Rumours that the first dark matter partical found

www.newscientist.com...


"The physics blogs are abuzz with rumours that a particle of dark matter has finally been found.

If it is true, it is huge news. Dark matter is thought to make up 90 per cent of the universe's mass and what evidence there is for it remains highly controversial. That's why any news of a sighting is seized upon."

Dark matter is everywhere, and the race is on to capture a particle of it. There is a great story in Wired Magazine concerning the quest to capture and identify what exactly dark matter is composed of.

A scientific consensus has emerged that dark matter makes up more than 80 per cent of all the matter in the entire universe. What it's actually made of, nobody knows. But dark matter might not keep its identity secret much longer. In mines around the world and deep within mountains, teams are now racing to snare the beast in strange traps built from vats of liquid xenon, ultrapure germanium crystals and lead from medieval roofs (it's less radioactive, so is better for screening out background particles).

Two of these experiments are the clear front-runners: the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) here in the Soudan mine, and XENON100, tucked under a mountain in central Italy. This year, both projects have scaled up their experiments to make them more sensitive to dark matter, which both hope to nail within 12 months. "Next year will be an exciting one," says Elena Aprile, team leader for XENON100. "Hopefully we'll have a first result by early 2010 - there's a lot of expectation as to what will happen."

There's a big prize at stake. Whoever wins the race will crack one of nature's most exasperating cryptic codes and plug some gaping holes in our grasp of how the universe evolved.
Wired UK

This story centers on the Xenon100 experiments primarily. The thing to note is that the first results from Xenon are expected, well, now (early 2010).

At this point it looks like it's still rumors, but I expect confirmation at any time. Truly fascinating stuff.

hmmm good find! lets hope this all works out!

Ive also read some theories stating that its hard to get a feel for the WHOLE universe, when we are in an area that is much different than the majority of open space. Some scientist believe that, since we have never been able to do experiments outside of the suns heliosphere, that its hard for us to get a true reading of "deep space"

Just a few weeks ago there was a thread about an entire dark galaxy which is colliding with the milky way, it provides a nice backdrop for this and can be read here. It provides more insight to the concept of dark matter, and a fascinating look at this dark galaxy. It appears this galaxy has punched through before (about 70 million years ago). It also comes from a NewScientist story. I have recently grown particularly fond of New Scientist.

The subject of dark matter is poised to become one of, if not the most discussed of 2010! (earthly politics aside)

The capturing of a dark matter particle, and it's further analysis could fundamentally reshape our tiny but growing understanding of reality. The cool thing is that it isn't some far away speculation. Instead it is a right here, right now science. The coming months or years should be very interesting indeed.

I've always found it funny that modern physicists are willing to believe that the majority of existence is made up of something they cannot see or identify for certain....just to make their math work...

The way the subject is treated in physics papers, you'd think it was already proven....

reply to post by superdebz


recall or reference my reply concerning the 25 Oct '09 'event'...
i said that the 'event' of importance that was forecast by Webot;
www.halfpathuman.com... could very well be the discovery of Scientific Proof of 'Dark Matter'

What does Bart Simpson say...??
~Eat My Shorts !~
(and we're not talking stock-future 'shorts' either)

Originally posted by Gazrok
I've always found it funny that modern physicists are willing to believe that the majority of existence is made up of something they cannot see or identify for certain....just to make their math work...

The way the subject is treated in physics papers, you'd think it was already proven....

Yup, funny how we wouldn't have tv, radio, or even electricity if they had never done that.

Well great, i suppose. IF this is legit, then I want to know a couple of things.

1) Can we harness more of it and use it as an energy source?

2) Are we damaging the space/time continuum in any way by tampering with dark matter?

Great way to end 2009 if this is confirmed.

Good find OP. Will have to keep watch on this to see what happens!

2009 has been amazing. Lots of fascinating stories about Space, the sun, etc.

the next few years hopefully will only get more and more interesting!

byproduct of CERN imo.

reply to post by serbsta


I agree, If we can use this as an energy source, that is one of earths many problems taken care of!

Im skeptical about the rumours however

Originally posted by Gazrok
I've always found it funny that modern physicists are willing to believe that the majority of existence is made up of something they cannot see or identify for certain....just to make their math work...

The way the subject is treated in physics papers, you'd think it was already proven....

