Transcript For Strip 190

Panel 1
Nicole and Seamus sitting on the bed, looking fully comfortable now. Seamus looks amused.
Seamus: Yes, that archaic vulgarity sums up the situation nicely.
Seamus: We have known – or at least suspected – dark matter since the middle of the 1st Century B.S.A.*, when it was noticed that galactic rotations didn't seem to follow the laws of gravity.
Caption: *B.S.A. = Before Space Age, which began in 1957 C.E.
Panel 2
Close-up on Seamus, looking a bit dreamy-eyed as if remembering events from long ago.
Seamus: Dark matter neither emits nor reflects any radation, and can only be detected by its gravitational effect.
Seamus: Originally, it was thought that the stuff was suffused more or less evenly throughout the galaxy, as tiny, discreet particles which would pass right through ordinary matter without incident.
Panel 3
Seamus inset against a shot of the Brahmaputra being pulled off course by an unseen body.
Seamus: Only later did we learn the truth – that dark matter is 'clumpy,' just as normal matter is.
Seamus: It's been estimated that the dark mass which pulled the Brahmaputra off course was a quarter that of Jupiter.
Panel 4
Looking past Nicole at Seamus.
Seamus: There appear also to be much more numerous 'rogue bodies' of normal matter drifting between the stars than we'd thought. Planetoids, dust clouds, and so on.
Seamus: With hazards such as these, and no practical super-luminal drive possible, interstellar exploration has been largely abandoned.

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