Scientists' Biggest Search For Dark Matter To Date Just Turned Up Nothing (sciencealert.com) 161
Peter Dockrill, reporting for ScienceAlert: For something that's hypothesised to make up more than 80 percent of the mass of the entire universe, it's no easy thing to detect the existence of dark matter. That's the conclusion the world is coming to today, after scientists announced that a massive $10 million experiment to find traces of elusive dark matter particles had failed after an exhaustive 20-month search. "We've probed previously unexplored regions of parameter space with the aim of making the first definitive discovery of dark matter," said physicist Cham Ghag from University College London in the UK, one of the scientists who took part in the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) project based in South Dakota. "Though a positive signal would have been welcome, nature was not so kind! Nonetheless, a null result is significant as it changes the landscape of the field by constraining models for what dark matter could be beyond anything that existed previously."Ars Technica has more details.
I know the feeling. (Score:1, Funny)
I keep looking for my imaginary friend, but he's never there.
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I keep looking for my imaginary friend, but he's never there.
At least this research shined some phlogiston on the subject of dark matter.
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It's kind of like the ball
Analogy (Score:2)
Gravitational effects tell us that things are there but it's too dark to see them.
Great news everyone (Score:1)
Well, the dark matter explanation feels a bit hacky anyway. Hopefully some better explanation will gain traction.
Re:Great news everyone (Score:5, Informative)
>the dark matter explanation feels a bit hacky anyway.
Dark matter isn't the explanation, it's the question.
We observe things like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
but we don't know what is causing them. "Dark matter" is just a short way of saying "whatever it is that is responsible for these things we are observing".
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No, it is more than that. Astrophysicists give the attribute of "gravity" to dark matter. In fact, that was the reason they promulgated the idea, i.e., galaxies would fly apart otherwise so there must be something we cannot see which supplies the extra gravity.
They do not entertain the idea that maybe their laws are wrong, or that some other phenomenon might be affecting gravity.
Re: Great news everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can come up with some way to modify gravity in such a way match more than one or two of the dozen plus lines of evidence supporting dark matter, you've got a guaranteed PRL publication. Of course every attempt so far has failed pretty miserably.
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Re:Great news everyone (Score:5, Informative)
They do not entertain the idea that maybe their laws are wrong, or that some other phenomenon might be affecting gravity.
Sure, MOND [wikipedia.org] never happened.
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MOND is an example of a class of theories known as modified gravity, and is an alternative to the hypothesis that the dynamics of galaxies are determined by massive, invisible dark matter halos.
It started out as a replacement for DM. 30 years later, with more evidence supporting DM, it's more like a ready-made replacement if DM fails, or an add-on if some of the observed phenomena aren't explained by a more refined DM theory.
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MOND doesn't eliminate the "need" for Dark Matter, does it.
Still, it fails in situations that otherwise have a "dark matter" explanation, just slightly fewer of them. It's not a solution to the problem.
Dark matter itself is only a partial solution, so...
You seem to have some strong feeling on the subject - could you explain?
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MOND is dumb anyways. What we call gravity arises from spacetime. When matter is condensed from energy, what is left is spacetime. There is more spacetime near matter which causes a pressure towards matter. This is what we call gravity.
Why is this important? Because there are areas of the universe where the universe has already ended. The concept of time moves faster the further away it is from the matter that it is part of (e=mc^2 simplified).
In summary, galactic rotation curves are flat because time is fa
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What we call gravity arises from spacetime. ... The concept of time moves faster the further away it is from the matter that it is part of (e=mc^2 simplified).
*facepalm*
In summary, galactic rotation curves are flat because time is faster and space is smaller where there is less matter.
Then why doesn't the same thing happen in the solar system? If it did, we wouldn't have had a mystery in the first place.
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What we call gravity arises from spacetime. ... The concept of time moves faster the further away it is from the matter that it is part of (e=mc^2 simplified).
