Dark Matter and Dark Energy Information

The importance of the CMB, while a snapshot of the early universe just after 380000 years after the big bang is a materialist point of view, other things were born, as with the idea about the current state of the universe. What is dominating in terms of dark energy.

http://xkcd.com/1758/

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Talking About Dark Matter and Dark Energy

So here is one I did this morning, about why cosmologists think dark matter and dark energy are things that really exist

See also:

https://www.facebook.com/seanmcarrollauthor/videos/1236421353095130/

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Emergent Gravity and the Dark Universe by Erik P. Verlinde

Recent theoretical progress indicates that spacetime and gravity emerge together from the entanglement structure of an underlying microscopic theory. These ideas are best understood in Anti-de Sitter space, where they rely on the area law for entanglement entropy. The extension to de Sitter space requires taking into account the entropy and temperature associated with the cosmological horizon. Using insights from string theory, black hole physics and quantum information theory we argue that the positive dark energy leads to a thermal volume law contribution to the entropy that overtakes the area law precisely at the cosmological horizon. Due to the competition between area and volume law entanglement the microscopic de Sitter states do not thermalise at sub-Hubble scales: they exhibit memory effects in the form of an entropy displacement caused by matter. The emergent laws of gravity contain an additional `dark' gravitational force describing the `elastic' response due to the entropy displacement. We derive an estimate of the strength of this extra force in terms of the baryonic mass, Newton's constant and the Hubble acceleration scale a_0 =cH_0, and provide evidence for the fact that this additional `dark gravity~force' explains the observed phenomena in galaxies and clusters currently attributed to dark matter.

(HD) Dark Matter & Dark Energy in the Universe - Full Documentary

See:(HD) Dark Matter & Dark Energy in the Universe - Full Documentary

The Xenon Dark Matter Project

Model of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search which translates actual data into sound and light. We have not yet had a dark matter interaction, but we have lots of particles hitting the detectors and that is what you are watching. A downloadable version is at my webpage http://www.hep.umn.edu/~prisca More info on our experiment can be found at http://cdms.berkeley.edu and http://www.soudan.umn.edu

There is current data that deals with this topic that has been transformed in how we look at this issue.  I leave that up to viewers to think about all the other bloggers that have already spoken to this. I wll give one link below for consideration.

See:

• Breaking News: Two Great New Measurements

The Geometrical State of the Universe

Supernova Cosmology Project

Dark Energy Camera

Dark Energy Camera construction time lapse

A long-awaited device that will help unravel one of the universe’s most compelling mysteries gets ready to see first light.See:The Dark Energy Camera opens its eyes

Unlike the human eye, photographic film and digital cameras can stare at the sky for a long time and store more and more light. By replacing the human eye with cameras, astronomers can detect fainter and more distant objects.

Cameras used for optical astronomy are usually composed of an array of digital chips called charge-coupled devices (CCDs). CCDs convert light into electrons. Each chip is divided into millions of pixels. The electrons generated by the light that hits each pixel are converted to a digital value that a computer can store or display. 

In concept, these are the same devices that make up the heart of any home digital camera. However, unlike home cameras that are used to record images of things that are very bright, astronomical CCDs must be souped up in order to detect the tiny amount of light that reaches us from faint and/or distant objects. Much of the light from extremely distant galaxies and supernovae has been redshifted into long-wavelength red and infrared light, which conventional CCDs do not detect very well. See: Dark Energy Survey

Thoughts On Dark Matter Search

  

A filament of dark matter has been directly detected between the galaxy clusters Abell 222 and Abell 223. The blue shading and yellow contour lines represent the density of matter. Image credit: Jörg Dietrich, U-M Department of Physics

In light of direction LHC is experiencing there is always the questions of Oversight in terms of the direction science needs to take. I have listed one aspect of the question of directions that may be of interest here? I have seen this procedure used over and over again. This is how I know to focus in on the experiments as they are listed and work backwards to gain full insight in these experimental procedures.

 This focus with regard to be "lead by science is part of the mantra" I hold and features part of my respect toward the science process that I have come to build in respect of where we are going and what is happening. In this spirit there has always been help by scientists who want to help the lay public with information to help exceed current levels of understanding with regard to where we are right now in that science.

