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Physicists Identify Possible New Particle Behind Dark Matter
sciencehabit writes: Like cops tracking the wrong person, physicists seeking to identify dark matter — the mysterious stuff whose gravity appears to bind the galaxies — may have been stalking the wrong particle. In fact, a particle with some properties opposite to those of physicists' current favorite dark matter candidate — the weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP — would do just as good a job at explaining the stuff, a quartet of theorists says. Hypothetical strongly interacting massive particles — or SIMPs — would also better account for some astrophysical observations, they argue.
I don't want to be known as a wimp or a simp (rap slang for simpleton).
Why is it every time that something unknown is simply noticed there is a jump to a conclusion without any proof that there is any relevancy to the claim?
I always thought that WIMP (Windows IIS MsSQL PHP) was the opposite of LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP)?
I understand the neutrino was theorized before discovery, but I just read the article and the chain of properties either WIMPs or SIMPs need to have, and they seem overly complex for something that there is no direct evidence for. Of course I am not a physicist. Just seems like we need better data collection of anomalous particle behaviors before investing much faith in such conjectures. Granted these theories could guide future experiments, but perhaps just sometimes theory gets a little too far ahead of experimental evidence.
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If the force carriers for ordinary matter are called bosons...
Then would the force carriers for SIMPs be called...SIMPsons?
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Not only are they inventing a new particle, but a new force as well ? Which is needed to explain how the new particles behave ?
Really this seems to be nothing more than an attempt to create an explanation that doesn't make predictions and is as removed from testability as possible.
No one has yet lost any money betting against solutions for dark matter, so I am not going to get very excited about SIMPs (which, of course, are not really that new an idea anyway). Wait for it to get poked and prodded for a while, and then we'll see.
If your theory requires you to make up 5X more mass in the galaxy to make the theory work, maybe you should consider the theory is wrong, instead of believing what you see is caused by magical dark matter. Sorry Einstein, Special Relativity is probably right, but GR is just plain wrong.
If you don't postulate some conjecture and start deriving all the required properties these particles are supposed to have, it's harder to find the proper experimental evidence you need to be looking for.
While everything you write is true, you leave out the actual importance of funding this: If SIMPS can be found, examination of their behavior in interactions would tend to prove or disprove fundamental ideas of the standard model.
That's my take on this all, anyway.
NB: I have been wrong before.
No one has "identified" anything. This is a paper with a proposal, an idea, a hypothesis. Behind it lie a rather gigantic pile of assumptions and parameters to fit the data. It's long been speculated that Dark Matter may not be simple, but rather could be as complicated as the visible spectrum (which contains electrons, photons, atoms, and the entire periodic table). But there's a huge problem with making predictions in a strongly interacting theory: you generally can't. "Strong interactions" mean that most computations do not converge. For instance we cannot, from first principles, calculate the mass of any atomic nuclei.
So this means the "dark matter sector" contains essentially a whole periodic table of stuff, and we're hopelessly unable to compute anything. This paper in particular ignores the possibility of bound states (e.g. atoms, mesons, etc) in the dark matter sector, which IMHO is just silly especially with strong interactions.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Somehow I don't think physicists bust into random houses, shoot up some dogs and flashbang babies in their cribs when they catch wind of possibly some kind of particle having gone on downtown.
Everyone is looking at the WIMPs or SIMPs. But what about the BLIMP in the middle of the room?
Terms like dark matter and dark energy are just physicist's way of trying to be edgy. We all know that whatever this turns out to be, the final name will be something very different. That's why WIMP was such a good candidate, and SIMP is even better. If any physicist comes up with something cute like SPARKLIES or a more bizarre name like VARIWHA, you know you'll have a winning theory.
There's plenty of direct evidence for them. We've observed huge (galaxy scale) gobs of something that can't be matter as we know it but has mass.
That long list of complex properties is what that something would have to have in order to explain the direct observations. And yeah, it's got to be pretty exotic and it proving hard to nail down exactly what it is.
May I suggest a more generic name that doesn't have to be changed every five minutes?
Physically Interacting Massive Particles
The name will probably be shortened at some point.