*facepalm*
In summary, galactic rotation curves are flat because time is faster and space is smaller where there is less matter.
Then why doesn't the same thing happen in the solar system? If it did, we wouldn't have had a mystery in the first place.
It does happen in the solar system.
http://www.astronomy.ohio-stat... [ohio-state.edu]
Read paragraph 7 in particular. That is all.
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In summary, galactic rotation curves are flat because ...
Then why doesn't the same thing happen in the solar system?
*Article that doesn't mention rotation curves*
Does that summarize our discussion well enough?
Relativistic effects happen almost everywhere, but they can't explain galactic rotation curves.
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You seem to be under the mistaken impression that because the Solar system experiences a roughly homogenous spacetime field that everywhere else does too.
I'm pretty well convinced by the precession of the perihelion of Mercury that it isn't 'homogeneous' - if by that you mean that here's no significant space-time curvature.
The edge of the galaxy has no significant matter at all one one side and has an extremely limited distribution of matter on the other side.
As does, on a smaller scale, the solar system. Why are the results so different?
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Because there are other star systems and a huge black hole making everything in the Solar system ROUGHLY homogenous. ... The effects are extreme and easily noticeable at the edge of the galaxy where there are relatively few star systems and the effect of the black hole is weak.
A. Being 'homogeneous' would only affect the things within the bulk of the galaxy, while, as you pointed out, it's the farthest objects that have the most unexplained speed. (Just as things weigh slightly less in deep mines because there's less mass below them and more above, but outside the atmosphere it falls off almost exactly with r^2.)
B: You really think that every scientist studying the problem, every college student that takes astronomy or advanced physics, in every country on earth wouldn't come u
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The problem is I am not talking about gravity, I am talking about time. ... What I am saying is that there is no such "thing" as gravity. e.g. we will never discover gravitons because there are no particles needed to explain gravity.
Ok then.
Gravity is an effect caused by spacetime.
Yes, spacetime is curved/warped/distorted by mass/energy and this results in things with mass/energy tending to head towards each other.
When you condense matter from energy, one of the byproducts is a spacetime field.
No. Spacetime isn't a byproduct of anything like that.
I am not talking about gravity being the reason the outside edge of the galaxies appear to be faster, it is because time is moving faster.
Great! If time is moving twice as fast for some of them then all the light from them will be blue-shifted to twice the frequency (or they'll be twice as bright), and that should be easy to detect! Cite me a paper, and we're good to go!
To take this to an extreme, there are areas within the universe where 30 trillion years have passed.
Yeah, the relativity of simultaneity is pretty interesting. But you do realize
Re:Great news everyone (Score:5, Informative)
Many people have spent a lot of time looking for ways to explain single like galaxy rotation curves, stellar velocities in globular clusters and elliptical galaxies, the structure of galaxy clustering and what-not without success. The simplest explanation has always turned out to be that there is some sort of extra matter that we cannot see. Dark matter requires the smallest number of assumptions out of all explanations that people have proposed so far. By Ocham's Razor it is probably the right solution. And by Grabthar's Hammer you shall be avenged.
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And the dark matter explanation is testable.
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Nobody seems to take into account that time goes faster the further away from matter you are. Read my comment here please: https://science.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org]
Re:Great news everyone (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it is more than that. Astrophysicists give the attribute of "gravity" to dark matter. In fact, that was the reason they promulgated the idea, i.e., galaxies would fly apart otherwise so there must be something we cannot see which supplies the extra gravity.
They do not entertain the idea that maybe their laws are wrong, or that some other phenomenon might be affecting gravity.
That was true quite a few years ago, when there were many theories for galactic rotation rates, including MOND (precisely "the idea that maybe their laws are wrong"), hot dark matter, and cold dark matter which might be WIMPs or MACHOs.
Then we got more data.