 The challenge is not to be lost in the confrontations of opposing view points in science but to focus more on what is being offered in terms of advancing that science knowledge. One has to put aside these character attacks in order to focus on the science process itself and information. Character attacks on theoretical definitions.

 Following scientists you get to know who is respecting this foundational approach in order to push forward public knowledge. The vitriolic statements about character are like sandpaper or a screeching board, to respect for individuals in their pursuits

Over the years as a researcher of sorts digging deeply for the directions science projects are initiated are always with the idea that advisory boards put forward proposals for money toward experimental procedures.

 So in order to justified this money I have to believe the best approach to advancing that money is to consider it as a method to falsify on scientific grounds.

 I know people have their own theories but in order to advance falsifiable methods these have to be considered at the time the phenomenology of experimentation is proposed as part of the development of that method to do so.

 So the OP introduction toward a news article is hardly sufficient to think about the advancement of any theory on the grounds that it could encapsulate the entire process of advancing science as nothing more then news fodder. To be able to raise the question for those who believe that it is a opportunity to advance their own theories or to ask the question in the spirit of the OP?

 Liquid Xenon both scintillates and becomes ionized when hit by particles (i.e. photons, neutrons and potentially dark matter). The ratio of scintillation over ionization energy caused by the collision provides a way of identifying the interacting particle. The leading theoretical dark matter candidate, the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP), could be identified in this way. LUX Dark Matter

See:

• Fermi Provides Insights?

Fermi Provides Insights?

 There's more to the cosmos than meets the eye. About 80 percent of the matter in the universe is invisible to telescopes, yet its gravitational influence is manifest in the orbital speeds of stars around galaxies and in the motions of clusters of galaxies. Yet, despite decades of effort, no one knows what this "dark matter" really is. Many scientists think it's likely that the mystery will be solved with the discovery of new kinds of subatomic particles, types necessarily different from those composing atoms of the ordinary matter all around us. The search to detect and identify these particles is underway in experiments both around the globe and above it.

Scientists working with data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have looked for signals from some of these hypothetical particles by zeroing in on 10 small, faint galaxies that orbit our own. Although no signals have been detected, a novel analysis technique applied to two years of data from the observatory's Large Area Telescope (LAT) has essentially eliminated these particle candidates for the first time. See: Fermi Observations of Dwarf Galaxies Provide New Insights on Dark Matter 04.02.12

NGC 147, a dwarf spheroidal galaxy of the Local Group

 

Dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) is a term in astronomy applied to low luminosity galaxies that are companions to the Milky Way and to the similar systems that are companions to the Andromeda Galaxy M31. While similar to dwarf elliptical galaxies in appearance and properties such as little to no gas or dust or recent star formation, they are approximately spheroidal in shape, generally lower luminosity, and are only recognized as satellite galaxies in the Local Group.^[1]

While there were nine "classical" dSph galaxies discovered up until 2005, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has resulted in the discovery of 11 more dSph galaxies—this has radically changed the understanding of these galaxies by providing a much larger sample to study.^[2]

Recently, as growing evidence has indicated that the vast majority of dwarf ellipticals have properties that are not at all similar to elliptical galaxies, but are closer to irregular and late-type spiral galaxies, this term has been used to refer to all of the galaxies that share the properties of those above. These sorts of galaxies may in fact be the most common type of galaxies in the universe, but are much harder to see than other types of galaxies because they are so faint.

Because of the faintness of the lowest luminosity dwarf spheroidals and the nature of the stars contained within them, some astronomers suggest that dwarf spheroidals and globular clusters may not be clearly separate and distinct types of objects.^[3] Other recent studies, however, have found a distinction in that the total amount of mass inferred from the motions of stars in dwarf spheroidals is many times that which can be accounted for by the mass of the stars themselves. In the current predominantly accepted Cold Dark Matter cosmology, this is seen as a sure sign of dark matter, and the presence of dark matter is often cited as a reason to classify dwarf spheroidals as a different class of object from globular clusters (which show little to no signs of dark matter). Because of the extremely large amounts of dark matter in these objects, they may deserve the title "most dark matter-dominated galaxies" ^[4]

