Huge underground xenon experiment zeroes in on dark matter

Directly detecting dark matter would be one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time – but it’s no easy feat to find something that’s invisible and barely interacts with regular matter. Now the results are in from one of the most comprehensive dark matter experiments ever run, and while the stuff was again a no-show, the study helps scientists zero in on where it might be hiding.

more…

Tau.Neutrino said:

Huge underground xenon experiment zeroes in on dark matter

Directly detecting dark matter would be one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time – but it’s no easy feat to find something that’s invisible and barely interacts with regular matter. Now the results are in from one of the most comprehensive dark matter experiments ever run, and while the stuff was again a no-show, the study helps scientists zero in on where it might be hiding.

more…

See also https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141007092455.htm

In a nutshell, latest results from both XMASS-I and XENON-1T have failed to find any WIMPs.

I’ve had a stupid/crazy thought about that.

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Huge underground xenon experiment zeroes in on dark matter

Directly detecting dark matter would be one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time – but it’s no easy feat to find something that’s invisible and barely interacts with regular matter. Now the results are in from one of the most comprehensive dark matter experiments ever run, and while the stuff was again a no-show, the study helps scientists zero in on where it might be hiding.

more…

See also https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141007092455.htm

In a nutshell, latest results from both XMASS-I and XENON-1T have failed to find any WIMPs.

I’ve had a stupid/crazy thought about that.

Doesn’t anyone want to know the stupid/crazy thought?

I should build one of those, I already own 4 of those Irwin Quick Clamps.

mollwollfumble said:

mollwollfumble said:

See also https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141007092455.htm

In a nutshell, latest results from both XMASS-I and XENON-1T have failed to find any WIMPs.

I’ve had a stupid/crazy thought about that.

Doesn’t anyone want to know the stupid/crazy thought?

Please tell us your stupid/crazy thought.

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

mollwollfumble said:

See also https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141007092455.htm

http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/xmass/gallery/wm/DSC_9695-m.jpg

In a nutshell, latest results from both XMASS-I and XENON-1T have failed to find any WIMPs.

I’ve had a stupid/crazy thought about that.

Doesn’t anyone want to know the stupid/crazy thought?

Please tell us your stupid/crazy thought.

Thanks Rev D, I appreciate it.

There are two types of experiments for detecting WIMPs, those that attempt to make them such as the LHC and those that attempt to detect naturally occurring ones such as XENON1T and XMASS-I.

Let’s set aside the LHC and similar experiments on the grounds that perhaps dark matter can’t be manufactured in this way.

All the experiments for detecting naturally occurring WIMPs work on the same principle as the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887. That is, they try to detect periodic changes in signal with a period of a year. The principle for both is that, as the Earth moves it moves through a sea of some exotic substance, the changes in speed as the Earth reverses direction are 60 km/s at opposite ends of the Earth’s orbit.

The Michelson-Morley experiment, as we know, failed to detect the ether because of the Lorentz equations, in which the speed of light plays a crucial role.

As we now know, WIMPs move fast but not at high relativistic speeds. What if experiments XENON1T and XMASS-I have failed to detect WIMPs because there’s a second set of Lorentz equations that applies only to dark matter with the value of c replaced by the slower speed of dark matter?

If so, then XENON1T and XMASS-I have failed to detect WIMPs for the exact same reason that the Michelson-Morley experiment failed to detect the ether, and there’s a second fixed speed – the speed of dark matter – that plays the same fundamental role in dark matter physics as the speed of light does for baryonic matter.

Stupid/crazy, I know. But no more crazy than the Lorentz equations in the first case. I can’t yet see a reason to rule it out. And just about every other explanation for dark matter has already been eliminated.

mollwollfumble said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

Doesn’t anyone want to know the stupid/crazy thought?

Please tell us your stupid/crazy thought.

Thanks Rev D, I appreciate it.

There are two types of experiments for detecting WIMPs, those that attempt to make them such as the LHC and those that attempt to detect naturally occurring ones such as XENON1T and XMASS-I.

Let’s set aside the LHC and similar experiments on the grounds that perhaps dark matter can’t be manufactured in this way.

All the experiments for detecting naturally occurring WIMPs work on the same principle as the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887. That is, they try to detect periodic changes in signal with a period of a year. The principle for both is that, as the Earth moves it moves through a sea of some exotic substance, the changes in speed as the Earth reverses direction are 60 km/s at opposite ends of the Earth’s orbit.

The Michelson-Morley experiment, as we know, failed to detect the ether because of the Lorentz equations, in which the speed of light plays a crucial role.

As we now know, WIMPs move fast but not at high relativistic speeds. What if experiments XENON1T and XMASS-I have failed to detect WIMPs because there’s a second set of Lorentz equations that applies only to dark matter with the value of c replaced by the slower speed of dark matter?

If so, then XENON1T and XMASS-I have failed to detect WIMPs for the exact same reason that the Michelson-Morley experiment failed to detect the ether, and there’s a second fixed speed – the speed of dark matter – that plays the same fundamental role in dark matter physics as the speed of light does for baryonic matter.

Stupid/crazy, I know. But no more crazy than the Lorentz equations in the first case. I can’t yet see a reason to rule it out. And just about every other explanation for dark matter has already been eliminated.

On the other hand, perhaps not. This is a good way to test it, from ArXiv. I’m not sure whether “new gravitational degrees of freedom” would be a consequence, though. Probably not.

“Testing Lorentz invariance of dark matter”, Diego Blas, Mikhail M. Ivanov, Sergey Sibiryakov, (Submitted on 3 Sep 2012).

“We study the possibility to constrain deviations from Lorentz invariance in dark matter (DM) with cosmological observations. Breaking of Lorentz invariance generically introduces new light gravitational degrees of freedom, which we represent through a dynamical timelike vector field. If DM does not obey Lorentz invariance, it couples to this vector field. We find that this coupling affects the inertial mass of small DM halos which no longer satisfy the equivalence principle. For large enough lumps of DM we identify a (chameleon) mechanism that restores the inertial mass to its standard value. As a consequence, the dynamics of gravitational clustering are modified. Two prominent effects are a scale dependent enhancement in the growth of large scale structure and a scale dependent bias between DM and baryon density perturbations. The comparison with the measured linear matter power spectrum in principle allows to bound the departure from Lorentz invariance of DM at the per cent level.”

When I grow up I want to be Super-Kamiokande.

mollwollfumble said:

When I grow up I want to be Super-Kamiokande.

These could be a sci-fi scenes.

Ian said:

mollwollfumble said:

http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/xmass/gallery/wm/DSC_9695-m.jpg

When I grow up I want to be Super-Kamiokande.

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/sites/default/files/styles/2015_hero/public/images/standard/Super-K-s.jpg

These could be a sci-fi scenes.

Yes. Interestingly, one place I’ve been that would make a perfect Sci-Fi scene would be inside one of the gas tanks at BHP Pert Kembla. Almost as grand as Super-Kamiokande but full of girders and struts.