WIMPs won out because they also explain gravitational lensing and the early universe. The cosmic microwave background radiation observations were decisive. The predictions made WIMPs were right on the money - turns out the early universe had just the predicted amount of (a) matter, that (b) wasn't moving near the speed of light, and (c) before block holes, brown dwarfs, etc could have formed.
That's how science works. Scientists do not lack creativity - there was a whole forest of ideas to explain galactic rotation rates. But as more observations of unrelated phenomena come it, only "some sort of particle" was left standing. Falsifiable theories were falsified.
This experiment was a bit silly IMO - it was just a detector much like the detectors we built for neutrinos, which had never shown any signs of dark matter before. It was very much a case of "well, we know how to build this sort of detector already, so let just build a big one and hope for the best".
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Yup, at no point has anybody in the astrophysics or cosmology community considered any other theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_general_relativity
No, wait, they have and you're talking out your ass.
Re: Great news everyone (Score:2)
Still Valid (Score:5, Insightful)
A null result is actually more valuable than an inconclusive result would have been.
Re: Still Valid (Score:4, Insightful)
Null result is valuable if you know what you're looking for, can prove that your detector works, and still detects nothing. In this case, we have a detector that may work for some guesses as to what dark matter is.
So the only value here is knowing that dark matter is not any of the things this detector would find. And lest you claim that is valuable, we don't know why it didn't work, so we can't rule out a lot of stuff.
Considering it was $10 million and being upgraded with 5x spending, it seems deliberately half hearted, a first stab to test for false positives, or get lucky. Build the environment and staff, then commit.
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The problem with a null result is it is often not specific and not causal. Consider the example of testing to see if electricity is making it to a lightbulb. We go into the room and observe the light is on. That was the test. It's on. Electricity is there. Now for the null results. The light is not on. Does that mean the electricity isn't there? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the bulb is just blown.
The test was to determine something specific based on some specific assumptions and using specific measurements. The
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Yay! We are all saved!
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I know where they need to look . . . (Score:2)
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which has a dark side, but no matter
Dark matter? (Score:2)
Obligatory movie quote (Score:4, Funny)
The title is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
From Ars:
The LUX detector (Large Underground Xenon) is designed to pick up signs of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, when they engage in one of their rare interactions with normal matter.
There are indeed other candidates for dark matter, WIMPs being only one of those. This experiment searched specifically for WIMPs, which only rules them out, while of course the other remaining candidates remain to be explored.
Re:The title is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
From Ars:
The LUX detector (Large Underground Xenon) is designed to pick up signs of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, when they engage in one of their rare interactions with normal matter.
There are indeed other candidates for dark matter, WIMPs being only one of those. This experiment searched specifically for WIMPs, which only rules them out, while of course the other remaining candidates remain to be explored.
It sets an upper bound for how strongly they interact with matter we know about, if they exist. And it's a very low upper bound indeed.
Re:The title is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't actually rule out WIMPs, it just (for the most part) rules out WIMPs with specific characteristic. Much larger, more sensitive detectors (both Xenon and Argon) are on the drawing boards for future searches.
Just like supersymmetry, it is very hard to actually rule something out.
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Thanks yeah I was coming back to say that haha! I had only skimmed the article and specifically the first part, which mentioned that only WIMPs had been searched for with the detector and relieved my fear that my pet physics fascination had been thoroughly disproved, lmao!
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Personally, I think those detectors are very likely to be a waste of time. We're just building what are basically better neutrino detectors, not because there's any reason to think dark matter will interact with them, but because it's a detector we know how to build!
I guess partly it's a case of whether dark matter is "massive particles that interact via the weak force" or "massive particles that interact weakly" (via some other force) - if it's the latter, these detectors aren't likely to work.
