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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.
TFA says the experiment saw nothing, and that this somehow rules out certain masses of dark photons.
I am not too sure what you are complaining about, "data" is plural by strict definition, if not common usage.
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.
* do NOT contact me with unsolicited services or offers
My favorite character from ST:NG are Data.
~(xkcd)
Thirty- two years ago? Wow! Imagine what life was like in that primitive era.
I'm wondering what you're complaining about...
That's the exact same text as in the Science news article.
Are you objecting to the present tense, or are you confused by the correct
usage of "data" as a plural?
Data is indeed the plural of datum, however, it is plural like a herd [of animal] is plural. The herd is referred as singular ("The herd is ...") rather than plural ("The herd are")
And it started out like this.
Life is not for the lazy.
Dark photons, or darkons , emitted by the boundary layer could simultaneously explain the missing mass and energy of the universe. Do I smell a Nobel prize?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I wish I had mod points for you.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
And how often do you start a meeting with introducing these agenda? After all, the meeting will cover each agendum in turn.
The collective noun for data is set: one talks about a set of data in the same way that one talks about a herd of cows. Data is just a normal nominative plural, not a collective noun.
This story seems like click bait the way it just leaves it as a cliffhanger. so you bombarded an aluminum plate and .... a superhero aluminum man emerged? what what?.... how did this submission get promoted to a front page story? I'm surprised it did not end with "your jaw will drop when you see what happened next".
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The data comes from
I am not too sure what you are complaining about, "data" is plural by strict definition, if not common usage.
I'm complaining about the tense of the origins of the data, and how that doesn't match the data itself
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The data came from
I'd still use past tense given that the experiment was 32 years ago
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Just like you say -- the electrons were in a storage vessel, left over from another experiment. Except, the vessel was probably a storage ring -- kind of like a particle accelerator, but without the stuff to boost particles to higher speeds.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
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.
Let's all share! What do _you_ do with all those left over high-energy electrons you've always got lying around?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Dark matter is primed for a whole new set of discovery, now that Dr. Sheldon Cooper has begun his research in the field.
>> physicists slammed a beam of high-energy electrons, left over from other experiments ...I was wondering what was inside all those carboard boxes under the stairs.
It is *so* uncommon today that it is actively confusing and hard to read. And I believe it has always been wrong when applied to any modern concept of data. Data in the modern context is a fluid quantity, like water. The other usage is archaic.
I got about 1 paragraph into the article before it became obvious that the author had no clue what the hell he was talking about. Maybe the old paper was better, but I don't have the patience to try to find out. From TFA:
They would interact only through the feeble weak nuclear force—one of two forces of nature that ordinarily flex their muscle only within the atomic nucleus—and could disappear only by colliding and annihilating one another
So many things wrong just in that sentence
1) Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) do have very low interaction cross sections (read: rates). There's sometimes an unfortunate ambiguity in the fact that phycisists have no imagination and gave two of the fundamental forces the names Strong and Weak. To say something interacts Weakly means that it interacts by exchange of W or Z bosons, not just that it has a low rate. However the WIMP interaction cross section has been known to be sub-Weak by several orders of magnitude for decades.
2) The Weak force's most obvious manifestation is in the production or absorption of neutrinos (beta decay or inverse beta decay) in a nucleus, but that's certainly not the only place it shows up; it's the mechanism for neutrino-electron scattering, muon decay, and a whole bunch of other stuff up to driving supernova explosions
3) Self-annihilation is the vanilla model for WIMP transformation, but there are plenty of sundaes-with-cherries-on-top models like self-interacting dark matter, which is discussed about 2 sentences later. Also, the chi is the symbol for the supersymmetric neutralino, often equated to a vanilla WIMP, and is not at all specific to the self-interacting dark matter model.
In short, cbtfaij;dr (can't bother to find an intelligent journalist; don't read)
"Data" can also be used as an "uncountable" or "mass" noun, which is it's common usage.
It isn't, I'm afraid. A 'herd' or a 'flock' etc. are a grammatical class called collective nouns, which are indeed treated as singular. The word 'data' isn't (and here I am refer to the single word 'data', not some collection of many datums).
You can tell that they're not the same thing, try saying "A data indicates that..." - it doesn't feel at all right does it? The fact that it only work when prefixed by 'the' tells us that it is a true plural noun and not a singular.
However, language being something that is subject to perpetual change though, it is something that 50 years form now will probably be very different. Many (most?) people do feel more comfortable conjugating 'to be' in the singular for the word data ( "the data is" rather than "the data are" ) so it is clearly undergoing some change at the moment.
This article looks like an attempt to reopen the discussion about libraries in Canada discarding some old manuscripts. Nice try, but submitter picked a poor example.
Hah, that's not in anymore. Big Data are the new popular guy in town.
Ezekiel 23:20
FWIW, when I was a student thirty-odd years ago, I hardly ever encountered the plural-noun ("data are") form. I knew it was technically correct, but almost nobody tried to use it. If anything, the plural form seems more common now than it was then.
"All of this has to be done in a very tight straitjacket."
Pretty much sums up the whole subject.
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I understood it to mean that other experiments produced - as a side effect - a beam of high-energy electrons, and the researchers set up this experiment that would run on the side whenever they were conducting whatever primary experiment that produced the beam.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
The LHC has about 115 billion protons in each bunch, and was designed for almost 3000 bunches at a time (I forget how many they ran before the shutdown).
Only a fraction of these protons collide, so there'll be plenty left when the beam quality is low enough for them to dump the beam and get a fresh one.
Data, as in the stuff that comes through your Internet connection, maybe. That is not the case here - this is scientific data, which is a set of individual measurements, very countable and not archaic at all.
But yes, "data" has essentially transitioned from being the plural of "datum" to being an abbreviation of "data set."
ST:TNG settled 2 things for geeks: the pronunciation of "data", and the phrasing "data is".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Depends on whether you are speaking the Queen's English or Murican.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
"Data" is the plural of "datum" in the same way that "recta" is the plural of "rectum". I suppository you are talking out of a single rectum only.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
The thing that freaks me out is what happens if a huge chunk of dark matter comes barreling through our solar system. It might only affect normal matter through gravity, but that alone could totally screw up the earth's orbit and kill the whole planet simply by passing through nearby.
Yes, I know, I'm an idiot for scaring myself, but doesn't the concept sound horrendous? I mean, how could we fight that? We wouldn't have a chance.
[citation needed]. Dictionaries observe the way language has been used in the past, but do not codify the limitations by which language may only be used. The way words enter the dictionary is generally by tally that lexicographers keep in observing past use of words out in the wild, so to speak. Grammar texts and dictionaries are merely descriptive of the most common ways the ordinary commoner has used the word in order of popularity -- it does not prescribe the ways in which a word may only be employed.
The real question is why if dark matter makes up the majority of the universe is there none if it within the solar system? We know there is none because if there was any significant quantity it would show up the orbital mechanics of the planets and General Relativity has those nailed to the wall with a sack full of six inch nails.
So if dark matter is real then we have to also believe the solar system in which we live is "special". At this point the whole concept falls foul of Occam's razor in my view.
I also take issue with the fact that the primary reason we believe dark matter exists is because Newtonian simulations of galaxy's don't work without more matter. Sorry but claiming dark matter must exist while using a theory of gravity that is known to be wrong does not cut the mustard. Yes I understand that a simulation of an entire galaxy using General Relativity would be "dam hard" and require a lot of computer time. However in my view you need to do that simulation first *before* you start claiming there is a tonne of dark matter in the universe.