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Breakthrough Announced in Dark Matter Detection Technology

washington.edu

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Re: Breakthrough Announced in Dark Matter Detection Technology

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modified gravity theories don't fit all the evidence, such as the distribution of mass in the Bullet Cluster [1] or the large-scale structure of the CMB [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Cosmic_microwave_b...

Some would disagree: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/04/no-that-galaxy-with... As a non-scientist, it seems like dark matter has been relentlessly adjusted and overfitted and still appears very inadequate to fit all the evidence.

> Some would disagree

Some do, but they're in the minority (which, to be clear, doesn't necessarily make them wrong). You can find scientists who refute climate change, too. That says nothing of the state of prevailing consensus, though.

Re: Breakthrough Announced in Dark Matter Detection Technology

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would disagree: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/04/no-that-galaxy-with... As a non-scientist, it seems like dark matter has been relentlessly adjusted and overfitted and still appears very inadequate to fit all the evidence.

> Some would disagree Some do, but they're in the minority (which, to be clear, doesn't necessarily make them wrong). You can find scientists who refute climate change, too. That says nothing of the state of prevailing consensus, though.

> You can find scientists who refute climate change, too.

That's an appeal to nature as well as a false equivalency. It is difficult to refute climate change because we have incredible amounts of tactile observations that match predictions - the stuff from which the scientific method stems.

At one point science (well, philosophy as the progenitor of science) said that the Earth was flat. It was a small number of rebellious scientists that corrected this misconception. Group-think and consensus do not mean that you are correct, it could mean that you are collectively wrong.

We've never seen dark matter. The so-called "evidence" that is continuously regurgitated[1] is an image of the problem. It would be like making a map of the missing periodic table of elements and calling it all "Dark Elements," never bothering to figure out what the missing elements individually are. We didn't do that, which is why we can do so many useful things with heavier elements today.

If axion decay is observed, I will have no choice but to agree with the WIMP theories. As it stands, there is zero credible and scientific evidence for the stuff.

[1]: http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2007/01/3D_map_of_da...

Re: Breakthrough Announced in Dark Matter Detection Technology

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would disagree: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/04/no-that-galaxy-with... As a non-scientist, it seems like dark matter has been relentlessly adjusted and overfitted and still appears very inadequate to fit all the evidence.

> Some would disagree Some do, but they're in the minority (which, to be clear, doesn't necessarily make them wrong). You can find scientists who refute climate change, too. That says nothing of the state of prevailing consensus, though.

Dark matter may be popular but only because it is currently the best theory that fits, it still has lots of assumptions and gaps that are not tested.

Re: Breakthrough Announced in Dark Matter Detection Technology

#27
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some would disagree Some do, but they're in the minority (which, to be clear, doesn't necessarily make them wrong). You can find scientists who refute climate change, too. That says nothing of the state of prevailing consensus, though.

Dark matter may be popular but only because it is currently the best theory that fits, it still has lots of assumptions and gaps that are not tested.

> it still has lots of assumptions and gaps that are not tested

Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that dark matter is a solved problem. In fact, I'm pretty sure I implied the exact opposite when I said it "doesn't necessarily make them wrong."

> Dark matter may be popular but only because it is currently the best theory that fits

Exactly. That's a pretty good reason to favor one theory over another.

Re: Breakthrough Announced in Dark Matter Detection Technology

#28
post #3

Can someone help me understand, is the "breakthrough" this? : >t is the world’s first and only experiment to have achieved the necessary sensitivity to “hear” the telltale signs of dark matter axions. This technological breakthrough is the result of more than 30 years of research and development, with the latest piece of the puzzle coming in the form of a quantum-enabled device that allows ADMX to listen for axions m…

The article describes how a better instrument enables a search in the band of interest: “This result signals the start of the true hunt for axions,” said Fermilab’s Andrew Sonnenschein, the operations manager for ADMX. “If dark matter axions exist within the frequency band we will be probing for the next few years, then it’s only a matter of time before we find them.”

[for this experiment] I presume he added silently, or did he just diss all the other axion searches out there?

Re: Breakthrough Announced in Dark Matter Detection Technology

#29
post #3

Can someone help me understand, is the "breakthrough" this? : >t is the world’s first and only experiment to have achieved the necessary sensitivity to “hear” the telltale signs of dark matter axions. This technological breakthrough is the result of more than 30 years of research and development, with the latest piece of the puzzle coming in the form of a quantum-enabled device that allows ADMX to listen for axions m…

Here, this should explain it in a bit more detail: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/34

It's written by someone more interested in conveying truth than hyping a null result, so it even mentions a woman was involved in inventing it! (rather than the copywriter who instead just mentions the man that gave it a name).

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