Has Dark Matter Finally Been Found? Big News Coming Soon

[ACG52]

From Space.com http://www.space.com/19845-dark-matter-found-nasa-experiment.html

 

 

BOSTON — Big news in the search for dark matter may be coming in about two weeks, the leader of a space-based particle physics experiment said today (Feb. 17) here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

That's when the first paper of results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle collector mounted on the outside of the International Space Station, will be submitted to a scientific journal, said MIT physicist Samuel Ting, AMS principle investigator.

Though Ting was coy about just what, exactly, the experiment has found, he said the results bear on the mystery of dark matter, the invisible stuff thought to outnumber regular matter in the universe by a factor of about six to one.

"It will not be a minor paper," Ting said, hinting that the findings were important enough that the scientists rewrote the paper 30 times before they were satisfied with it. Still, he said, it represents a "small step" in figuring out what dark matter is, and perhaps not the final answer.

 

 

My predictions is that whatever the results, the arguments will continue.

[SciFiReal]

A more precise definition will be given, when more scientists have the chance to review the data. 2 weeks is way too early to think on such a fundamental discovery.

[imatfaal]

Any news on the paper? Will dig around and post if I find anything

[imatfaal]

Bump!

 

Not really bumping the thread - just bumping in the hope that the nanobump registered all the way off at the AMS will hasten this paper a tiniest bit. Curious to know what would make a nobel laureate quite so excited.

[LaurieAG]

Even CERN don't claim they have definitively found it any more than their previous announcements. The bolded bit below reminds me more of when global economists agreed that two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth don't indicate a recession in 2001, just before the dot com bubble burst, rather than any new scientific discovery.

 

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2013/03/new-results-indicate-new-particle-higgs-boson

 

 

 

At the

Moriond Conference today, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) presented preliminary new results that further elucidate the particle discovered last year. Having analysed two and a half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July, they find that the new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson, the particle linked to the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles. It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model. Finding the answer to this question will take time.

Edited March 15, 2013 by LaurieAG

[imatfaal]

Hi Laurie - that's not quite what I was getting at. If you check out the OP you will find out that Samual Ting - leader of AMS - was getting all excited about a paper they were all preparing. This would be about Dark Matter and detected in the AMS equipment that hangs off the International Space Station. The Higgs is a bit different.

 

CERN have definitely found a particle that is the right mass. The initial results are now filtering out regarding the spin, parity etc - and that seems hopefull as well.

 

 

Even CERN don't claim they have definitively found it any more than their previous announcements. The bolded bit below reminds me more of when global economists agreed that two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth don't indicate a recession in 2001, just before the dot com bubble burst, rather than any new scientific discovery.

 

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2013/03/new-results-indicate-new-particle-higgs-boson

[LaurieAG]

Hi imatfaal,

 

I read the bits about the AMS and wondered if the detection sample size will prove anything statistically significant without severe manipulations of the data set. Observations may need to be made outside the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt to detect original charged cosmic rays coming from outside the solar system. The reference to anti matter is also interesting.

 

 

Ting: We want to measure charged cosmic rays. You know, we live under 60 miles of atmosphere, it's like 30 feet of water. So original charged cosmic rays cannot be detected on Earth; therefore, you have to go to space.

 

In July 2012, it was reported that AMS-02 had recorded over 18 billion cosmic ray events since its installation.

I will be looking out for both papers to see what goes on.

 

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/one_swallow_does_not_a_summer_make

 

 

From a remark by Aristotle (384 BCE - 322 BCE): "One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy."

[pantheory]

They are spending a lot of time on this new paper preparing cautious but positive claims. According to the article above there have already been 30 re-writes of the same paper that will be released soon concerning the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and implications concerning dark matter. The spectrometer experiment is in an orbit outside the international space station.

 

I believe that regardless of what their claims may be, arguments concerning their interpretations of the data will continue. Of course the degree of skepticism will depend upon the clarity of the asserted evidence, or lack thereof, and the number of alternative explanations available for the same data.