There are l
Re:The title is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
results didn't rule out WIMPS, only certain kinds of WIMPS. A new detector the LUX-ZEPLIN will be 100 times as sensitive and continue the search
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Thanks for the correction! I hadn't read that far yet before jumping to post about the misleading title hahaha. Dark matter fascinates me...I was an astrophysicist researching dark matter in another life :/
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results didn't rule out WIMPS, only certain kinds of WIMPS. A new detector the LUX-ZEPLIN will be 100 times as sensitive and continue the search
True, but this is getting quite interesting. The constraints are squeezing the WIMP theory into a corner now. People who had been betting that dark matter would have been detected by now and beginning to suspect that the new detectors will also fail to find it.
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I would rather they found nothing and a new force or component of gravity we can't deal with would be the cause. Also no supersymmetric particles, just the recent way-too-light Higgs boson being the last thing discovered. physicists would go apeshit
Honest callow stupid question... (Score:2)
Re:Honest callow stupid question... (Score:4, Informative)
The orbital period of a star in a galaxy depends, to first order, on the amount of mass that is closer to the centre of the galaxy than the star. (That's a consequence of gravity being an inverse-square force.)
The distribution of stellar orbital velocities in a galaxy indicates that there is additional mass, not at the centre, but distributed amongst the stars in a galaxy. An inventory of the visible mass shows there is nowhere near enough to account for the velocity distributions. Therefore, it is inferred that there is invisible, or dark matter, that accounts for the discrepancy. It has nothing to do with mismeasuring the mass at the centre of the galaxy, whether it's a black hole or not.
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The orbital period of a star in a galaxy depends, to first order, on the amount of mass that is closer to the centre of the galaxy than the star. (That's a consequence of gravity being an inverse-square force.)
The distribution of stellar orbital velocities in a galaxy indicates that there is additional mass, not at the centre, but distributed amongst the stars in a galaxy. An inventory of the visible mass shows there is nowhere near enough to account for the velocity distributions. Therefore, it is inferred that there is invisible, or dark matter, that accounts for the discrepancy. It has nothing to do with mismeasuring the mass at the centre of the galaxy, whether it's a black hole or not.
This also holds true for the affect of gravitational lensing produced by distant galaxies.
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Dark matter is not about single galaxies holding together, but about the galaxies holding to each other for no aparent reason.
The center mass if a galaxy, if there is one, is calculated by the rotation speed of said galaxy.
Just like Mercury is orbiting the sun faster than Venus, Earth etc.
And regarding to the distance, a planets orbit speed is a function of the mass in the center.
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The mass distribution in the galaxy can be determined by measuring the orbital velocity of stars at different distances and positions, which includes not only stars in the galactic disk but a spherical halo that surrounds the entire disk. It turns out that most of the mass of the galaxy is in that apparently nearly empty halo. We can rule out invisible gas, black holes, and any form of solid matter or known particles as the source of this mass, because we could detect them with other means at our disposal.
I get the feeling that (Score:2, Insightful)
dark matter is today's epicycles
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I get the feeling that dark matter is today's epicycles
Well you're not the first one, there have been multiple attempts to modify gravity so that it gives the right answers without introducing additional matter. Unfortunately that tends to break other results that our current theory of gravity gets right and trying to "fix" that usually ends up in just as convoluted theories as dark matter/dark energy. Personally I think it's easy to feel like solid matter is a wall but we know radio transmissions pass through it like it was nothing. And neutrinos pass through
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Another famous experiment that turned up nothing (Score:3)
The Michelson-Morley experiment was experiment that turned up nothing, and lead to the development of general relativity. Perhaps this experiment will also turn nothing into something.
A null result is not failed science (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh, you must mean science funding agencies. For them, a null result results in quick financial death for the funded science program.
Not to say I told you so... (Score:1)
But I fucking told you so!!
I have nothing to go on other than my own impertinence and pigheadedness, but I am convinced that simply adding mass to the equation is not what is needed to solve it. Yes, our models look right when we add that mass, but I think it's something else going on. Something fundamental, misunderstood, and/or some emergent interaction of other forces.
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But I fucking told you so!!