See also

• Galaxy
• Dwarf galaxy
• Dwarf elliptical galaxy
• Galaxy morphological classification
• Galaxy formation and evolution
• Groups and clusters of galaxies
• Irregular galaxy
• Local group
• List of nearest galaxies
• Dark galaxy

 

External links

• A popular overview
• Universe Today, Some Galaxies Are Made Almost Entirely of Dark Matter

 

References

1. ^ Mashchenko, Sergey; Sills, Alison; Couchman, H. M. (March 2006), "Constraining Global Properties of the Draco Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy", The Astrophysical Journal 640 (1): 252–269, arXiv:astro-ph/0511567, Bibcode 2006ApJ...640..252M, DOI:10.1086/499940
2. ^ Simon, Josh; Geha, Marla (November 2007), "The Kinematics of the Ultra-faint Milky Way Satellites: Solving the Missing Satellite Problem", The Astrophysical Journal 670 (1): 313–331, Bibcode 2007ApJ...670..313S, DOI:10.1086/521816
3. ^ van den Bergh, Sidney (November 2007), "Globular Clusters and Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies", MNRAS (Letters), in press 385 (1): L20, arXiv:0711.4795, Bibcode 2008MNRAS.385L..20V, DOI:10.1111/j.1745-3933.2008.00424.x
4. ^ Strigari, Louie; Koushiappas, et al; Bullock, James S.; Kaplinghat, Manoj; Simon, Joshua D.; Geha, Marla; Willman, Beth (September 2007), "The Most Dark Matter Dominated Galaxies: Predicted Gamma-ray Signals from the Faintest Milky Way Dwarfs", The Astrophysical Journal 678 (2): 614, arXiv:0709.1510, Bibcode 2008ApJ...678..614S, DOI:10.1086/529488

See Also:

• Team detects clusters’ dark matter scaffold

Brian Greene: Why is our universe fine-tuned for life?

At the heart of modern cosmology is a mystery: Why does our universe appear so exquisitely tuned to create the conditions necessary for life? In this tour de force tour of some of science's biggest new discoveries, Brian Greene shows how the mind-boggling idea of a multiverse may hold the answer to the riddle.

Brian Greene is perhaps the best-known proponent of superstring theory, the idea that minuscule strands of energy vibrating in a higher dimensional space-time create every particle and force in the universe.

See Also: 

• The Smoking Gun

Do Gamma rays hint at dark matter?

Using a new statistical technique to analyse publicly available data from NASA's Fermi Space Telescope, an astrophysicist in Germany says he may have spotted a tell-tale sign of exotic particles annihilating within the Milky Way. If proved to be real, this "gamma-ray line" would, he claims, be a "smoking-gun signature" of dark matter.

There is a wide body of indirect observational evidence that an invisible substance accounts for some 80% of the matter in the universe. Although physicists can measure the effects that this dark matter has on the visible universe, they have very little understanding of what this mysterious stuff actually is. As well as looking for direct evidence of dark matter by detecting it – or even producing it – here on Earth, researchers are also scouring the skies for signs of the particles that dark matter might produce when self-annihilating. An excess of high-energy positrons (anti-electrons) observed by the Italian-led PAMELA spacecraft in 2008, and confirmed by Fermi last year, might be such a signature. However, it is possible that these positrons are produced by processes unrelated to dark matter. See:Gamma rays hint at dark matter

Also a Physics World see: Has Fermi glimpsed dark matter?

A Mysterious Dark Flow?

Dark flow is an astrophysical term describing a peculiar velocity of galaxy clusters. The actual measured velocity is the sum of the velocity predicted by Hubble's Law plus a small and unexplained (or dark) velocity flowing in a common direction.

According to standard cosmological models, the motion of galaxy clusters with respect to the cosmic microwave background should be randomly distributed in all directions. However, analyzing the three-year WMAP data using the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, the authors of the study found evidence of a "surprisingly coherent" 600–1000 km/s^[1] flow of clusters toward a 20-degree patch of sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela.

