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Elusive Dark Matter May Be Detected With GPS Satellites

An anonymous reader writes: Two researchers say time disparities identified through the network of satellites that make up our modern GPS infrastructure can help detect dark matter. In a paper in the online version of the scientific journal Nature Physics, they write that dark matter may be organized as a large gas-like collection of topological defects, or energy cracks. "We propose to detect the defects, the dark matter, as they sweep through us with a network of sensitive atomic clocks. The idea is, where the clocks go out of synchronization, we would know that dark matter, the topological defect, has passed by." Another reader adds this article about research into dark energy: The particles of the standard model, some type of dark matter and dark energy, and the four fundamental forces. That's all there is, right? But that might not be the case at all. Dark energy may not simply be the energy inherent to space itself, but rather a dynamical property that emerges from the Universe: a sort of fifth force. This is speculation that's been around for over a decade, but there hasn't been a way to test it until now. If this is the case, it may be accessible and testable by simply using presently existing vacuum chamber technology

67 comments

  1. Re:It can also be detected by the National Guard by rmdingler · · Score: 0
    You know, maybe, perhaps, and you never know, if you'd been born with the courage to post merely pseudo-anonymously then your racy wit could be judged more hospitably.

    We're not politically correct here, to a person, but that's where it's headed.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  2. I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by rmdingler · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    It, like dark matter, are constantly asking us to take things on faith...

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      Hardly. The evidence for the Higgs is five sigma, almost six. Unless your faith is something you measure in percentages, there's no reason to involve it. With regards to Dark Matter, if you need faith there you're going to need to find someplace else to put it eventually; your "God of the Gaps" is shrinking with each new discovery.

      If you were just boasting of your complete ignorance of astrophysics and particle physics, please carry on -- somewhere else where ignorance is held in esteem.

    2. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you a Libertarian?

    3. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 1

      more like the god damned particle...

      my non-physicist brain wants to stuff dark matter into the role of 'barely detectable multiverse'.

      I find stuff like this online and find myself wondering if it is all hooey
      http://www.math.columbia.edu/~...

      How long until we can start to describe the pieces and parts of adjacent universes?

      --
      Wherever You Go, There You Are
    4. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by rmdingler · · Score: 1
      No.

      But I've been accused of worse.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    5. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by dreamchaser · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is ample observational evidence of dark matter in the form of its gravitational effects. We just don't know what it is. It could be 'ordinary' baryonic matter or something entirely new. It isn't a matter of faith. Pun intended.

    6. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

      I don't care about your history or my karma, I have taken your OP at face value. - No "we" don't need (blind) faith, your self-confessed need for it is merely a consequence of your lackluster search for evidence.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    7. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It can't be "ordinary baryonic matter": we know it doesn't interact with photons even at extreme energy densities, and we also know it doesn't move at or near the speed of light. Both are clear from the CMBR data.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    8. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by mbone · · Score: 3, Insightful

      tt can be baryonic matter, if it is encapsulated in some fashion. I believe your two conditions refer to BBN (not a particularly extreme energy density, BTW) and the Lyman Alpha constraints on Warm Dark Matter (which means it had to drop out of the radiation fluid v ~ c / sqrt(3) pretty early).

      Both of these are fulfilled by, e.g., quark nugget dark matter (these would form well before BBN and drop out of the radiation fluid well before needed to fulfill the WDM constraints), as maybe also the recently proposed "macros".

    9. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 2

      can be baryonic matter, if it is encapsulated in some fashion.

      In which case it would hardly qualify as ordinary baryonic matter...

    10. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Informative

      The fundamental problem with the "standard model" is that it's based on gravity.

      Actually the one thing that the Standard Model is absolutely NOT based on is gravity. Gravity being so weak and have an long range actually is responsible for the structures at the largest scales of the Universe which is precisely where we see Dark Matter. The reason for this is that EM is so much stronger that it will force charge cancellation to a large high degree on smaller distance scales: if there is a charge imbalance opposite charges will be rapidly dragged in to create a balance. This cancels EM out at larger distance scales since the charges balance leaving only gravity (the strong and weak nuclear forces being short range [~nucleus] due to their physics).

    11. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by lgw · · Score: 2

      "Quark nuggets" are ordinary?

      Well, I guess that would be technically correct (the best kind of correct!) if true, since 85% of matter is whatever dark matter is. Our matter is the weird stuff.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    12. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by blue+trane · · Score: 2

      Don't we have to have faith that the scientists aren't cherry-picking chunks of data that give them (almost) the significance they want?

      Remember Feynman, in "Cargo Cult Science", describing how experimenters replicating Millikan's famous experiment found ways to fudge their data to match his flawed results? Didn't they have faith he was right?

