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Rumours that first dark matter particle found (1 Viewer)

Simris

Footballguy
Physics is becoming very interesting with the LHC up and running and now the dark matter particle possibility.

This is that experiment being done in Soudan mine in Minnesota.

Link

December 8, 2009 2:35 PM

Rumours that first dark matter particle found

Update: in an email to the blog Resonaances, Nature's senior physical science editor Leslie Sage has squashed the rumours that a paper is about to appear in the journal

Valerie Jamieson, physics features editor

DarkMatter.jpgThe physics blogs are abuzz with rumors that a particle of dark matter has finally been found.

If it is true, it is huge news. Dark matter is thought to make up 90 per cent of the universe's mass and what evidence there is for it remains highly controversial. That's why any news of a sighting is seized upon.

The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment is one of several designed to look for the tell-tale signature of dark matter particles passing through. No one is sure what a dark matter particle will look like, though theory gives some pointers.

Most of the experiments have been designed to look for elusive massive particles called WIMPS that barely register as they pass through matter, because the only forces they experience are gravity and the weak nuclear force.

CDMS is located deep underground in the Soudan mine in Minnesota, to protect it from the hail of cosmic rays that would otherwise wash out any dark matter signal.

Earlier this year, the collaboration published a paper in Physical Review Letters (vol 102, p011301) based on two series of experiments between October 2006 and July 2007. They found nothing.

So researchers have been waiting eagerly for the next chapter of the story - maybe with more time, more experience running their detector and a sprinkling of luck, the team would spot a dark matter particle.

The gossip mill went into overdrive after a rumour leaked out that the CDMS collaboration has had a paper accepted by the journal Nature. Word is that the paper will appear in the 18 December issue.

Nature is an unusual place for particle physicists to publish their papers and this has prompted speculation that the news must be big.

A few physicists I know say that talks have hurriedly been scheduled for 18 December at SLAC National Laboratory, the University of California Santa Barbara and Fermilab - all prominent institutions within the CDMS collaboration.

We'll have to wait and see if the rumours turn out to be true. Even if not, with NASA's Fermi satellite looking for dark matter in space and the Large Hadron Collider up and running, 2010 could be the year we finally crack the dark matter mystery.
 
here is what I believe dark matter could be. I'm probably wrong but here goes.

so our universe is not everything. our Universe is part of a multiverse. think of it like soap bubbles and each bubble is its own universe. they are connected with black and white holes, the black hole take stuff out of our universe and into another universes, and the white hole bring in new stuff into our universe. the matter in an adjacent universe will have a gravitational pull on our universe, but that matter is not in the other universe.

think of it like were fish in a pod, we can't see out side of the pond, we think this is our whole world but things out side of the pond have gravitational pull on the thing inside the pond.

 
Can anyone put this in simple english? I'm dumb and can't understand why this is important or exciting.
There is not enough visible matter in the universe to cause galaxies to form or to account for other phenomena that require a certain amount of mass in order to happen. Therefore there must be some kind of matter that exists, but that we haven't detected. Scientists call this dark matter. Verifying that it exists will fill a lot of holes in cosmologic theory.
 
This stuff is way :goodposting: over my head....but wouldn't it be just as likely that we don't understand gravity and it's effects on a scale that large vs. a bunch of invisible matter?

I love to read this stuff, just need help understanding it on occassion. :bag:

 
It's exciting because we can learn about space.

But it's also possible that we learn something about the properties of dark matter, find out that those properties also extend to normal matter in ways we didn't understand.

Or we may learn that there are dark matter particles floating around in places we didn't expect, and be able to use that information to make things happen that we hadn't expected.

Or we might blow up the world.

 
Does this mine in Minnesota have some kind of lab and they discovered it in an experiment or are they saying this is just something floating around?

 
Does this mine in Minnesota have some kind of lab and they discovered it in an experiment or are they saying this is just something floating around?
The use the earth above the mine to filter out all the other known particles that interact with matter.Ideally the only thing else that gets through are dark matter particles.

They use hockey puck shaped doodads to collect the particles, at least that is the hope.

They have been doing this for years now without anything, so far.

WIKI on dark matter

WIKI on dark enegry

 
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Does this mine in Minnesota have some kind of lab and they discovered it in an experiment or are they saying this is just something floating around?
The use the earth above the mine to filter out all the other known particles that interact with matter.Ideally the only thing else that gets through are dark matter particles.

They use hockey puck shaped doodads to collect the particles, at least that is the hope.

They have been doing this for years now without anything, so far.

WIKI on dark matter

WIKI on dark enegry
"Hello CERN. Yeah never mind, we found one."
 
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whitem0nkey said:
here is what I believe dark matter could be. I'm probably wrong but here goes.so our universe is not everything. our Universe is part of a multiverse. think of it like soap bubbles and each bubble is its own universe. they are connected with black and white holes, the black hole take stuff out of our universe and into another universes, and the white hole bring in new stuff into our universe. the matter in an adjacent universe will have a gravitational pull on our universe, but that matter is not in the other universe. think of it like were fish in a pod, we can't see out side of the pond, we think this is our whole world but things out side of the pond have gravitational pull on the thing inside the pond.
I would imagine you are close.Also, in my experience, dark matter really smells bad.
 
whitem0nkey said:
here is what I believe dark matter could be. I'm probably wrong but here goes.so our universe is not everything. our Universe is part of a multiverse. think of it like soap bubbles and each bubble is its own universe. they are connected with black and white holes, the black hole take stuff out of our universe and into another universes, and the white hole bring in new stuff into our universe. the matter in an adjacent universe will have a gravitational pull on our universe, but that matter is not in the other universe. think of it like were fish in a pod, we can't see out side of the pond, we think this is our whole world but things out side of the pond have gravitational pull on the thing inside the pond.
I would imagine you are close.Also, in my experience, dark matter really smells bad.
especially after Mexican food
 
bostonfred said:
It's exciting because we can learn about space. But it's also possible that we learn something about the properties of dark matter, find out that those properties also extend to normal matter in ways we didn't understand. Or we may learn that there are dark matter particles floating around in places we didn't expect, and be able to use that information to make things happen that we hadn't expected. Or we might blow up the world.
Any chance I can learn to use the force to move stuff?
 

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