Utada: What are you most focused on pursuing at the moment?
Kojima: There is a theory in particle physics called the Standard Model, but it can only explain about 5 percent of the mass and energy in the universe. In fact, it is thought that about 26 percent of the mass and energy in the universe is dark matter, and the remaining 70 percent is dark energy. Regardless of dark energy, we know that dark matter exists, but we don’t know what it is, and we are currently searching to understand its true nature.
Utada: Dark energy is …
Kojima: We know almost nothing about it.
Tanaka: You could say it’s a name that was almost given at random.
Utada: OK, so “dark” here doesn’t mean “not lit,” but rather “unknowable” or “unknown.”
Tanaka: We don’t know anything about dark energy. It has that name because the universe is expanding. But dark matter can be explained by gravity, so we believe it exists. But it’s hard to find it. We’re trying to measure something when we don’t know what it is, so we spend a great deal of time conducting experiments.
Utada: It’s like proving the existence of something by the absence of something else.
Kojima: Yes, that’s right.
Utada: It’s like trying to prove the existence of an invisible man. A room with capacity for 10 people is packed even though there are only nine people there. Or there were 10 people in the room, but traces of 11 people coming from it.
Tanaka Yes, yes, that’s the idea!
It’s a matter of making an analogy to something else or replacing one relationship with another. Utada says they attach a special importance to this act. This means that they regularly transform what exists only in their own mind into clever metaphors by making full use of the knowledge and experience they have cultivated over time, and the words and symbols derived from their intuition. They then diligently carry out the task of communicating these to others.