A dark matter, indeed.

“…the most important book about cosmology since Steven Weinberg’s 1977 volume The First Three Minutes.” Gregg Easterbrook, Slate, Sept. 14, 2006

mmm. Perhaps we should examine the tax codes of yesteryear as well. It seems that the tax rate for the very wealthy (unlike today’s anemic 17% or so) was greater than 60%, and in some states closer to 75%. These rates could be offset, and were, by tax-deductible giving, especially to the sciences and arts. Thus the “private expense” was a useful and highly productive tax-avoidance tactic. In those days universities would provide a vast menus of possible projects to wealthy donors suggesting how best to offload their tax debt. Today we have to hire whole departments of development bureaucrats, competing against other universities’ development departments, to find the funds for the next project, mostly to add capital to the endowment, or perhaps a wing of a building (and only rarely a science project–and almost never an art one).