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'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

phys.org

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Re: 'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

#21

Post by kevindamm »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #16

Am I wrong to assume that science that is harder to prove will have less impact on human wellbeing? Electricity is easy to run experiments on and prove, meaning humans can manipulate it for our benefits easy. However, the Higgs Boson was extremely difficult to prove and I see no way that it could ever benefit humanity's wellbeing. Now how could humans improve our wellbeing by manipulating dark matter?

Sometimes we don't know the improvements until we have done enough experiments to provide a model that aids in discovering improvements. Electricity was hard (even fatal) to experiment with before it was understood (and frontier work in electricity when running at extreme frequencies or energies is still difficult to understand, and if we're counting all EM in there it goes beyond being easy to manipulate and experiment with).

My guess? If we figure out how to detect dark matter we can get closer to figuring out how to interact with it (other than through the very very very weak gravitational force). Or maybe we figure out that it was a spinning universal frame or something that gives us a better Standard Model.

If, however, we figure out how to interact with it and can harness any potential energy from it, then by definition we won't see any interference in the electromagnetic forces. That would be incredible, that would be as good as having readily available superconductors.

Re: 'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

#22

Post by notfed »

dventimi wrote: post #17
vihren wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have a pretty substansive evidence that dark matter exists: from the cosmic background radiation, gravitational lensing, galaxy formation simulations, galaxy rotation curves, etc. Why is it so hard for people to believe that there are some particles that are not interacting with electromagnetism that we haven't detected directly yet? It's not even a precedent, the neutrino is just like that. I guess the name "d…

I agree with you. "Dark Matter" (and "Dark Energy") are colorful (colorless?) names that I think helped these theories diffuse into the popular consciousness at a time when popular interest in science was at a high-water mark (remember when "chaos theory" was fashionable?). As I mentioned in another comment recently (it feels like a "Dark Matter" or "Dark Energy" headline trends on HN almost every day), this coded th…

Had we named it "invisible matter", perhaps not as much controversy would surround it.

Re: 'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

#24

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

vihren wrote: post #14
resource0x wrote: post #13

Dark matter is a pseudo-scientific variant of the "God of the gaps". Rather of acknowledging an obvious (default) assumption that the laws of Universe (including all "constants") depend on local conditions, the community prefers spending inordinate amounts of money on nebulous ideas.

We do have a pretty substansive evidence that dark matter exists: from the cosmic background radiation, gravitational lensing, galaxy formation simulations, galaxy rotation curves, etc. Why is it so hard for people to believe that there are some particles that are not interacting with electromagnetism that we haven't detected directly yet? It's not even a precedent, the neutrino is just like that. I guess the name "d…

Not trying to be a mindless skeptic but your “why is it so hard” question seems bizarre to me. It seems quite understandable that it’s hard for people to believe there’s a particle responsible for a significant percentage of all matter in the universe that we have no direct evidence of and the only reason it’s believed to exist at all is because a lot of otherwise well-understood equations and observations require it to exist.

Re: 'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

#25

Post by tejtm »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #16

Am I wrong to assume that science that is harder to prove will have less impact on human wellbeing? Electricity is easy to run experiments on and prove, meaning humans can manipulate it for our benefits easy. However, the Higgs Boson was extremely difficult to prove and I see no way that it could ever benefit humanity's wellbeing. Now how could humans improve our wellbeing by manipulating dark matter?

   "It's of no use whatsoever. This is just an experiment that proves Maestro Maxwell was right—we just have these mysterious electromagnetic waves that we cannot see with the naked eye. But they are there." -- Heinrich Hertz

Re: 'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

#26

Post by rhdunn »

vihren wrote: post #14
resource0x wrote: post #13

Dark matter is a pseudo-scientific variant of the "God of the gaps". Rather of acknowledging an obvious (default) assumption that the laws of Universe (including all "constants") depend on local conditions, the community prefers spending inordinate amounts of money on nebulous ideas.

We do have a pretty substansive evidence that dark matter exists: from the cosmic background radiation, gravitational lensing, galaxy formation simulations, galaxy rotation curves, etc. Why is it so hard for people to believe that there are some particles that are not interacting with electromagnetism that we haven't detected directly yet? It's not even a precedent, the neutrino is just like that. I guess the name "d…

We have concrete evidence that either a) a new type of matter and energy exists, or b) our theories need to be modified in some way.

The orbit of planets in our solar system have hinted at missing matter several times -- one time it lead to the discovery of a new planet (Uranus or Neptune, IIRC); one time it lead to the discovery of General Relativity.

Until we either detect dark matter/energy, or develop a theory that accurately predicts the behaviour we're attributing to dark matter we cannot say one way or the other which is the correct approach.

It could also be that we are not accurately modelling EM/SR/GR effects at a large scale, such as how they are warped by the different stars orbiting the arms of the galaxies. Or that when we extend QED/QCD to accelerating reference frames (general relativity) that dark matter won't be needed, just like how QED was formulated by extending electromagnetism/QM to special relativity (non-accelerating reference frames).

Re: 'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

#27

Post by staplung »

evanb wrote: post #7
slow_typist wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is what they wanted to say they did a very bad job. And spooky action at a distance is a term related to quantum entanglement, which has probably nothing to do with the phenomenon they tried to describe here.

You're right; this is nothing to do with spooky action at a distance. But sympathetic response, or resonance, is how this device would work---just like a radio. Axions couple to electromagnetism; by listening in on different frequencies we can see if there is any "cosmic signal being broadcast" (meaning: axions suffusing the galaxy); the frequency of the signal corresponds to the mass of the axion. In that sense, the…

Any chance this could lead to a resonance cascade? I saw some documentary where that happened at a remote corporate facility in the desert somewhere...Dark Table maybe. I was surprised to see such heavy use of a crowbar at a place doing advanced physics. ;-)

Re: 'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

#28

Post by rzz3 »

I’ve always felt like (as neither a mathematician nor a physicist) that “dark matter” is simply just something that suddenly makes a math problem work to model the universe-—and that in reality, that math problem just doesn’t work.

Is my theory even _possible_ here, or am I missing something. Really fundamental?

Re: 'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

#29

Post by Hikikomori »

rzz3 wrote: post #28

I’ve always felt like (as neither a mathematician nor a physicist) that “dark matter” is simply just something that suddenly makes a math problem work to model the universe-—and that in reality, that math problem just doesn’t work. Is my theory even _possible_ here, or am I missing something. Really fundamental?

Well you have things like the bullet cluster that can't be explained by math being wrong.

Re: 'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

#30

Post by luma »

rzz3 wrote: post #28

I’ve always felt like (as neither a mathematician nor a physicist) that “dark matter” is simply just something that suddenly makes a math problem work to model the universe-—and that in reality, that math problem just doesn’t work. Is my theory even _possible_ here, or am I missing something. Really fundamental?

Dark matter is a proposition put forward to explain observations. It’s not a result of pretty math, it’s the result of a lot of different observations which don’t align with the current math unless you stick something like dark matter into it.
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