The authors, Alexander Kashlinsky, F. Atrio-Barandela, D. Kocevski and H. Ebeling, suggest that the motion may be a remnant of the influence of no-longer-visible regions of the universe prior to inflation. Telescopes cannot see events earlier than about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe became transparent (the Cosmic Microwave Background); this corresponds to the particle horizon at a distance of about 46 billion (4.6×10¹⁰) light years. Since the matter causing the net motion in this proposal is outside this range, it would in a certain sense be outside our visible universe; however, it would still be in our past light cone.

The results appeared in the October 20, 2008, issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.^[1][2][3] Since then, the authors have extended their analysis to additional clusters and the recently released WMAP five-year data.

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This all-sky view of the entire near-infrared sky reveals the distribution of galaxies beyond the Milky Way and has been desaturated to serve as the background for the dark flow plots. The image is derived from the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog, which contains more than 1.5 million galaxies, and the Point Source Catalog, which holds nearly 500 million stars within the Milky Way. The galaxies are color coded for distances obtained by various surveys. The nearest sources are blue (redshifts less than 0.01), moderately distant sources (redshifts between 0.01 and 0.04) are green, and red represents the farthest sources that 2MASS resolves (between redshifts of 0.04 and 0.1).(click image for larger viewing)

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Video showing direction of travel of galaxy clusters at four distances from Earth. The colored dots are clusters within one of four distance ranges, with redder colors indicating greater distance. Colored ellipses show the axis of bulk motion for clusters of the corresponding color. Images of representative galaxy clusters in each distance slice are also shown. Credit: NASA/GSFC/A. Kashlinsky et al.

Distant galaxy clusters mysteriously stream at a million miles per hour along a path roughly centered on the southern constellations Centaurus and Hydra. A new study led by Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., tracks this collective motion -- dubbed the "dark flow" -- to twice the distance originally reported, out to more than 2.5 billion light-years.

The study used a new technique to determine the motion of X-ray-emitting galaxy clusters. The clusters appear to be moving along a line extending from our solar system toward Centaurus/Hydra, but the direction of this motion is less certain. Evidence indicates that the clusters are headed outward along this path, away from Earth, but the team cannot yet rule out the opposite flow.


The video shows the team's catalog of galaxy clusters separated into four "slices" representing different distance ranges. A colored ellipse shows the flow axis for the clusters within each slice. While the size and exact position of the ellipses vary, the overall trends show remarkable agreement. The video includes images of representative clusters in each distance slice.


The dark flow is controversial because the distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for it. Its existence suggests that some structure beyond the visible universe -- outside our "horizon" -- is pulling on matter in our vicinity. See: Dark Flow

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See Also: Dark Energy, Dark Flow, and can  we explain it away?

The Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics (COUPP)

The Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics (COUPP) collaboration looks for bubbles in chambers filled with a compound containing carbon, fluorine and iodine. The fluid is superheated beyond the boiling point but has no rough surface to form bubbles. When a specific type of particle interacts in the chamber, it can deposit enough energy to boil the fluid and make a bubble. Electrons do not produce bubbles, while a dark matter particle interacting with a nucleus can – making this the key for dark matter detection. See:Bubble chamber gets more precise in dark matter search

Bold added for emphasis.

See Also: Bubble chamber gets more precise in dark matter search

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The accelerating universe is the observation that the universe appears to be expanding at an increasing rate, which in formal terms means that the cosmic scale factor a(t) has a positive second derivative,^[1] implying that the velocity at which a given galaxy is receding from us should be continually increasing over time^[2] (here the recession velocity is the same one that appears in Hubble's law; defining 'velocity' in cosmology is somewhat subtle, see Comoving distance#Uses of the proper distance for a discussion). In 1998, observations of type Ia supernovae suggested that the expansion of the universe has been accelerating^[3][4] since around redshift of z~0.5.^[5] The 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics were both awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess for the 1998 discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae.^[6][7]

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In cosmology, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) refers to an overdensity or clustering of baryonic matter at certain length scales due to acoustic waves which propagated in the early universe.^[1] In the same way that supernova experiments provide a "standard candle" for astronomical observations,^[2] BAO matter clustering provides a "standard ruler" for length scale in cosmology.^[1] The length of this standard ruler (~150 Mpc in today's universe^[3]) can be measured by looking at the large scale structure of matter using astronomical surveys.^[3] BAO measurements help cosmologists understand more about the nature of dark energy (the acceleration of the universe) by constraining cosmological parameters.^[1]