    13. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      Unless the universe has a modest net charge. You'd get localized charge cancellation, but even the slightest charge imbalance would have profound effects on an interstellar scale. Even a charge imbalance far too small to detect in any ordinary, solar system contained instrumentation would have enormous effects in the long-term history of the universe.

      It is something to think about.

    14. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by Scryer · · Score: 2

      CERN said the evidence is five sigma or so for a particle more or less where the Higgs was expected (or perhaps about halfway between where two competing theories expected it), but some now doubt whether the particle CERN found is actually the Higgs. See this recent reassessment: http://sdu.dk/en/Om_SDU/Fakult...

    15. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by delt0r · · Score: 1

      any net charge would be trivially detectable to have any effect on the interstellar scale. Run the numbers for gods sake.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    16. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by hawkinspeter · · Score: 1

      Yes, they used faith rather than science, even though they were supposed to be conducting scientific experiments. Just because they were doing it wrong doesn't mean that you can extrapolate that to people who do it right.

      --
      You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
    17. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by Bengie · · Score: 1

      I think the issue with the description of "ordinary baryonic matter" is that it was using "ordinary" and "baryonic" synonyms. Not to say (ordinary(baryonic matter)), but (ordinary baryonic(matter)), because "baryonic" is "ordinary", generally speaking.

    18. Re:I see why the boson is a "God Particle" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're playing word games. Faith in someone doing something right is not the same thing as faith in a deity. One is an expectation, the other a delu^h^h^h^hbelief.

  3. Re: It can also be detected by the National Guard by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 0

    It depends...

    Are you going to make me work for less/no money, burn a cross in my yard if I act uppity, or shoot me if I get within 3 ft of you or behave 'aggressively'?

    --
    Wherever You Go, There You Are
  4. dark matter doesn't exist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The missing mass of the universe is junk orbiting the stars that we can't see because we don't have high enough resolution on our telescopes to see all the junk.

    1. Re:dark matter doesn't exist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that's just what the invisible pink elves want you to think!!!!

  5. luminiferous aether by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Idiots are still looking for the luminiferous aether except now they call it dark matter, eh?

  6. Comological Constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems that Einstein's cosmological constant just doesn't want to die.

    May the Force be with you.

  7. Re: It can also be detected by the National Guard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes

  8. hey buddy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tell that to a mathemitician. Just do a few steps in a proof, and then waive your hands and say "beh! GOOD ENUF!!11!"

    1. Re:hey buddy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, exactly like Fermat's Last Theorem, then?

  9. dark matter == by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    every exception and contradiction in academically championed theories. It's that simple. It's not a real phenomenon.

  10. Dark matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    sounds pretty similar to the "ether" - and I bet this experiment will have the same result as Michelson's and Morley's. (Where's a Swiss patent clerk when you need one?)

  11. Re:It can also be detected by the National Guard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    iif you'd been born with the courage to post merely pseudo-anonymously

    I don't have an account because I don't want or need one.

    Nope, the reason is because you can't think of a funky pseudonym. Even if you could you're not allowed to be here except as an AC because you are an asshole!

    Does that make me a coward ?

    No, but it does make you a dick.

    Only in the mind of a fool like you.

    Who's more the fool, the fool or the fool who follows the fool. It's a legitimate question from obi wan considering you admit to actually 'choosing' to be an anonymous coward on slashdot. So don't whine because a legitimate user of the site calls you out for what you are. We've sustained your right to anonymous free speech and you used it to prove you are a dick. Way to go, dick, such a mammoth contribution that in years people will read your comments and say to themselves:

    What a dick.

    Btw I do have an account but a privilege of having an account means I can troll you back as an AC and protect myself because you're an idiot and likely to anonymously troll my posts with your fecal rambling.

    Some ACs are ok but Anonymous Coward such as yourself are the parasites on our community that spawn the reason for Beta, go back to reddit or facefuck. Fortunately we can all ignore you simply by turning the moderation selector up until your pathetic, whiney, child like voice can no longer be heard over the boring mundane and somewhat stupid comments that most people skip. I might do that so that I don't see your reply and forget you, meanwhile you will carry the scars of this encounter culminating in rage that builds up inside you until you do something that lands you in the Darwin awards.

    Your story will be posted to slashdot and we will all say "what a dick that guys was".

    So carry on being an asshole, it's why you don't have an account and no one cares what you are saying anyway.

  12. Re: It can also be detected by the National Guard by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 0

    Welcome to Merica

    --
    Wherever You Go, There You Are
  13. Not the Ether by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

    No, it is very different from the ether. The ether was the proposed medium which light propagated through. As such it was a continuous field not clumps of particles. Also the ether was massless and had no gravitational field. Dark Matter has a mass and causes a gravitational field which is how we know that it exists.

    1. Re:Not the Ether by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh yes you're right, dark matter is very very different. Dark matter is lumpy ether.

