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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


“After completing this study, we know less about dark matter than we did before.”

The uncertainty of science: “After completing this study, we know less about dark matter than we did before.”

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

2 comments

  • The Emigrant

    It actually is somewhat exciting. So much we don’t know, and the key to the solution will probably involve imagination. Assume there actually is dark matter, which we now do–then does it have the same gravitational constant as “matter matter”? That, after all, is somewhat the assumption, isn’t it? But….what if one “piece” of dark matter actually has a far greater ability to exert gravitational “force” than normal matter (I presume that would mean there would be a lot less of it than hypothesized)? What if a “little dab will do ya”? How do we figure that out if so?

    Or….what if dark matter particles have a mutual repulsive force between themselves, unknown to us because it is unobserved, that is equal in effect to the gravitational force?

    Or….what if “normal matter” is really nothing more than “dark matter” that through some kind of synergistic/interactive effect amongst the dark matter is able to interact with light? That “normal matter” is like a standing wave effect caused by interacting dark matter particles at some deeper level? That there is no such thing as matter, but only nth-order effects of interactions of dark matter? That it is a collection or certain density of dark matter that causes “matter matter” to pop into existence–to be “squeezed” into the universe, so to speak.

    What if the relationship between matter and dark matter was somewhat akin to the order of magnitude between neutrinos and matter–matter affects not dark matter, but the reverse is not true?

    Like I said, it’s all neat and exciting.

  • The Emigrant

    As far as my point about interactions between dark matter possible creating matter–what if our ability to do stuff via colliders was, order of magnitude-wise, akin to the ratio of the amplitude of a very small and higher frequency modulation imposed on a larger amplitude/lower frequency carrier wave? That with colliders we are not actually exploring the fundamental nature of the universe, but merely making art on a canvas we do not understand yet?

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