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Dark Matter, WIMPS, and NASA's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Data
cylonlover writes "Recently the media has been saturated with overly-hyped reports that NASA's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer may have detected dark matter. These claims may have some justification if the word 'may' is shouted, but they rest on a number of really major assumptions and guesses, some of which are on weak and shifting soil. So just what was seen in the experiment, and what are the possible explanations?"
Never trust an Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer with important discoveries. I wouldn't even start considering it useful until it hit Beta.
No, trust me, the media is saturated. I mean, shit, samzenpus posted an article about it on Slashdot and everything.
Copy/pasted summary from single source, source has popups harassing for email address and tons of social media buttons, and source adds nothing interesting to the discussion.
Editors/moderators haven't had their coffee today?
If dark matter wasn't so wimpy, why is it hiding in the dark?
Recently the media has been saturated with overly-hyped reports that NASA's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer may have detected dark matter
So here's another story about it. Brilliant.
These claims may have some justification if the word 'may' is shouted
The word is "emphasised." Try it now - read that out loud and shout the word "may."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The PAMELA probe sees antiprotons in the Van Alen belts. The ISS-AMS sees more positrons than expected. Whatever the ultimate expanation, its interesting to see these surpluses.
The amounts are so small, dozens of protons for PAMELA and hundreds of thousands of positrons for AMS, that they would not be noticeable in human life.
I do not believe the issue is it being over-hyped; I would take it as a positive for anything to grab the general public's attention in a positive way for basic science research. Maybe we have a bit of solid marketing here by Michael Turner in coining the term "Dark Matter" for this stuff which grabs the imagination of folk who are outside the small sphere of people who actually understand this (and I would completely acknowledge that I am one).
Is the article a bit "fluffy"? Sure. But if the link was to the IOP, maybe in about 2 weeks, and pulling out my college physics textbooks (oops, they predate this stuff) I might begin to understand the actual theoretical equations behind it. If you churn through the full length of the article it does touch on some meatier topics mentioning WIMPS, supersymmetry, and my favorite the neutralino (just because it sounds cool). Again, yes, lightly, but for the audience targeted doing a pretty decent job of explaining in terms that can be understood and maybe whet the appetite a bit.
And maybe that is the point, sitting here more than a few years past college, I am not likely to go back into to school and study theoretical physics and put together an eloquent equation that pulls all of this together. But, maybe in talking with my kids (in college or college bound) they may pick up the excitement and move the topic forward. Because, in the end it is all marketing. Where are the brightest heading, and what will move forward. If articles like this one sparks some interest, then I'll put up with a bit of fluff (and fully recognize that I would not understand much at all if they broke out the underlying math) if it sways public opinion in favor of basic research, and maybe helps sway a couple of new physicists.
It doesn't matter, not one smegging bit."
Never trust an Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer with important discoveries.
What makes this funnier is that it is true! Nobody will really believe that the AMS positron signal is from Dark Matter until we have discovered the Dark Matter itself. It may useful in giving us an idea of where to search. Indeed the earlier discovery by PAMELA of the signal AMS is studying already lead to new models for DM which can explain the lack of anti-protons.
The really silly thing about the dust-up with AMS is that the PAMELA experiment (later confirmed by Fermi) made the exact same measurement and is credited with the discovery. AMS just re-did it with smaller error bars. Here's the original PAMELA paper from 2009: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7238/full/nature07942.html (preprint here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.4995 ) The dark matter interpretation isn't even new. All AMS has brought is smaller error bars.
People who are interested in these matters should follow Matt Strassler's science blog, Of Particular Significance, which covered these same points back at the beginning of April, and then again two weeks later.
But were the error bars smaller?
If dark matter only reacts to gravity, why doesnt collapse into hgh density clumps over the eons? Ordinary matter is stopped from doing this by the electronmagnetic repulsion of atoms for masses less than a few hundred Jupiters and by hadronic stong force for less than couple Suns.
We would definately notice dark matter signularities, since there is six times more of it than the non-dark kind.
Nobody will really believe that the AMS positron signal is from Dark Matter until we have discovered the Dark Matter itself.
Maybe the proof is on an island you can only find if you already know where it is. [/piratesofthecarribean]
From the summary: "... reports that NASA's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer ..."
AMS isn't a NASA experiment, it is an international collaboration and NASA is only one among many other collaborators. Source: http://www.ams02.org/partners/participating-institutions/
I believe this summary is badly worded letting people think the AMS experiment is even a NASA initiative while it isn't neither. It is a CERN experiment that is taking advantage of the ISS and hence the NASA collaboration. Even other space agencies have contributed in this experiment.
Achille Talon
Hop!
I think there is not dark matter http://t.co/DhiB9Zxp [t.co]