Edited March 16, 2013 by pantheory

[SomethingToPonder]

It's getting very close to finding something now, Who knows what we will find but it is a very exciting time. Im keen to see what happens

[imatfaal]

hmm - not so sure you are right StoP. I posted the AMS results - so highly anticipated - in another thread; underwhelming would be perhaps too mean. My feeling is that we are not a great deal closer - but we have opened a new avenue of research and a promising one at that

[SomethingToPonder]

where do you read all their research papers may i ask? I have been trying to find quite a few different ones and always seem to get one or the other.
Is there a specific website that they update with their papers?
sorry if the question sounds daft.

[imatfaal]

arxiv.org is a pre-publication site where many physics papers are posted. However many papers are commercially published by commercial outfits who rely on charging in their business model - for these papers you can either hope there is a pre-pub reprint at arxiv, or become a member of a library that has a subscription (not so easy) or subscribe either long term or per articles (pretty expensive). There are more journals that are open-access - but many of the majors still charge for use.

[SomethingToPonder]

arxiv.org is a pre-publication site where many physics papers are posted. However many papers are commercially published by commercial outfits who rely on charging in their business model - for these papers you can either hope there is a pre-pub reprint at arxiv, or become a member of a library that has a subscription (not so easy) or subscribe either long term or per articles (pretty expensive). There are more journals that are open-access - but many of the majors still charge for use.

Thank you, Il be sure to check it out.

I cant wait to hear what they have found.

[Wassem Alward]

Any Updates about the Results ???

[imatfaal]

Any Updates about the Results ???

As it turned out the results were not a candidate for dark matter - nor even definitively dark matter indicative; cos of that I posted a summary in a ne thread

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/74050-alpha-magnetic-spectrometry-news/

[krash661]

i was in a small conversation about the AMS on anther forum some days ago,

 

according to this one guy,

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=683408&page=4

 

" Despite the significant hype, the AMS results in no way point to dark matter any more than previous data about the same phenomenon had. The positron excess under discussion was actually first noted about 5 years ago by the PAMELA experiment; and, there was a flurry of papers at the time discussing the possible natures of dark matter models that could explain such a result. However, as was known then, the excess may well be the result of totally unrelated astrophysical processes, such as pulsars. And, because of the presence of galactic magnetic fields, the positrons can't be particularly reliably traced back to their source (or sources), meaning that we can't directly test whether they originate at the center of the galaxy (as a dark matter signal must) or from other more local sources. AMS has put out far more detailed and more precise data. However, at least as yet, the data shows no features that we're already present in the PAMELA data. Therefore, any attribution to dark matter is, at best, premature. "

 

" it's finding the source of the excess positrons. It certainly could be that they come from dark matter annihilation; but, they could also come from astrophysical processes that nothing to do with dark matter. "

Edited April 22, 2013 by krash661

[12012]

This article is quite the shocker towards the extensive research of black matter.

 

Even though the author stated that these finding were not as accurate as they seem, the discovery of WIMP particles, as the author mentioned, could be findings of black matter since many scientists agree that black matter forms from WIMP particles.

 

 

This could be a huge step for our understanding and comprehension of black matter.

[TERRYJAZ121224]

DARK MATTER IN MY OPINION HAS

ALREADY BEEN FOUND, Hadron Collider; WHEN YOU ENTER particle TRAVELING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT, WHILE BEING COMPRESS AND COOLED BY liquid helium AT -455 DEGREE..... ADD A superconducting electromagnets FORCE SURROUNDING IT.....I CALL THAT AND INVENTION OF MASSIVE DARK OR NEGATIVE ENERGY ....HINTS YOUR BLACK HOLE[ OR A SINGULAR ENERGY

 

[swansont]

DARK MATTER IN MY OPINION HAS

ALREADY BEEN FOUND, Hadron Collider; WHEN YOU ENTER particle TRAVELING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT, WHILE BEING COMPRESS AND COOLED BY liquid helium AT -455 DEGREE..... ADD A superconducting electromagnets FORCE SURROUNDING IT.....I CALL THAT AND INVENTION OF MASSIVE DARK OR NEGATIVE ENERGY ....HINTS YOUR BLACK HOLE[ OR A SINGULAR ENERGY

 

Nobody at CERN is calling it dark matter.

 

Also, NO NEED TO SHOUT