Current Issue March 2014 magazine cover  Save 47% off the cover
price!  In the Dark  A mysterious force is tearing the universe
apart!  WHEN SCIENTISTS RECEIVE QUACK LETTERS, they arrive
bearing certain characteristic trademarks. They tend to be
written in longhand, with pencil, the pages covered with
smudges, stains, and inscrutable cabalistic symbols, as if the
writer were originally from the planet Weebo.  The author
invariably claims to have spotted a hitherto-unnoticed flaw in
Einstein’s theory of relativity. For the greater good of
humanity, he humbly offers to correct it, proposing a melange of
previously unknown forces, particles, energy fields, and,
commonly enough, flocks of hidden dimensions, which have somehow
escaped the attention of generations of scientists.  Today’s
cosmologists might use computers instead of pencils, but
otherwise their latest theories bear a suspicious resemblance to
the World Classics of Crackpottery. Consider, for example, a
briefing held last May at NASA headquarters in W