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I understand the neutrino was theorized before discovery, but I just read the article and the chain of properties either WIMPs or SIMPs need to have, and they seem overly complex for something that there is no direct evidence for. Of course I am not a physicist. Just seems like we need better data collection of anomalous particle behaviors before investing much faith in such conjectures. Granted these theories could guide future experiments, but perhaps just sometimes theory gets a little too far ahead of experimental evidence.
Well, there is lots of evidence for something out there. This something, after coming up with other options and rejecting them through testing, must not interact with electromagnetic forces to a degree we can detect and have mass. Thus the "dark" and "matter". I am pa physicist and what you aren't seeing when you read these articles is a lot of math. It's complicated because physics at this level is really complicated and to come up with these hypothesis, they have to come up with something that fits what we already know about matter and the universe. That's going to involve a lot of graduate level mathematics and physics that describe a world that even physicists have a hard time wrapping their heads around. That's how particles get predicted, the math works out that way, and physics without the math is just philosophy. Sometimes you end up with something like string theory where the math works out (or seems to) but it can't be easily tested. At least these options can be tested.
Because clicks is money.
If SIMPS can be found, examination of their behavior in interactions would tend to prove or disprove fundamental ideas of the standard model.
Yes, but that's what they said about WIMPS, too, and look where that has gone so far. (Pretty much nowhere.)
Hey, if I come up with some complex theory postulating DUMPs (Dubious Universal Massive Particles), can I get funding too? After all, proving their existence would force major changes to the standard model.
Yes, yes and yes. That's exactly why I concentrated on "funding": The politics of it are critical. Lots of hypotheses exist, but few get to be funded and none without extensive peer review by proven fundraisers.
It's a bit like The Movies in that there are lots of screenplays around, but only the ones producers think will turn a profit or an Oscar get produced.
I tried to be non-cynical in my post.
This is how science works.
It's not pretty, so you don't have to like it, but your not liking it is not a valid criticism.
That's one way to work, and usually the most popular because much of the theoretical work is done by grad students hoping to get a PhD out of what they find. The other way is to collect as much data about the situation as you can so that you can narrow down the possible explanations. Of course, that way rarely leads to a PhD, so it's not used very often. Quite understandable.
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So if the dark matter would just get out of the way, we could see this new particle ALOT better, right?
(the above question pretty much sums up my knowledge on this subject)
" no direct evidence for"
Where do you think that chain of properties comes from?
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Dark Matter Core Defies Explanation
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...
Of course I admit I am a little biased in my analysis above, because my own theory actually predicts this lensing effect and doesn't even require any new fictitious or magic particles to do it. When the Abell 520 survey came out it merely confirmed my hypothesis of how the physics actually works at the quantum level.
This hunt for "Dark Matter" really reminds me of the hunt for "Aether" way back when.
If the large scale structures of the Universe are not matching to how our theories say they should then maybe, rather than just looking for voodoo particles, we should also be asking ourselves seriously why we are assuming that our current theories are totally correct.
One thing that has bothered me about all the dark matter theories I have heard; if dark matter is only affected by gravity then what keeps it from all just collapsing into singularities?
the photon
I am pretty sure the first place you should search for DUMPs would be around Uranus. I'm not an astrophysicist though!
These are not the SIMPletons you're looking for, move along.
It seems to me that whatever particle they theorise, if they try hard enough they can find it sooner or later. That makes me suspect that none of them are actually real, but are just artefacts of the experimental methods, and indicators of some much more fundamental reality - which they are completely failing to see.
There's plenty of direct evidence for them.
There is no direct evidence of them. If there were, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.
We've observed huge (galaxy scale) gobs of something that can't be matter as we know it but has mass.
They have not been observed. They have merely been inferred from the behaviour of things which have been observed. However, there are other possible explanations of those phenomena.
Light bending is direct evidence, the same way that seeing the moon is "direct" evidence of its existence. We can see it, therefore it is.
I think that dark matter is made of a yet to be discovered material called math-errorium. You'll never guess why it hasn't been discovered yet.
"can't be easily tested"..? Nonsense, there is NO test. String theory isn't a theory as it isn't testable.
No, we have direct evidence of gravitational anomaly.
