Missing Matter... Still Missing

squidfrog writes "Nature.com, PhysicsWeb, and the BBC all report on the latest results from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search. 'The most powerful search yet for the Universe's missing matter has come up empty handed, contradicting an earlier study that claimed to have seen new particles.' 'A favoured theory is that the dark matter consists of Wimps (weakly interacting massive particles) about a thousand times more massive than a proton, one of the particles found in an atom's nucleus... on the rare occasions a Wimp strikes an ordinary atom, the effect should be noticeable.' 'Writing in the Physical Review Letters, the team says that while a detection has yet to occur, there is now a better idea of how much dark matter must exist.' They 'hope to improve the sensitivity of the experiment by another factor of 20 over the next few years.' What's 20 times 0? And don't tell me zero!"

Comments

Unusual science

[Control Group]

I freely admit to not being a physicist, cosmologist, or astronomer. However: when Einstein formulated general relativity, he discovered that his model demanded either an expanding or a contracting universe. Since he "knew" the universe to be static, he introduced the cosmological constant to "fix" the model. Later, of course, when Hubble (I think?) demonstrated the universe to be expanding, the cosmological constant was dropped, and Einstein referred to it as his greatest mistake.

This research, though, seems to be taking the same route: rather than questioning the model, they continue a so-far fruitless search for the "missing matter." If the model demands something the existence of which we are completely unable to verify, shouldn't we be questioning the model? Doesn't the very fact that there's all this "missing" matter indicate that perhaps our understanding is flawed?

Or am I just displaying rampant ignorance of the current state of physics and cosmology by asking this?

Re:Multi Dimensions?

[Chris Ashton 84]

One of the possible outcomes of string theory is multiple universes, each separated by a fairly small distance (of course this distance is in a higher dimension so we can't notice them). If these alternate universes do exist, it is thought that the gravity from particles in our universe affects the other nearby universes. Imagine our universe as a flat sheet and another universe is a parallel flat sheet close to ours. In this model, gravity would still be three dimensional - ie, it would be able to bridge the gap between universes and affect the other universe. Perhaps this is what we're noticing - the gravity of massive particles in another universe?

BTW, I am not a physist but I have read up on this stuff. The theory of gravity carrying over to other universes actually does make sense - it explains why gravity is so much weaker than the other forces, because much of gravity's effect isn't on this universe. There's experiments going on now to test and see whether this is actually the case but I don't know the outcome. Anyway, this is just my thought on perhaps why we can't detect the dark matter - because it's not physically in our universe.