Exciting hints that scientists had finally discovered the existence of dark matter - the mysterious substance thought to make up a quarter of the Universe – were dashed last night as researchers realised their equipment had detected a dark mattress instead.
The premature announcement was blamed on faulty software. “Apparently, someone left an errant ampersand in our code,” said an embarrassed physicist, before weeping slowly into a whisky glass.
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) laboratory, buried half a mile underground in an iron mine, announced last night that they had found traces of the weakly-interacting massive particles (or WIMPs) that are thought to make up dark matter.
Instead, they had actually detected a dirty poorly-sprung mattress, left in the cave by a weakly-inebriated, noxious old-timer (or WINO).
“We thought there was around a one in four chance that we had found nothing,” said one of the lead researchers, “but we now know there is a one in one chance that we have found the former sleeping materials of a sheltering vagrant.”
Laboratory technicians were saddened that the most important advance in recent physics had not come to pass, but noted that the dark mattress was really rather comfortable, if not a bit wet.
December 18th, 2009 at 11:17 am
lol!
December 18th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Was the dark mattress where the big bang took place?
December 18th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
And now t’is my turn to lol.
December 18th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Awesome. Thanks for the Friday afternoon chuckle.
December 18th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Good one, Ed. WINO…heh heh…
December 18th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
LMAO!
December 18th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I’m still trying to figure out how the ships-boson can go back in time….
December 18th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
LOL!
Then I read the article and they said dark matter might consist of …”weakly interacting massive particles (Wimps) and massive compact halo objects (Machos)”. heehee
December 18th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Did the mattress have black hole in it? If so, then the whole thing doesn’t matter anyway.
December 19th, 2009 at 2:37 am
Thanks for the chuckle!
December 19th, 2009 at 7:40 am
LoL! That was choice!
December 19th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
lol, Ed. I bet the WINO is hiding the REAL dark matter under his dark mattress.
December 20th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Nice and Onion-y.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:51 pm
For the record, wino really is the name for the hypothesized supersymmetric partner to the W boson.
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:21 pm
That made me laugh. I’m trying to come up with a joke including the obelisk from 2001, but there’s nothing but screaming voices in my head….