

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Found? - rpm4321
http://www.kurzweilai.net/has-dark-matter-finally-been-found

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ChuckMcM
No.

Ok, sorry that is a bit snarky. I dislike space.com (best read using lynx(1))
and I really dislike reporting on the hint of results from an unpublished
paper which probably isn't what you think because oh-my-gosh we might be able
to confuse a few hicks into clicking on one of these adverts we just threw
under their mouse when they weren't looking. Woo hoo! Another buck fifty for
us sucker!

Read this:
[http://ams.pg.infn.it/~zuccon/Pubblicazioni/ams/physicsrepor...](http://ams.pg.infn.it/~zuccon/Pubblicazioni/ams/physicsreport.pdf)
and then decide for yourself if you think their theory holds water or not.

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jerrya
I started using adblock plus filters to remove the worse portions of space.com
and it was a pretty good experience. Got rid of social networking crap, got
rid of their top bar, their bottom bar, the sidebars, the header, the
masthead, the next article prompter, and the site was becoming readable, and
then I slipped up and whoosh out went their content and voila, and like many
inventions, one error led me to realize a greater creation than I had
originally thought possible.

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eksith
How does one "find" what's already been "found"? We already know _where_ dark
matter is just by observing changes in gravity, we just need to know _what_ it
is. Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains this the best :
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSeXyDEWgyc>

The tl;dr of that article is basically that Dark Matter is theorised to be
made of WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) which are matter that are
their own anti-matter. Mind boggling concept since when ordinary matter meets
anti-matter, it's an Angels and Demons style explosion. But these particles
are their _own_ "matter" and anti-matter in one, if that's what they really
are.

These WIMPs give rise to positrons, which are basically anti-electrons (anti-
matter variant of electrons) and this is what these sensors are alleged to
have detected. WIMPs are what they think create positrons and regular
electrons.

    
    
      "The smoking gun signature is a rise and then a dramatic fall" in the number of positrons with respect to energy,
      because the positrons produced by dark matter annihilation would have a very specific energy, 
      depending on the mass of the WIMPs making up dark matter...
    

Until they actually publish that paper with conclusive evidence, this is still
all speculation and ad revenue for space.com .

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nagrom
"when ordinary matter meets anti-matter, it's an Angels and Demons style
explosion"

Oh goodness me, no. They annihilate to create a lepton pair. There is no
explosion, really. Subatomic physics is much more boring than popular science
would have you believe! You must try quite hard to get an explosion - it isn't
chemistry, where things explode simply because it's Wednesday. Particles that
are their own antimatter are not all that exotic either. Z bosons, gluons and
photons are all their own antiparticles too, and perhaps neutrinos.

As I understand it (and I am a nuclear physicist, not an astrophysicist) there
are few (no?) observed natural interactions known to produce high energy
positrons (i.e. with energy >1 GeV). So, if you find one coming from space, it
is an indicator that something unexplained has happened. Since we know where
there must be clusters of dark matter and WIMPs are theorised to produce such
positrons, dark matter decay is the leading candidate for an explanation for a
high energy positron coming from such a direction.

Or it could be aliens, of course.

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eksith
Ah! I fear Hollywood and TV has corrupted my understanding of Anti-matter.
Thanks for clearing that up :)

Aliens could be enticing us to seek new frontiers for scientific knowledge,
but unless this comes to us in messages hidden in crop-circles or revealed
through abductions, I'm not buying it!

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freddealmeida
I think the largest issue with dark matter and it's cousin dark energy is that
there is no observation of either, at all. What we see is a wobble here, or a
mess of background radiation and we suspect it may be something to do with
this high mass non-radiating matter.

I think this may be our modern ether. Though the theory of ether was far more
interesting.

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monochromatic
I have to think Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies with even more force on
kurzweilai.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Kurzweilai Tagline: "Accelerating Intelligence?"

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afhof
Another case of Betteridge's law of headlines.

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bobwaycott
Devoid of substantive and informative content.

