Dark Matter - or does it?

I attended a fantastic lecture yesterday, about the search for dark matter and dark energy.  Apparantly only about 4% of the universe can actually be seen, the rest is dark mater and dark energy. This is only seen by the way that it distorts the path of light rays from distant galaxies and right now there are several surveys taking place to try to map this dark energy.  But no one quite knows what it is yet or really what it does - you can view the lecture in about a week's time at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl/lhlpub_autumn2009/05_271009
I'm very excited about tomorrow's lecture on vampires and the undead!
I've been able to do some writing over the past couple of days too, including a short story today with a halloween type theme.  I also picked up two new books yesterday, The Twilight Watch (the third in the Night Watch trilogy - which I think now is actually a quadrilogy!) and a book by Pauline McLynn (of Father Ted Mrs Doyle fame).
More photographs now...I took a walk out onto Hampstead today, it was a bit of a grey day but all the more dramatic and autumnal for that...hope you enjoy them.