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SDSS III: 2008-2014

In mid-2008, SDSS-III was started. It comprises four separate surveys, each conducted on the same 2.5m telescope: ^[9][10]

• Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE)
• Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS)
• Multi-object APO Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey (MARVELS)^[11]
• Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration 2 (SEGUE-2)

Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS)

The SDSS-III's Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) will map the spatial distribution of luminous red galaxies (LRGs) and quasars to detect the characteristic scale imprinted by baryon acoustic oscillations in the early universe. Sound waves that propagate in the early universe, like spreading ripples in a pond, imprint a characteristic scale on the positions of galaxies relative to each other ^[12] .

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See Also:

• SuperCDMS An Improvement on Detection 
• There Be Dragons on the Dark Matter Issue? 
• Sounding Off on the Dark Matter Issue
  

Scientists Have Found Unexplained Force?

Both radio observations with the VLBA and optical observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have measured the motions of concentrations of material in M87's jets, and have shown the material to be moving at apparent speeds greater than that of light. This "superluminal" motion is a geometric illusion created by material moving nearly, but under, the speed of light, but in a direction somewhat toward the Earth.

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I've walked these streets
A virtual stage
It seemed to me
Make up on their faces
Actors took their
Places next to me Natalie Merchant, Carnival

I've walked these streets
In the mad house asylum
They can be
Where a wild eyed misfit prophet
On a traffic island stopped
And he raved of saving me  Natalie Merchant, Carnival

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 It starts with a Bang......

Just about 14 Billions years ago, the universe flickered into existence in an event know as the Big Bang.

See Also: Theory Carnival: Phenomenological Quantum Gravity

Dark Matter

(Click on Image)


Friedman Equation What is _pdensity.

What are the three models of geometry? k=-1, K=0, k+1

Negative curvature

Omega=the actual density to the critical density
If we triangulate Omega, the universe in which we are in, Omega_m(mass)+ Omega(a vacuum), what position geometrically, would our universe hold from the coordinates given?  

See Also:

Non Euclidean Geometry and the Universe

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I am not sure if it is proper to take such expressions of dark energy and dark matter as they are perceived in the universe and apply them to a "dynamical movement of a kind,"  as an expression of that Universe?

Part of that "Toposense" you might say?

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IN their figure 2. Hyperbolic space, and their comparative relation to the M.C.Escher's Circle Limit woodcut, Klebanov and Maldacena write, " but we have replaced Escher's interlocking fish with cows to remind readers of the physics joke about the spherical cow as an idealization of a real one. In anti-de Sitter/conformal theory correspondence, theorists have really found a hyperbolic cow."

Click on image for larger version. See:Solving quantum field theories via curved spacetimes by Igor R. Klebanov and Juan M. Maldacena

See:

The Pringles Potato Chip

Lighting up the dark universe

The CHASE detector. The end of the magnet (orange) can be seen on the right.

Exploring our dark universe is often the domain of extreme physics. Traces of dark matter particles are searched for by huge neutrino telescopes located underwater or under Antarctic ice, by scientists at powerful particle colliders, and deep underground.  Clues to mysterious dark energy will be investigated using big telescopes on Earth and experiments that will be launched into space.
But an experiment doesn’t have to be exotic to explore the unexplained. At the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which ended today in Paris, scientists unveiled the first results from the GammeV-CHASE experiment, which used 30 hours’ worth of data from a 10-meter-long experiment to place the world’s best limits on the existence of dark energy particles.

CHASE, which stands for Chameleon Afterglow Search, was constructed at Fermilab to search for hypothetical particles called chameleons. Physicists theorize that these particles may be responsible for the dark energy that is causing the accelerating expansion of our universe.

“One of the reasons I felt strongly about doing this experiment is that it was a good example of a laboratory experiment to test dark energy models,” says CHASE scientist Jason Steffen, who presented the results at ICHEP. “Astronomical surveys are important as well, but they’re not going to tell us everything.” CHASE was a successor to Fermilab’s GammeV experiment, which searched for chameleon particles and another hypothetical particle called the axion.