I have nothing to go on other than my own impertinence and pigheadedness, but I am convinced that simply adding mass to the equation is not what is needed to solve it. Yes, our models look right when we add that mass, but I think it's something else going on. Something fundamental, misunderstood, and/or some emergent interaction of other forces.
Fucking beautiful explanation--you just have to figure out how to change those models without breaking the rest of the models. Nobody who has some clue as to what the fuck they are doing thinks that our models are 100% complete or 100% accurate--so standing around telling people they're wrong if fucking useless and contributes nothing to the search for the solution.
You want to be useful? Try getting your level of skill up to the same level as the people who are actually doing the work; because otherwise y
That's because (Score:1)
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Unless.... the aether was dark matter all along!
Re: That's because (Score:2)
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Unless.... the aether was dark matter all along!
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Perhaps you should actually study the theories rather than reading the pop-sci executive summaries of them you would understand.
But sincerely I hope you're joking, but I'm too drunk, (6 shots 99 proof + 2 shots 60 proof), to tell the difference, and too many people are too fucking stupid to understand the difference.
Don't fret! (Score:1)
Parameter space? (Score:2)
great (Score:2)
Could just be the black hole detection problem? (Score:2)
> Well, the thing about a black hole - its main distinguishing feature - is it's black. And the thing about space, the colour of space, your basic space colour, is black. So how are you supposed to see them?
Given that there may several exaquintrillion tonnes of asteroids, planetesimals [nasa.gov], rocky planets gas giants [spaceref.com], black, brown and red dwarves and even reasonably large stars [scitechdaily.com], roaming around that we are only just beginning to be able to see, a large amount of dark matter may well turn out to be regular matte
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Does dark matter have anything to do with string theory? I thought those were more or less independent ideas.
Re:String theory is just that: a theory (Score:5, Informative)
nothing to do with string theory, it's the search for why the stars in even our own galaxy have the orbits they do, and why the cosmic microwave background has certain imprints in it
Re:String theory is just that: a theory (Score:4)
And also the huge affect it has on gravitational lensing -- or rather, there being far too much gravity within the galaxies producing the gravitational lensing for the amount of visible matter we know the given galaxy to hold.
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Um, you do realize that scientists do have experimental evidence that dark matter exists indirectly, right?
So, um...indirect experimental evidence is not actually empirical. It is absolutely, completely un-the-same as experimental evidence.
The case for dark matter is more inductive or abductive reasoning. Given certain premises based on our current understanding of gravity and our observations of the universe, dark matter makes sense. However, our observations could be wrong, or our models could be incorrect.
Re:String theory is just that: a theory (Score:4, Informative)
The observations are not wrong. Measuring the velocity dispersion of stars in a globular clusters is not a much harder, or more conceptually difficult, than measuring the colour of a fluorescent light. Determining a galactic rotation curve is a bit more complex, but not much so. These observations have been done tens of thousands of times using many different techniques, sometimes by groups of astrophysicists who hate each other and would like nothing more than to discredit the person who got to speak instead of them at last January's AAS meeting. The observational evidence for dark matter is overwhelming. The modeling, on the other hand, has more assumptions built in. The key assumption is that gravity, in the weak limit, follows Newton's law of gravity, and there is a 400 years of evidence to support that.
Re:String theory is just that: a theory (Score:5, Insightful)
So, um...indirect experimental evidence is not actually empirical. It is absolutely, completely un-the-same as experimental evidence.,
Um, no you don't understand. There is direct evidence that we can measure the total amount of mass and energy in the universe. However, 95% is unaccounted for if we count all the stars and planets scientists think exist. Therefore indirectly, dark matter is the placeholder for the matter that should exist but can't detect. They could have called it Zoidberg matter and it would be the same.
It's like looking at the ocean. With the naked eye we can only see the top layers of the ocean. Historically, sonar allows us to determine the depths of the ocean to be miles deep; however, until the existence of deep underwater vehicles, scientists didn't know what the bottom was like. They could only guess. They could not imagine that life exists near the Marianas Trench for example.
