Has Missing Dark Matter of the Universe Finally Been Detected?

A scientific system buried deep below the Earth, constructed of ultrapure materials held hovering over absolute zero, has finally stirred.  This isn't an attack by misbegotten monsters but an encouraging clue to the main mystery of the universe: dark matter.

The kind of matter with which we are familiar -- atoms and molecules, and indeed every particle we have ever created in a laboratory known as baryonic-- only makes up about 5% of the universe. Another 25% is dark matter, a kind of particle that is massive and weakly interacting. The remaining 70% is dark energy, which is not even a particle -- it's a smoothly-distributed energy field that remains persistent in density even as the universe expands. The ongoing effort to understand dark matter and dark energy is the most important task of twenty-first century cosmology.

The Berkeley Cryogenic Dark Matter Search II (CDMS II) does exactly what it says - it's cryogenically cooled, it's searching for dark matter, and this is the second time they've done it.  High purity low temperature crystals of germanium and silicon vibrate are disturbed by anything impacting on them, and they're buried under seven hundred meters of iron mine to make sure most of "anything" can't make it.  One thing that could conceivably come down and stir things up is a WIMP, a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle - one of the options for dark matter.

The system is so shielded that over an entire year users only expect 0.8 events, and in 2008 they saw two.  This is a tantalising taste of data: analysis indicates that the event energy matches the model for dark matter WIMPs, but even after screening out as much noise as possible it simply isn't enough signal to be sure.  Scientists, you see, double-check and confirm things before shouting about them (unlike others who - for example - might hack unprocessed e-mails, strip random sentences out of context, then start screaming about all kinds of nonsense.)

This excitement is motivating instead of mob-making: the research team are upgrading the equipment with Super-CDMS stacks of crystal which will triple its efficiency.  Space satellites, subterranean sensors, and that little LHC thing: we want this dark matter stuff.    

The bulk of the dark matter that makes up 75% of the universe is believed to be nonbaryonic, which means that it contains no atoms and that it does not interact with ordinary matter via electromagnetic forces and includes neutrinos, and possibly hypothetical entities such as axions, or supersymmetric particles. Unlike baryonic dark matter, nonbaryonic dark matter did not contribute to the formation of the elements in the early universe, so its presence is detected only by its gravitational attraction.

Luke McKinney

Clearest Sign Yet Of Dark Matter Detected 

Comments

[Christian Rioux]

"Scientists, you see, double-check and confirm things before shouting about them (unlike others who - for example - might hack unprocessed e-mails, strip random sentences out of context, then start screaming about all kinds of nonsense.)"

You accuse the sceptics of doing exactly what the "warmists" are doing: making assumptions that the human is responsible for climate change without double-checking their data.

Not all scientist are honest. Some may change data to confirm a theory that will get them research funds, other invest in "green comapnies" and then make apocalyptic prediction, so their action will rise.

The climate of the planet has never been fixed. It always change. A few hundred years ago, Viking were planting vineyard in "green land", now it's under the ice.

[Simon Salosny]

Understanding the human Brain, should be much more exciting...

[The Top Doc]

This is typical of you Luke. I always check the By Line when reading "The Daily Galaxy" articles. I'm surprised just how often I 'guess' the author. I got this one correct as well. Science and Scientist are no better / no worse than society on whole. Bias is bias, period and it enters into all things we do. "Scientist" or not.

[DougDomo]

And why does it matter what he says? It's funny, and he is giving yo information. I would rater read something that is funny then something that is dry. If they both presnt the same thing, what's it matter?

[DougDomo]

You, rather, and present.

[James]

Why do you read if what he says doesn't matter? The information maybe wrong. I didn't see any thing particularly humorous. Did I mention the information may be wrong.
Besides throwing in a gratuitous slam on a subject unrelated to the one being discussed is unprofessional and amateurish. Not to mention cheap propagandizing.

And ... the myth is the emails were 'hacked.' They weren't. They were gathered to comply with FOI requests filed but never complied with. Much like Nasa has refused to comply with FOI request for the last 3 years. Ya, these are brave honest scientist openly sharing data. Uh huh, I have bridge to sell you.

[Narendra Nath]

These heavy non-baryonic matter has to be a part of the primordial matter that has created both the dark and visible matter. These may well be very heavy quarks that we had not yet seen, which are much heavier than the TOP quark we have the limit to observe presently. These quarks got frozen as the rest of the quarks got converted to lighter ones before resulting in baryon forming lightest of quarks. The potential field existing then at Big Bang was not the presently known 4- force fields but a unified field we can not imagine to exist resulting in the 4- field picture of gravitational, strong nuclear, electromagnetic and last the weak nuclear one.It is impossible to observe that unified force field unless we can observe phenomenon closest to the Big bang, within its initial moments. Yes the current deep under earth experiment is worth persuing but low noise signals are hard to eliminate, as was the situation when neutrino's detection experiment performed only late in 1970's suceeded.