeepers, and
Peacelovers. Together, President Clinton and we have managed to open up a
"tunnel" of hope after so much suffering."

That testimony by President Aristide at the U.N. emphasizes the magnitude of
the efforts needed to bring about such a happy conclusion.

Your present trip to Haiti is the strongest confirmation of that sequence of
events, and illustrates an unprecedented chapter in the annals of Haiti, as
well as in the life of the Haitian people

Thank you, Mr. President, for associating Haiti with your Strategic
Development Initiative (S.D.I.) at the dawn of the "Star Peace".

Lucien Bonnet

L’auteur, Montréalais d’origine haïtienne, est diplômé en Sciences de la Communication de l’Université de Montréal.

The author, from Montreal of Haitian origin, is graduate in Communication Sciences from the University of Montreal.
============================================================
FROM : www.Cnn.com:

Cnn.com
96 percent of cosmos puzzles astronomers
Friday, June 20, 2003 Posted: 1629 GMT (12:29 AM HKT)

Luminous matter accounts for only about 0.4 percent of the universe.

Story Tools

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Earth, moon, sun and all visible stars in the sky make up less than one percent of the universe. Almost all the rest is dark matter and dark energy, unknown forces that puzzle astronomers.

Observations in recent years have changed the basic understanding of how the universe evolved and have emphasized for astronomers how little is known about the major forces and substances that shaped our world.

Astronomers now know that luminous matter -- stars, planets and hot gas -- account for only about 0.4 percent of the universe. Nonluminous components, such as black holes and intergalactic gas, make up 3.6 percent. The rest is either dark matter, about 23 percent, or dark energy, about 73 percent.

Dark matter, sometimes called "cold dark matter," has been known for some time. Only recently have researchers come to understand the pivotal role it played in the formation of stars, planets and even people.

"We owe our very existence to dark matter," said Paul Steinhardt, a physicist at Princeton University and a co-author of a review on dark matter appearing this week in the journal Science.

Steinhardt said it is believed that following the Big Bang, the theoretical beginning of the universe, dark matter caused particles to clump together. That set up the gravitation processes that led to the formation of stars and galaxies. Those stars, in turn, created the basic chemicals, such as carbon and iron, that were fundamental to the evolution of life.

"Dark matter dominated the formation of structure in the early universe," Steinhardt said. "For the first few billion years dark matter contained most of the mass of the universe. You can think of ordinary matter as a froth on an ocean of dark matter. The dark matter clumps and the ordinary matter falls into it. That led to the formation of the stars and galaxies."

Without dark matter, "there would be virtually no structures in the universe," he said.

The nature of dark matter is unknown. It cannot be seen or detected directly. Astronomers know it is there because of its effect on celestial objects than can be seen and measured.

But the most dominating force of all in the universe is called dark energy, a recently proven power that astronomers say is causing the galaxies in the universe to separate at a faster and faster speed. It is the force that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.

Robert P. Kirshner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the presence of dark energy was proved only five years ago when astronomers studying very distant exploding stars discovered they were moving away at a constant acceleration. It was a stunning discovery that has since been proved by other observations.

Kirshner said it is clear now that dark matter and dark energy engaged in a gravitational tug of war that, eventually, dark energy won.

Following the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, matter in the universe streaked outward. It formed galaxies, thinned out and then began to slow down.

"Dark matter was trying to slow things down and dark energy was trying to speed it up," said Kirshner, the author of a review article on dark energy in Science.

"We think dark matter was winning for the first seven billion years, but then universe went from slowing down to speeding up. ... Dark energy took over."

Kirshner said astronomers do not really understand dark energy. Albert Einstein first proposed a form of the idea, but discarded it later. Now, researchers know it exists, but its exact form and nature are mysterious, although it is thought to be related to gravity.

"What this is pointing to is a deep mystery at the heart of physics," said Kirshner. "We don't understand gravity in the same way we understand other forces."

He said there are virtually no experiments on Earth that would explore the nature of dark energy. It can only be studied across vast stellar distances by observing the motion of objects extremely far away, a skill that has been possible only in recent decades with the development of very powerful telescopes.

"Dark energy will cause the universe to expanded faster and faster and eventually, over time, we will see less and less of it," Kirshner said. Over millions of years, familiar stars and nearby galaxies will disappear from view and the sky, now choked with stars, will slowly darken.

"The piece of the universe that we can see will get lonelier and lonelier," he said.

(www.Cnn.com)