The case for dark matter is more inductive or abductive reasoning. Given certain premises based on our current understanding of gravity and our observations of the universe, dark matter makes sense. However, our observations could be wrong, or our models could be incorrect.
Yes everything in science could be wrong; however, you must prove that every one of their observations is incorrect rather than assume that because someone doesn't have all the answers, they don't have any answers.
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We have a certain model, a mathematical conception if you will, of how gravitation effects work. Based on that model combined with our observations, some scientists conjecture there needs to be more mass and energy, by a factor of almost 100 times, than what we can observe to make galaxies spin at the observed rate and not fly apart, etc.
You take that as direct empirical evidence of dark matter. I assert that this is not irrefutable empirical evidence of dark matter/energy. Obviously something is going o
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I assert that this is not irrefutable empirical evidence of dark matter/energy.
Then please refute it with evidence or observational data. So far no one has been able to determine that the data is wrong or the observations were incorrect. Also the dark energy/dark matter discrepancy was verified in at least two different ways.
Obviously something is going on, but saying the model is 100% correct, and therefore dark matter/dark energy exists as postulated is weak and sloppy thinking. Walking back your position to say that dark matter/dark energy is a "placeholder" is disingenuous on your part and shows you are trying to walk on two sides of the fence here. It's a kludge, tossed into the model to make it work. It points toward something, but what that something is has not been determined yet, obviously.
No one has ever said in science that anything is 100%. Even the best model for gravity (General Relativity) is known to have flaws in that it can't resolve quantum mechanics with gravity. But the best model is that there is 95% missing energy and matter. At this p
Re:String theory is just that: a theory (Score:5, Informative)
Right, a theory. But if you can't count it, can't measure it, does it really exist?
But we can measure it. Its gravity reveals its existence, its quantity, and its location. So yes it exists. We just don't know what it is, and the detector experiments are testing theories about what it may be.
We also have pretty good estimates [arxiv.org] of the density of dark matter in the solar neighborhood. It amounts to 0.49 ± 0.13 GeV cm3. This means, if you weight 70 kg, your body contains about 34 trillion electron-volts of dark matter (or 6*10^-20 grams).
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This means, if you weight 70 kg, your body contains about 34 trillion electron-volts of dark matter (or 6*10^-20 grams).
Only if it's uniformly distributed. If dark matter is black holes, then no. http://www.space.com/33122-dar... [space.com]
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It sounds like dark matter is thought to be made of particles of some sort. Could it instead be a force field of uneven density in space that interacts with the gravitational field in some way? Though the question then would be what causes the field I guess. But maybe that's an easier task.
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That's a great point. Gravity however doesn't seem to have a particle yet, and we know and measure it and use it comfortably anyway. "Dark Matter" force seems to be a closer cousin to gravity than some other forces.
Re: String theory is just that: a theory (Score:2, Insightful)
The mass of the EM is accounted for in the 5% referred to above. All the "stuff" we can detect (mass and energy combined) only add up to 5% of the apparent total mass required to explain the effects we see.
Re:String theory is just that: a theory (Score:4, Informative)
But we just proved it doesn't exist.
No, that's not what TFA says at all. You can't even blame a misleading Slashdot headline here: you just made that up. A detector was built to find a very specific kind of matter. It didn't find anything. No real surprise, as there was never any reason to think it would - it was just the sort of detector we already knew how to build.
Hence, my theory is just as valid, that EM has both mass and is a wave
Yes, that's called "Quantum Field Theory", and it's what nearly everyone believes. Doesn't explain anything that dark matter explains, though, so no.
Re:String theory is just that: a theory (Score:4, Informative)
But we just proved it doesn't exist. The missing mass exists.