And new particles aren't the only game in town. Revised properties of gravity (TeVeS) are still candidates as there has yet to be irrefutable evidence against them, and given our continuing inability to directly observe said novel particles...
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I don't think we are assuming our current theories are totally correct, otherwise we wouldn't be looking for new physics (in the form of dark matter particles) to explain what we're seeing. Signs tend to indicate though that out current mode of thinking is correct but incomplete, as opposed to being completely wrong, which is why we're not throwing out everything and starting again from scratch.
there is no such thing as dark matter, as dark matter is defined as having an "opposite" charge of say, a proton or an electron. You know what the opposite of an electron is? A FUCKING PROTON! I don't know what the opposite of proton is, but who cares? It's still bullshit.
i mean to say "i have no idea what the opposite of photon is, but who cares?". Protons were already covered!
dark matter states that it is the opposite charge of all other known particles. They say it's like having a proton with an opposite charge. Ok, do you know what the opposite of a proton is? An electron. Present everywhere that is visible. Case closed.
These days, the data comes from high-energy interactions, and often involves highly improbable events. If you don't already know what to look for, you will have to slow down and analyze every event. If you do know what to look for, you can dial up the frequency of events tremendously, paying close attention only to the ones that surprise you in some way. This cuts observation times from well beyond human lifespans, to a matter of a year or two. It makes them practical.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
The Real Reason Dark Matter Can't Be Seen
The reason scientist can't find dark matter is that they're not looking in the right place. As soon as they look it is not dark matter but normal matter. This is because the Universe is very much like a game simulation in the computer where it only displays what you are looking at, not the things you're not looking at. This selective display saves computational resources allowing a higher, more realistic frame rate. Although the objects aren't displayed they still have to be accounted for in terms of gravitational and other force calculations because they are there, right? Now in the real Universe there are many people all looking in many directions, much like a multiuser game, so many different places are being displayed. Yet, still not all of the Universe has observers at the same time because there just aren't enough people looking or, as the case often is, they're looking at the same think like the Kashardians or a soccer game. The result is that even with the trillions of trillions of trillions of observers in the Universe not all parts of the Universe are being observed at any given moment. These unobserved portions are simply not displayed. That's where the Dark Matter is. If you look really quickly, oops, you looked and it got displayed so now it's no longer Dark Matter...
TeVeS isn't taken seriously by astrophysicists, and for good reason. You can't account for all the separate lines of evidence for dark matter by tweaking gravity. People keep trying, and they keep failing. Stop trying to second guess a complex field of which you clearly have no understanding.
As long as the evidence fits, the theory sits.
"The Search for Dark Matter - Professor Carolin Crawford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If you are interested in astronomy you should check out the other videos of her from Gresham College. After Neil deGrass Tyson she's the only other person that makes me - who is only mildly interested in the subject - want to watch such hour log lectures all the way to the end. In other words: She's darn good at this!
Revised properties of gravity (TeVeS) are still candidates
Nope, not for a long time. Revised gravity theories still require some amount of dark matter to explain current observations, which makes them the by far worse option.
Wasn't there an article years ago about a theoretical test that only required a particle accelerator the size of Mars' orbit?
TBF, I think that would still qualify as "testable, just not with current technology".
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Except for half-wits and dumb-shits.
The particles you are looking for
"Abell 520" was fun to google... From wikipedia
At one time, this cluster appeared to present a challenge prevailing theories about dark matter... However, more precise observations since this time have shown that the earlier observations were misleading, and that the distribution of dark matter and its ratio to normal matter are very similar to those in galaxies in general, making novel explanations unnecessary.
Do you have any refrence for that assertion? The lensing clearly show actual filiments of higher redaction which would be a completly unnatural static formation for matter to arrange itself in. There is no natural laws of physics that could account for this to my knowledge. Please expand on your assertion, as I would certainly like to know more if there is any real evidence.
Perhaps they should refrain from making up particles to solve discrepancies until they have considered ALL known forces on inter-galactic scales instead of just Gravity. Electro-Magnetic has been mostly ignored as having an effect beyond small scale. Even extremely small current flows, small charged particulate moving through solar, galactic, and inter-galactic scale potentials quickly adds to "Dark" levels. I think we should start calling Dark Matter, Doesn't Matter.