See: Lighting up the dark universe by Katie Yurkewicz Posted in ICHEP 2010

See Also:Backreaction: Detection of Dark Energy on Earth? - Improbable

There Be Dragons on the Dark Matter Issue?

 I have been intrigued by the comparison of the latest reporting by Bee of Backreaction at a workshop at Perimeter Institute about the Laws of Nature: Their Nature and Knowability.

Bee writes, "Yesterday, we had a talk by Marcelo Gleiser titled “What can we know of the world?”."

I look at this from a historical position as it has been outplayed from the beginning as to the understanding that gravity in the universe can have it's counterpart revealed the action of a phenomenology search for the dark matter constituents while describing the state of the uinverse.

The type of detective work described by Sherlock Holmes has been used by astronomers for a long time to deepen our understanding of the universe. Ever since the phenomenal success of Isaac Newton in explaining the motion of the planets with his theory of gravity and laws of motion in 1687, unseen matter has been invoked to explain puzzling observations of cosmic bodies.

Sirius A & B

For example, the anomalous motion of Uranus led astronomers to suggest that an unseen planet existed, and a few years later, in 1846, Neptune was discovered. This procedure is still the primary method used to discover planets orbiting stars.
A similar line of reasoning led to the detection in 1862, of the faint white dwarf Sirius B in orbit around the bright star Sirius.

In contrast, the attempt to explain the anomalies in the motion of Mercury as due to the existence of a new planet, called Vulcan, did not succeed. The solution turned out to be Einstein's theory of general of relativity, which modified Newton's theory.

Today, astronomers are faced with a similar, though much more severe, problem. Unlike the case of Uranus, where the gravity of Neptune adds a fraction of a percent to the gravitational force acting of Uranus, the extra force needed in the cases described below is several hundred percent! It is no exaggeration to say that solving the dark matter problem will require a profound change in our understanding of the universe. See:Field Guide to Dark Matter

So given the outlay of experiential work to the subject there would be those that counter the proposal to support such research because they believe that such an exercise if fruitless to solving the nature of the cosmos and the way the universe could be expanding according to some speeding up of a gravitational consideration ?

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Update:
Impressions from the PI workshop on the Laws of Nature


See Also:
There Be Dragons?
Map of North America from 1566 showing both Terra In Cognita and Mare In Cognito.
Sounding Off on the Dark Matter Issue
Dark Matter Discovery Announced by Nasa

SuperCDMS An Improvement on Detection

So far no WIMP interaction has been observed, so the sensitivity needs to be improved further. This will be achieved by increasing the total detector mass (and with this the probability that a WIMP interacts in the detector) and at the same time reducing the background and improving the discrimination power. This effort started in 2009 under the name SuperCDMS.

The first set of new detectors has been installed in the experimental setup at Soudan and is operating since summer 2009. First tests show that the background levels are in the expected range. Over the course of the next year all CDMS detectors will be replaced by the new larger detectors. The active mass will increase by more than a factor of three to about 15 kg.See:CDMS and SuperCDMS Experiments

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It is known since the 1930's that a significant part of the mass of the universe is invisible. This invisible material has been named Dark Matter. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are considered as one of the most convincing explanation for this phenomenon.See:SuperCDMS Queen's Home

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SNOLAB is an underground science laboratory specializing in neutrino and dark matter physics. Situated two km below the surface in the Vale Inco Creighton Mine located near Sudbury Ontario Canada, SNOLAB is an expansion of the existing facilities constructed for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) solar neutrino experiment. SNOLAB follows on the important achievements in neutrino physics achieved by SNO and other underground physics measurements. The primary scientific emphasis at SNOLAB will be on astroparticle physics with the principal topics being:
Low Energy Solar Neutrinos;
Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay;
Cosmic Dark Matter Searches;
Supernova Neutrino Searches.

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The Sudbury Neutrino Laboratory, located two kilometres below the surface, is the site of groundbreaking international research.

 The 17-metre-wide SNO detector in Vale Inco’s Creighton Mine.
Ernest Orlando, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Update:
Latest Results in the Search for Dark Matter
Thursday, December 17, 2009

 

 

Dark Matter Detected, or Not? Live Blogging the Seminar

by JoAnne

Sounding Off on the Dark Matter Issue

Fermilab

If dark matter can pull gravitationally, it has mass

So here is an article of 2006 with some interesting information. Now these experimental procedures are always interesting to me because of the type of detectors that were dreamt up in which to measure some aspect of the reality supposed, and realized, by noise in the background.