      You know regular ordinary matter has mass, right? You know regular ordinary matter doesn't always reflect light, right? But hey, let's call it "dark" matter. For the funding, man, the funding!

    2. Re:Not the Ether by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you know about blackbody radiation?

  14. The Real Reason by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Funny

    No, the reason the Higgs is called the god particle is because you can't have Mass without it.

    1. Re:The Real Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. Both you and the GP are dead wrong. Actually, the ONE AND ONLY reason the Higgs is called the God particle, is because a journal editor refused to call it "The GODDAMN Particle" which is what Higgs called it in his writings. So he cut it down to "God" to avoid the use of offensive language.

    2. Re:The Real Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The reason that Higgs called it the goddamn particle was because it was so goddamn hard to find.

  15. Re: It can also be detected by the National Guard by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2, Funny

    If y'all don't mind, 4Chan is downstairs.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  16. wrong wrong wrong by slashmydots · · Score: 2

    Satellites? Okay, here's one for you. The Voyager spacecraft. It traveled outside the solar system and the only minute unpredictable change in vector was due to heat radiating infrared photons from its metal. The measurements were THAT sensitive! And it interacted with exactly zero dark matter. You think some GPS satellite orbiting Earth is going to come up with different results?

    1. Re:wrong wrong wrong by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 1

      The sensitivity in measuring one effect is no guarantee it will measure any other effect.
      As far as I know neither of the Voyagers is fitted with an atomic clock so this measurement method does not work on it.

      According to the article dark energy signatures would be evident in slight time shifts. Slight as in in the range of "billionth of a second". Light travels 30 cm (1 foot) in that time.
      According to the article GPS satellites can measure those. They just don't check if there is a pattern to them. That pattern would indicate the presence of dark matter.

      GPS satellites have Cesium clocks. Those are accurate to one second in 1,400,000 years. That means the error the article is talking about is the error the clock naturally has over about half a day. Apparently that is precise enough.

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
    2. Re:wrong wrong wrong by slashmydots · · Score: 1

      Satellites orbiting earth with atomic clocks have been correcting for time dilation from moving at 24,000 MPH or whatever for decades. They all adapt with leap-milliseconds and if there was something in addition to dilation throwing them off, the anticipated corrections wouldn't be working. They are though.

    3. Re:wrong wrong wrong by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      A GPS satellite being off by half a millisecond would be horrible, about 150km off, so I can't really believe that leap-milliseconds would work.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  17. And armies live in my sleevies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We've been seeing physics drivel for roughly 50 years trying to explain subtle "dark matter" as a fancy, "undetectable" form of matter. Well, guess what? Normal matter is "undetectable" in interstellar space if it's in any size between stars (which ignite) and nebulae (which block background light from stars). And what we're finding, as we explore for exoplanets and expand our orbital telescope capability, is that there are a *lot* of dark planets, planetisimals, and just plain debris in the interstellar void. Spread out over light years, and cold as background radiation, it's a *nightmare* to detect and easily accounts for the confusingly low Hubble constant and unexpectedly low speed of more distant extragalactic objects.

    But n-o-o-o, every creative twit who likes to invent math and particles for no particular reason insists that their particular violation of the historical equations bredicts this, even they they're making up the results themselves because the curves don't fit *their* theories, either, but they're sure a "mathematical breakthrough is just around the corner!!!" Please. If it acts like "dark matter",the obvious candidate is precisely that. "Dark, ordinary matter".

  18. Explain it like I'm five by camg188 · · Score: 1

    collection topological defects, or energy cracks.

    This is not a good description. I've no idea what a topological defect or energy crack is.

    1. Re:Explain it like I'm five by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      collection topological defects, or energy cracks.

      This is not a good description. I've no idea what a topological defect or energy crack is.

      It's what Cthulhu will use to enter this dimension and consume our souls once our Scientists open one of these cracks far enough.

    2. Re:Explain it like I'm five by jouassou · · Score: 2

      Sure, I'll give it a try. If you put two bar magnets next to each other, they tend to flip each other around so that they point in the same direction. Now try to picture an infinitely large universe, which is filled with an infinite number of tiny bar magnets. If all of these magnets pointed in the same direction, there wouldn't be much interesting going on; since all the tiny magnets are already aligned, they won't try to flip each other over, and the universe would be a stable place. (You could still have some fun by flipping a few magnets, and watching the ripples spread as a wave throughout the universe; but that's not what I'm gonna talk about now.)

      But let us now consider a different scenario: in one end of the universe, all the magnets are pointing "up", while in the other end of the universe, all the magnets are pointing "down". By themselves, both these regions are stable, since there is nothing inherently "better" about pointing up than pointing down. However, somewhere in between these two far ends of the universe, there has to be a region where the magnets change from pointing up to pointing down; and this is a region of higher energy, since you have all these tiny magnets which are constantly fighting among themselves about which way to point, and constantly trying to flip each other over. This is called a "domain wall" in the case of magnetism, which is an example of a "topological defect". This domain wall can be moved and twisted by flipping a finite number of magnets in the vicinty of the domain wall; but you can't truly get rid of it without flipping an infinite number of magnets throughout the universe, which would end up requiring an infinite amount of energy.

