Searching For Dark Matter From Deep Under an Italian Mountain 62
Zothecula writes "Like the Higgs Boson, dark matter is one of those things in the Universe that evidence points to, but is very difficult to pin down. A team of researchers is looking to verify the existence of this most elusive of ingredients that is thought to make up 23 percent of the Universe using powerful detectors buried deep in an Italian mountain. The DarkSide-50 project is an international collaboration between Italian, French, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Chinese institutions, as well as 17 American universities. The project team spent last (Northern hemisphere) summer assembling the detector in a laboratory deep within the Gran Sasso mountain, which is accessed via an exit off a six-mile (9.6 km) long highway tunnel in Italy."
You will not hide from NSA (Score:1)
So, they think by hiding under the mountain they can escape powerful USA regime?
How naive.
Re: (Score:2)
In the sewers of Rome... most of it.
23% (Score:3, Funny)
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Did they mention it makes up 23% of the universe?
Once or twice. Just in the summary though. Any more than that would just be showing off.
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23, 23, riding through the glen
23, 23, with his band of men
Feared by the bad,
Loved by the free,
23,
23,
23.
Bring in the IRS... (Score:1)
When the US and Italian police have problems with Mafia dons (all the evidence points to them, but it is very difficult to pin anything on them), the IRS has much more success in getting them on tax evasion.
Give the IRS something to do, and maybe enlist the NSA's help with tapping dark matter's communication channels so that the IRS can figure out where the dark matter is hiding!
Terrible summary (Score:4, Informative)
To be clear, dark matter is nothing like the Higgs-Boson. The Higgs was predicted to be within a specific energy range and to decay along a specific subset of paths. The LHC was designed to reach or exceed the energy range of the Higgs and to detect its decay once it appeared. The Higgs appeared within the range predicted, decayed like predicted, and everything is fine and right with the world of predicted and accepted particle physics so far as everyone is concerned.
Dark Matter on the other hand, is something which is not predicted by any theory we currently have. Its existence is only inferred by seemingly missing mass from galaxies and some astronimical observations that suggest this mass may be in the form of seemingly invisible matter that we have no currently confirmed way of detecting other than looking at the effect it seems to have on gravity. Heck we don't even know if it is matter to begin with, at least as we know it, but that' the closest thing we can infer other than it seems to be invisible and so the name "dark matter".
Candidates of what dark matter is have been suggested. Or rather, quite vague candidates have. The most popular is the "WIMP" or "Weakly Interacting Massive Particle" that may or may not interact via the weak force at all, may have an energy/mass equivelance of who knows, and should for your guess is as good as mine not interact at all with the electromagnetic force or the strong force. Except we've built detectors, more and more of them with higher sensitivity and so far the only thing that's come back are what seems to be statistical errors.
So, really they're pretty much the opposite. Dark Matter is largely a mystery who's properties are at best hoped to be like the physics we already know and understand, and the detector mentioned hopes that this hope is correct and that it will be. The other is a particle that was predicted decades ago, had an extremely solid theoretical understanding and backing, and who's detector was build largely with the expectation that it would turn up as predicted, which it did.
Re:Terrible summary (Score:5, Informative)
I think you're being unfair to the submitter here; all they suggested was that the Higgs and dark matter alike have been difficult to tease out. That one's an issue of generating a large enough instrument to detect something we're very sure exists, and one's an issue of explaining the existence of something that we can see but not understand, is an excellent teaching point, and you've done a great job there.
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Dark Matter on the other hand, is something which is not predicted by any theory we currently have.
Before you are at all taken seriously, you have a ton of explaining to do then.
Since you claim General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and the laws of Thermodynamics are all not current theories we have, you must start by explaining what each one of those theories explains and then some
You have to explain why the Sun exists, since it can't with the amount of gravity we actually see.
You have to explain the cosmic microwave background image, and why it shows in multiple ways what you claim doesn't exist.
Why do
pinning down dark matter (Score:1)
Re:From the severed horsehead's mouth. (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, Italia.
The country were seismologists are thrown in jail because the can't asses the risks of earthquakes,ships run aground on calm seas and neutrinos run faster than light. If they can't find dark matter in the darkness under its mountains, noone can.
On the other side, US is squeezing the last bit of the dark energy barrel (while it lasts)
Re:From the severed horsehead's mouth. (Score:5, Informative)
The country were seismologists are thrown in jail because the can't asses the risks of earthquakes
False. They were thrown in jail for their false claims.
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While I support your position, I won't mod you up
If you run around the block twice, you'll be my most athletic supporter.
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Most of what you said is correct, but italy is run by bankers on side, and the mafia, camorra and n'drangheta on the other, with politicians tell you to ignore the guys in dark suits behind the curtain.
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on one side, sorry
surprise (Score:2)
Maybe they'll find Jimmy Hoffa down there, too.
Searching for WIMPs, not DM (Score:2)
To be accurate, the search in Gran Sasso is a search for WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), which are one microphysical explanation for dark matter. I personally do not like the common conflation of dark matter (for which there is abundant evidence) with WIMPs (for which there is no evidence at all).
A lot of the interest in WIMPs comes from particle physics, due to the "WIMP miracle" [uci.edu] (that hypothetical particles at the electro-weak scale, i.e., ~ 100 GeV, apparently have the right mass to explai
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True, but all that means is that any DM theory must be consistent with Lambda CDM (which is true for all the ones I mentioned, at least for a suitable choice of prameters). Note that there is still the "core-cusp" problem, which it now doesn't look like _Warm_ Dark
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Mussolini was on top of the massif, these detectors are deep inside the mountain (in a tunnel bored off of the 10-km A24 Autostrada tunnel underneath the mountain, which makes driving equipment in very convenient).
eep (Score:1)
These scientists... (Score:1)
Ether (Score:2)
The more I read about dark matter and dark energy pervading the universe, the more I think about ether (also spelled "aether" or "æther"), which also was supposed to fill the universe. Dark matter and dark energy will never be found because they are as real as ether. See the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org].