Space Observatory May Have Found Dark Matter

KentuckyFC writes to mention that new data from the orbiting observatory PAMELA may shed some additional light on the question of dark matter. Still only a preliminary announcement, the new findings apparently support the "Minimal Dark Matter" model, in which a particle called a "Wino" is responsible.

Comments

Re:Again?

[meringuoid]

The very first thing that astronomers reached for to explain these phenomena was as yet unseen, or "dark" matter.

It has worked in the past, though. Remember how the observed motion of Uranus differed from the predicted motion? A hypothesis was put forward that the difference was due to the gravitational effects of a large body of dark matter. After some mathematical work, the likely location of the dark matter was deduced, someone went to a telescope and had a look - and there it was. Time to crack open the champagne and think of a name for it, how about 'Neptune'?

It has failed in the past too: the motion of Mercury also differed from what was predicted, and the hypothetical planet Vulcan was suggested as the cause. Yet after many searches, there was no sign of Vulcan. It wasn't until the general theory of relativity replaced Newtonian gravity that this was cleared up.

Whether we're about to discover another Neptune, or another general relativity, remains to be seen; the point is that the Universe is pulling something weird on us, and that's interesting.

Not wholly kosher

[pz]

The linked article is a summary of a paper that has an analysis of data not written by the original PAMELA team who collected the data. The PAMELA team have not yet published their data or findings, although apparently have presented them at a conference in Stockholm.

The summary quotes the paper thusly: "The preliminary data points for positron and antiproton fluxes plotted in our figures have been extracted from a photo of the slides taken during the talk, and can thereby slightly differ from the data that the PAMELA collaboration will officially publish."

I am not familiar with the conference in Stockholm that the PAMELA data were originally presented at, but at every large conference I have attended, it is official policy that no photographs are allowed. Taking unpublished data without permission of the authors is theft, pure and simple. Submitting a paper on that data before the original authors do is unethical.

Certainly, such proclamations are made with scant and incomplete information (it could be that Cirelli and Strumia, the non-PAMELA authors, did indeed get permission from the PAMELA team, and everything is kosher), and I hope that either members of the PAMELA team or authors of the new paper might read Slashdot to explain what's going on.