The idea boils down to this: If a certain type of dark matter particle existed, it would occasionally kill people, passing through them like a bullet. Because no one has died from unexplained gunshotlike wounds, this type of dark matter does not exist, according to a new study....Good thing it doesn't exist, I guess.
A less mainstream dark matter candidate, known as macros, would form heavier particles. Although macros would be much rarer than WIMPs, any collisions with ordinary matter would be violent, leaving an obvious trace. The new study explores what those traces might look like if the macros hit people.
Glenn Starkman and Jagjit Singh Sidhu, theoretical physicists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, were originally searching for traces of macros in granite slabs when a colleague made a suggestion. “Why can’t you just use humans as a detector?” they recall Robert Scherrer, a co-author and theoretical physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville saying. “The energies you’re talking about, these things would probably at best maim a person, at worst kill a person.”
The team forged ahead with the idea and modeled macros that would have a similar effect to a fatal shot from a .22 caliber rifle. Such particles would be minuscule, but very heavy, and thus release the same amount of energy as a bullet as it passes through a person. Their calculations focused on the millions of people living in Canada, the United States, and Western Europe over the past decade because researchers say these countries have more reliable data on how many people died and from what causes.
In this sample, scientists would expect to see a handful of reports of unexplained deaths from invisible dark matter “bullets.” But there were none, the researchers report this week on the preprint server arXiv. These deaths would not go unnoticed—they would leave victims dead or dying with a tubular wound where their flesh was vaporized.
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
An unusual form of dark matter detector
At Science, an article explaining that scientists think they can rule out one form of dark matter, because if it existed, "
people would be dying of unexplained ‘gunshot’ wounds".
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4 comments:
Why even bother when a recent study produced a 3rd figure for the rate of universe expansion? So much fudging in cosmology. There are non-Einstein models, there are no dark matter or energy models but these don't make the press very often leading people to think that modern cosmology is just filling in the blank spaces of a perfect theory.
Give it time, John. It's barely gone 100 years since humanity even realised that galaxies were other Milky Ways, far far away.
https://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/groundup/lesson/scopes/mt_wilson/discovery.php
To put that in perspective, I just heard on Radio National that James Lovelock is just about to turn 100. When he was a young boy, astronomers were still arguing about the nature of galaxies. This article in Discover argues that 1 Jan 1925 is the true "birthday" of modern cosmology.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2017/01/02/the-day-we-discovered-the-universe/#.XTay_HuubIU
So really, complaints about the uncertainty in fully understanding the universe are like complaining that it should have been all worked within a single (long) human lifetime. Give scientists a break...
There is no such thing as "Dark Matter" Steve. Get your act together.
The next time a Leprachaun says that he will give you his bag of gold if you let him suck your ---- ..... its time for you to grow up and realise that there are no Leprachauns. There are queers, fags, pillowbiters and science frauds. But that you are a little bit too old to be believing in Leprachauns.
You have to exercise some sort of personal pride, and you need to stop yourself from being taken in by this dark matter jive.
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