      In some quantum field theories, you get analogous situations where a theory has multiple stable "vacuum solutions". If the universe contains fields like that, we would then have two possible scenarios: (i) the entire universe has the same vacuum state (corresponding to all the magnets pointing in the same direction); or (ii) the universe could in principle consist of different stable regions with different vacuum states, with an unstable region called a "topological defect" inbetween, where the different vacua fight for dominance.

    3. Re:Explain it like I'm five by neilo_1701D · · Score: 1

      If you put two bar magnets next to each other, they tend to flip each other around so that they point in the same direction.

      Wow. Where I come from, if I put two bar magnets together they flip around until they point in the opposite direction, with N joining S. But then again, I'm Australian: things are different in the Northern Hemisphere.

    4. Re:Explain it like I'm five by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think he means [NS] [NS] = same direction.

    5. Re:Explain it like I'm five by Vintermann · · Score: 1

      You could still have some fun by flipping a few magnets, and watching the ripples spread as a wave throughout the universe

      There's got to be at least a novelty toy hidden in this idea.

      --
      xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
    6. Re:Explain it like I'm five by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In no way does that negate the whole of his argument.

    7. Re:Explain it like I'm five by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you put two bar magnets next to each other, they tend to flip each other around so that they point in the same direction.

      Wow. Where I come from, if I put two bar magnets together they flip around until they point in the opposite direction, with N joining S. But then again, I'm Australian: things are different in the Northern Hemisphere.

      I never realized Australia had its own laws of physics.

      In the rest of the observable universe, if you have two straight bar magnets with a north and south pole, and place them near one another, they will point in the same direction. If the first has the north pole pointing to the right, and you bring the second magnet near the first magnet's south pole, the second magnet will align itself so its north pole is also pointing to the right. This is because the second magnet's north pole is attracted to the first magnet's south pole.

    8. Re:Explain it like I'm five by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 1

      This is not a good description. I've no idea what a topological defect or energy crack is.

      Fine. You haven't finished your dinner. Sit down and eat your vegetables, or 20 years from now you'll have high triglycerides and hate me for being a bad parent.

      Oh, wait,

      Explain it like I'm five

      Would you like some candy? I have candy. I'm not saying I would give you candy, but I do have candy.

  19. not in a million years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There will be no discovery as dark matter is a figment of the theorists imagination, shortly to be diproved by a new grand unified theory of electromagnetics and light that will unify the microcosm and macrocosm. The logic of this theory is already a known, but expect the dim estabilshmentatians to have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the new paradigm. Dark matter is the shadowy stain on your consciousness, begone satan!

  20. GPS Errors Caused By Error in Relativity Theory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In 1986, Dr. Ernest W. Silvertooth (an optical physicist) conducted an experiment to determine the absolute velocity vector of the Earth in space. This experiment not only matched the results of NASA's COBE satellite, designed to measure the same vector, but did so BEFORE NASA launched it. The paper is available here: http://www.rexresearch.com/ether/silvertooth.pdf.

  21. Dark matter is a joke. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Galaxies are spinning faster than my gravity only equations say they should". "Maybe there is more than gravity causing the spin". "No, must be some invisible undetectable particles, that has to be it.". "Ok".

  22. Apples and oranges. by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

    You think some GPS satellite orbiting Earth is going to come up with different results?

    Ok, here's one for you - Voyager is a cheap ass grade school optical microscope. The GPS constellation is a scanning tunneling microscope. Which would you choose to look at atomic level features?
     
    Seriously, you're comparing apples to the thing least like apples that you can imagine. For starters they're looking at different effects, Voyager's effects manifested as variations in trajectory, while they're looking for variations in (some extremely precise) clocks with the GPS constellation. Voyager is a single bird, while the GPS constellation is an array of 32 birds - which means you have enough that the effects are amenable to statistical analysis. Etc... etc...

  23. not in a million years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your children will know the truth but the establishmentarians, as you put it, will have to die off first.
    Too bad Einstein put us back about 100 years, I was so looking forward to those promised flying cars.

  24. Re:I see why the boson is a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's funny is Feynman himself took too much faith in the math than actual observations.

  25. Comological Constant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you told people gravity is relative to rotating inertial frames they would call you a blasphemer for not believing the gospel of Einstein.

    Ask someone to explain why gravitational mass and inertial mass are supposedly equal. They have no answer, and nobody seems to care. The Equivalence Principle is bunk.

  26. Whoosh! by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

    I know that but I guess the joke was lost on you.