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Decades-old Scientific Paper May Hold Clues To Dark Matter
sciencehabit writes: Here's one reason libraries hang on to old science journals: A paper from an experiment conducted 32 years ago may shed light on the nature of dark matter, the mysterious stuff whose gravity appears to keep the galaxies from flying apart. The old data put a crimp in the newfangled concept of a 'dark photon' and suggest that a simple bargain-basement experiment could put the idea to the test. The data come from E137, a "beam dump" experiment that ran from 1980 to 1982 at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. In the experiment, physicists slammed a beam of high-energy electrons, left over from other experiments, into an aluminum target to see what would come out. Researchers placed a detector 383 meters behind the target, on the other side of a sandstone hill 179 meters thick that blocked any ordinary particles.
... but does it shed light on how to transform luminiferous aether into phlogiston? Personally, I suspect it has something to do with walking under a ladder while saying "bloody Mary" into a mirror three times, but I can't fit the proof in the margin.
Available for free: 2.5E36 high-energy electrons (~ 10GeV - 100 GeV). Last used in 1982, kept in a pet-free, smoke-free particle accelerator.
Local pick-up only; bring your own magnetic container.
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Dark matter is primed for a whole new set of discovery, now that Dr. Sheldon Cooper has begun his research in the field.