The search for dark matter

C

Cypress

Well-known member
All of the natural world, all of reality, is composed of quantum fields. What we think of as particles is a convenient fiction.

Sidebar: My prediction for the top five discoveries of the next 20 years:

Discovery of dark matter
Discovery of dark energy
Discovery of habitable exoplanets
Discovery of Ghengis Kahn's tomb
Unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity

Higgs boson examined as source of dark matter at the LHC

It’s been calculated that dark matter is around five times more common than regular matter – and yet, we still haven’t directly detected it. Many different types of experiments are trying to find it, and now CERN has joined the hunt, testing whether the famous Higgs boson could decay into dark matter.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) probes the secrets of the universe by smashing particles together at incredible speeds. In doing so, new and exotic types of particles are often created, giving scientists a fleeting opportunity to study things that would be virtually impossible to come across naturally.

One of the most groundbreaking discoveries made by the LHC is the Higgs boson, in 2012. This long-hypothesized particle was the last remaining puzzle piece in the Standard Model of particle physics, believed to create the means by which other elementary particles gain mass.

Since its discovery, scientists have used the Higgs boson as a tool to probe other particle physics mysteries. The boson quickly decays into other particles, and it’s predicted that some may not be directly detectable by the equipment.

Given the Higgs boson’s role in “giving” particles mass, and dark matter only being detectable through its mass, the two should interact with each other. So for the new study, scientists with the ATLAS collaboration at CERN set out to check whether the Higgs boson may be decaying into dark matter.

https://newatlas.com/physics/cern-higgs-boson-dark-matter-source/
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Dark matter. That sounds racist and you therefore are a racist you racist!

Well, that is how the Progressive Left rolls these days isn't it?
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Dark matter. That sounds racist and you therefore are a racist you racist!

Well, that is how the Progressive Left rolls these days isn't it?
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^ an attempt at rightwing humour.

^ Sounds like you have never heard of dark matter, which happens to be one of the most important research topics in physics of the last 30 years.

You appear to be deficient in rudimentary scientific knowledge. Let me guess, you think climate change is a Chinese hoax, the Earth is 6000 years old, and early humans kept dinosaurs as pets.
 
Hello T. A. Gardner,

T. A. Gardner said:
Dark matter. That sounds racist and you therefore are a racist you racist!

Well, that is how the Progressive Left rolls these days isn't it?
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Better understanding requires dropping pretenses.

Only a truly open mind can accept the unexpected.

Prejudice never leads to higher knowledge.
 
AProudLefty said:
I doubt there will be any unification in the next 20 years.
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You could well be correct.

I was holding out hope that string theory would unify quantum mechanics and general relativity. But from what I can tell, string theory seems to be faltering. Rats!
 
Considering how many billions of dollars the Europeans spent on the CERN particle accelerator, it would be surprising if all they had to show for it was the Higgs boson, important though it may be. Perhaps cosmology will replace particle physics as the top dog in physics this century.

Why the Higgs Boson Discovery Is Disappointing, According to the Smartest Man in the World

It's been 35 years, and when it comes to new particles and the like, there really hasn't been a single surprise. (The discovery of neutrino masses is a partial counterexample, as are various discoveries in cosmology.) Experiments have certainly discovered things--the W and Z bosons, the validity of QCD, the top quark. But all of them were as expected from the Standard Model; there were no surprises.

At some level I'm actually a little disappointed. I've made no secret--even to Peter Higgs--that I've never especially liked the Higgs mechanism. It's always seemed like a hack. And I've always hoped that in the end there'd be something more elegant and deep responsible for something as fundamental as the masses of particles. But it appears that nature is just picking what seems like a pedestrian solution to the problem: the Higgs mechanism in the Standard Model...

If the Standard Model is correct, yesterday's announcement is likely to be the last major discovery that could be made in a particle accelerator in our generation. Now, of course, there could be surprises, but it's not clear how much one should bet on them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...y0jkQOru33AYdh_Lkbe_7SLz8zPw-_sBoCagIQAvD_BwE
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Cypress said:
All of the natural world, all of reality, is composed of quantum fields. What we think of as particles is a convenient fiction.

Sidebar: My prediction for the top five discoveries of the next 20 years:

Discovery of dark matter
Discovery of dark energy
Discovery of habitable exoplanets
Discovery of Ghengis Kahn's tomb
Unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity
Click to expand...

Have they investigated the interior of your skull yet? Oh wait, I guess they would first need to invent a method of penetration. I doubt diamond drill bits would do it, and carbide probably wouldn't even scratch it.
 
countryboy said:
Have they investigated the interior of your skull yet? Oh wait, I guess they would first need to invent a method of penetration. I doubt diamond drill bits would do it, and carbide probably wouldn't even scratch it.
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I do not see a career as professional comedian in your future

You obviously do not appreciate attempts to elevate the tone at jpp, and ever seek to lower it.