Um no. They haven't detected it yet does not mean it doesn't exist. it was an experiment failure. It's hard to prove a negative. That's like saying the Higgs Boson particle was proven not to exist until they detected it. See how silly that sounds?
Hence, my theory is just as valid, that EM has both mass and is a wave, and we're just confused little podlings who will have to go back and adjust our theories again, as we did over and over and over.
You don't have a theory. That's conjecture.
Remember, at first we didn't think light bent due to gravity.
Yes but that doesn't mean neither light nor gravity existed. We didn't know about the interaction between them could produce such results.
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Right, a theory. But if you can't count it, can't measure it, does it really exist?
You're not listening: There is experimental data. DATA says that dark matter exists indirectly. Measuring directly is the hard part. It's not theory. Again please read what I wrote above. Measuring the total amount of mass and energy in the universe, physicists are about 95% short of the amount for which they can directly account. So either every instrument and measurement they have is wrong; or you just don't understand science.
Secondly, string theory has nothing to do with dark matter. String theory is a
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You have it backwards. Our hypothesis to explain the DATA is black matter. The DATA does not (indirectly) show that dark matter exists.
No, you don't understand the data. The data says that there is an amount of the total combined amount of energy and mass; however only 5% of it can be accounted for if all the stars and planets in the entire universe is counted. The 95% we don't know what it is; therefore, it is considered dark. It's a placeholder designation. Scientists could have call it silly putty matter.
What scientists are trying to do is prove their hypothesis correct by proving dark matter exists.
No, they are trying to determine if one of their proposed methods might work in detecting dark matter. They know it exists; they do
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DATA does not "say" dark matter exists. The indirect data we have suggests that as one possible explanation (and so far the only one that has survived critical analysis of numerous experiments).
What is dark matter to you? To scientists, it's matter we can't detect with current instrumentation. It's that simple. It does exist. Now could scientists be wrong. Yes. Absolutely. However you can't merely say there are wrong because they haven't found all the answers. If you have other plausible explanations please let them know. So far the best minds of science can't describe it in other terms other than "dark."
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>Now we "know" it's a particle and a wave.
No, it's a wave. The particle thing is just about the way your brain entangles with things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
If you're impatient, jump to 23:00 and listen for a few minutes to be told the same thing by a real physicist.
Gravity is a theory (Score:2)
Scientific theories are not in the same category as conspiracy theories or cockamamie theories.
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Ok then, smarty-pants, how does gravity actually work? Answer should include a solution to the three body problem.
This is, mostly*, a joke! (Score:2)
Our universe exists 'on' the 4-dimensional soft skin of an 'onion'. Matter and energy as we see it deforms the surface of the skin, and it is this deformation that we perceive as gravity. What we call dark matter is simply the cumulative effect of the (contents of the) other skins of the onion on ours, which we cannot yet directly measure, having no way to 'focus our measurements' outside our universe.
Several solutions exist for special cases of the three body problem, but I'm sure you're after a general so
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It's a lack of understanding of how gravity actually works.
You idiot, if we understood how gravity works, we'd probably have gravity generators. Aircraft wouldn't need wings anymore, and spacecraft wouldn't need reaction motors either. Hoverboards would be real.
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Funny how ACs who are entirely ignorant of a subject imagine themselves to be experts with great insights.
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Empty space is actually made up of vacuum energy [wikipedia.org] which can be directly observed.
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Dark matter, which is a complete and utter fantasy to cover for the fact that we don't know how gravity works, reminds me of the last time scientists pushed baseless nonsense so they could keep their jobs and keep funding their research into knowingly wrong science. Anyone remember "The Ether?" which was allegedly what empty space was made of. As it turns out empty space is made of empty space. Who would have thought?
i've always thought the idea of "potential energy" is only a hack to adjust calculations of kinetic energy to fit the law of conservation of energy. so, same deal with dark matter.
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Scientists' Biggest Search For Dark Matter To Date Just Turned Up Nothing
dude, that's heavy.