That would be because we can only see things that emit light or radiation or reflect it, so if there are objects that are not near a star then we cannot see it, therefore it is dark.

Considering the vast amount of space between stars (closest to us besides Sol is Proxima Centauri @ ~4.2 light years away), there must be matter somewhere in between.

Originally posted by superdebz
www.newscientist.com...


"The physics blogs are abuzz with rumours that a particle of dark matter has finally been found.

If it is true, it is huge news. Dark matter is thought to make up 90 per cent of the universe's mass and what evidence there is for it remains highly controversial. That's why any news of a sighting is seized upon."

This is all a myth made up by the NWO... and the Rockefellers... it's based on eugenics and is designed to create a one world government to tax the entire world at once.

Are there any other articles about this from more reputable sources?

Thank you for this post and thread.
Could any of you briefly explain what dark matter is or provide a link or source that can succinctly explain dark matter in laymen's terms? And by laymen, I mean people such as I who have a very poor grasp of the cosmos. I took astronomy in college (many years ago) and this was not on the topics covered.
I have hit wikipedia and it gets really heavy, really fast. I was looking for but did not see a good one or two liner of a definition.

Originally posted by Gazrok
I've always found it funny that modern physicists are willing to believe that the majority of existence is made up of something they cannot see or identify for certain....just to make their math work...

The way the subject is treated in physics papers, you'd think it was already proven....

It's even 'funnier' that it's mentioned in the Bible regarding the area of faith. I don't have time to sift through the pages atm and give specific verses.

But there was a passing mention in the Bible regarding non-religious based ancient knowledge of the 'unseen'. I most likely think, anything that's microscopic and smaller and the atomic forces which are very familiar.

Things that are small and unseen are of great important to science and Christianity. Therefore I conclude based on ancient and modern wisdom that our reality held together by the unseen holds great merit!

Or in other words, like a computer program, or let's say a 3D computer game. From the point of view of the gamer, you see the visuals, but you can't see the binary codes zipping through at a rate of millions per second. Just because you can't see it doesn't make it any less vital than the visuals itself. In fact, just sending a few errant codes in the stream, is enough to crash a very complex program and we never knew what happened!

The importance of this? If we ever crack the code of the Universe, it's over!! Even what humanity did in fictional Star Trek will be greatly surpassed if blessed by the knowledge of the very nature of the Universe. Now all you need is a device that could reproduce all sorts of EM phenomenon and sounds that is hooked to a high speed computer and that's it! It's over!!!

Originally posted by seethelight
This is all a myth made up by the NWO... and the Rockefellers... it's based on eugenics and is designed to create a one world government to tax the entire world at once.

huh??


what does dark matter have to do with eugenics???

Originally posted by queenannie38

Originally posted by seethelight
This is all a myth made up by the NWO... and the Rockefellers... it's based on eugenics and is designed to create a one world government to tax the entire world at once.

huh??

what does dark matter have to do with eugenics???

Didn't you know that EVERYTHING is the fault of the Rockefellers, including the creation and therefore the elements of the Universe.

reply to post by nik1halo

Didn't you know that EVERYTHING is the fault of the Rockefellers, including the creation and therefore the elements of the Universe.

Thank goodness.

I thought I was the only one left that could recognize satire.

And I am sure that even I miss about 99.44% of it on ATS. Some people's writings really only make sense if they are being satiric or sarcastic.

There was an update to that original link at www.newscientist.com...

Update: in an email to the blog Resonaances, Nature's senior physical science editor Leslie Sage has squashed the rumours that a paper is about to appear in the journal

which takes you to resonaances.blogspot.com...

Important update: I just received this in an email:

I was alerted to your blog of yesterday (you certainly don't make contacting you easy). Your "fact" #1, that Nature is about to publish aCDMS paper on dark matter, is completely false. This would be instantlyobvious to the most casual observer because the purported date of publication is a Friday, and Nature is published on Thursdays. Your "fact" therefore contains as much truth as the average Fox News story, and I would be grateful if you would correct it immediately.Your comments about the embargo are therefore, within this context, ridiculous. Peer review is a process, the culmination of which is publication. We regard confidentiality of results during the process as a matter of professional ethics, though of course authors are free to post to arxiv at any point during the process (we will not interfere with professional communication of results to peers).Dr Leslie SageSenior editor, physical sciencesNature