If particle physics and cosmology is not your bag, I am sure there are threads about human poop in front of Pelosi's house around here somewhere.
 
Apparently, dark matter cannot be any type of normal matter we simply have may have difficulty visually observing and confirming.

Gravitational micro-lensing studies seemingly rule out while dwarfs, brown dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes as the source of dark matter.

Dark matter is evidently some entirely unknown manifestation of physics we do not know about - some science journalists are speculating we need a new Einstein to make any fundamental breakthroughs in particle physics and cosmology.
 
Dark energy = Einstein's cosmological constant?

Einstein thought the cosmological constant was his greatest blunder, but apparently in hindsight it may have been a mathematical description of dark energy.
Here is where science and philosophy diverge. Asserting that empty space has an inherent energy is purely mechanistic and has little explanatory power. IMO.

One of the simplest explanations is that it is a “cosmological constant” – a result of the energy of empty space itself – an idea introduced by Albert Einstein.

Many physicists aren’t satisfied with this explanation, though. They want a more fundamental description of its nature.

Our results show that about 69% of our universe’s energy is dark energy. They also demonstrate, once again, that Einstein’s simplest form of dark energy – the cosmological constant – agrees the most with our observations.

When combining the information from our map with other cosmological probes, such as the cosmic microwave background – the light left over from the big bang – they all seem to prefer the cosmological constant over more exotic explanations of dark energy.

https://scitechdaily.com/dark-energ...ut-deepens-cosmic-expansion-rate-dispute/amp/
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Leads to decent philosophical questions: Planck's constant, the cosmological constant, the gravitational constant - where do they come from? Is it beyond the realm of science to even understand their essence and origin? Is this the limit of science and reason? Is the universe finely tuned and balanced on the edge of a razor, or is it impossible for these physical constants to take any other value other than what they are?

Is There Really A Cosmological Constant? Or Is Dark Energy Changing With Time?

According to physics, the universe and everything in it can be explained by just a handful of equations. They’re difficult equations, all right, but their simplest feature is also the most mysterious one. The equations contain a few dozen parameters that are – for all we presently know – unchanging, and yet these numbers determine everything about the world we inhabit.

Physicists have spent much brainpower questioning where these numbers come from,

whether they could have taken any other values than the ones we observe,

and whether their exploring their origin is even within the realm of science.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fo...ant-or-is-dark-energy-changing-with-time/amp/
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Hopefully dark matter is some kind of boson energy field. It would be a total nightmare if we learned there is something fundamentally wrong with Newtonian gravitational mechanics.

Dark-matter detector result is consistent with previous hint of exotic particles

New data from the PandaX-II particle detector in China leave open the possibility that the XENON1T experiment in Italy has found evidence of new physics. In June 2020 researchers working on XENON1T announced the detection of around 50 events above background levels and concluded that hypothetical solar axions or very magnetic neutrinos might be responsible. The new results from PandaX-II are consistent with these hypotheses but further work will be needed to settle the issue.

The events reported in 2020 involved electron, rather than nuclear, recoils. Elena Aprile of Columbia University in the US and colleagues reported 53±15 such recoils at low energy that they could not tie to other identifiable sources of background (these events themselves being considered noise in the search for WIMPs). Careful not to claim any discovery, researchers instead laid out several possible explanations for the observation.

These explanations included two novelties associated with particles arriving from the Sun – either hypothetical particles known as axions (postulated originally to fix a problem with the strong nuclear force) or neutrinos with a greater magnetic moment than previously observed. Another possibility, they said, was “bosonic dark matter”, which would be absorbed, rather than scattered, by the xenon nuclei and cause electrons to be emitted.

https://physicsworld.com/a/dark-mat...stent-with-previous-hint-of-exotic-particles/
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Dark matter is starting to bug me, I've been waiting 30 years to learn what it is

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Dark Matter’s Last Stand

A new experiment could catch invisible particles that previous detectors have not

Scientists are fond of saying negative results are just as important as positive results, but after several decades of not finding something, researchers can be forgiven for feeling impatient. Back in the 1990s, experiments began trying to detect the particles that make up dark matter, the ubiquitous yet untouchable invisible material that apparently fills the cosmos. Since then, physicists have found more and more evidence that dark matter is real but not a single sign of the stuff itself. A new version of the long-running XENON experiment that started up late last year aims to finally break that pattern.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-matters-last-stand/
 
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