For scientists to "hear" a dark matter particle, it must hit an atom in one of the crystals at the heart of the CDMS detectors. The crystals are kept cold—close to absolute zero—to reduce atomic movement, keeping the crystals quiet. The detectors "listen" for vibrations inside the crystal, like ears listening for vibrations in the air.

The detectors contain two kinds of crystals, germanium and silicon. A germanium atom is larger than a silicon one: Its nucleus has 73 protons and neutrons compared to silicon's 28. This size difference helps CDMS sort out yet another source of background—neutrons. High-energy cosmic rays and radioactive decays in the matter surrounding the detectors can produce neutrons. Hitting atoms in the crystals, these neutrons cause a "sound" in the detectors similar to the one made by the predicted dark matter particles.See: Listening for whispers of dark matter

Model of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search which translates actual data into sound and light. We have not yet had a dark matter interaction, but we have lots of particles hitting the detectors and that is what you are watching. A downloadable version is at my webpage http://www.hep.umn.edu/~prisca More info on our experiment can be found at http://cdms.berkeley.edu and http://www.soudan.umn.edu

So lets mover forward here to Dec 10, while waiting to hear on Dec 17 for more news.

The CDMS collaboration has completed the analysis of the final CDMS-II runs, which more than doubled the total data from all previous runs combined. The collaboration is working hard to complete the first scientific publication about these new results and plans to submit the manuscript to arXiv.org before the two primary CDMS talks scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 17, at Fermilab and at SLAC. See:The search for dark matter:has CDMS found something?

Update:
Latest Results in the Search for Dark Matter
Thursday, December 17, 2009

Dark Matter Detected, or Not? Live Blogging the Seminar

by JoAnne

One Small step.......for Mankind

It should read...Humankind.

Lee Smolin:

"Here is a metaphor due to Eric Weinstein that I would have put in the book had I heard it before. Let us take a different twist on the landscape of theories and consider the landscape of possible ideas about post standard model or quantum gravity physics that have been proposed. Height is proportional to the number of things the theory gets right. Since we don’t have a convincing case for the right theory yet, that is a high peak somewhere off in the distance. The existing approaches are hills of various heights that may or may not be connected, across some ridges and high valleys to the real peak. We assume the landscape is covered by fog so we can’t see where the real peak is, we can only feel around and detect slopes and local maxima.

Counter arguments are good things if we can understand where this next step takes us.

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Science Saturday: The Recipe For Our Universe

People need to understand something about dialogue( Pirsig is being offered here as gesture of what I am paying forward by implication) as a means of bringing out the best of us and of each other. I could of course digress to the Socratic method of searching the population for the most "wisest of words" but we are living in a new age of media now aren't we?:)

I thought to replace Sean's head with Plato and Mark Troddens with Sir Francis Bacon, just to encapsulate further "the rhetoric" that seems "to find the most viable method of presenting the place were we can step off of," and if the moon step taken on one rung down would have you think of Michael Jackson current passing, this would be far from what stepping on new worlds should mean, although I would present his passing as a higher perspective of viewing the world from which he had lived in and shared.

Such conceptual boundaries are then moved in kind. Working the earth in higher geometrical perspective and it's curvature, is a Geometers historical place once part of the discussion of earth as a postulate, to find that all of this becomes part of what the earth as a pearl could look like for the very first time as that first space walk took place.



Photo from NASA of the Bullet Cluster

 

These stills show four stages from an artist's representation of the huge collision that is taking place in the bullet cluster. Hot gas, containing most of the normal matter in the cluster, is shown in red and dark matter is shown in blue. During the collision the hot gas in each cluster is slowed and distorted by a drag force, similar to air resistance. A bullet-shaped cloud of gas forms in one of the clusters. In contrast, the dark matter is not slowed by the impact because it does not interact directly with itself or the gas except through gravity. Therefore, the dark matter clumps from the two clusters move ahead of the hot gas, producing the separation of the dark and normal matter seen in the image. More Images

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'An unexpected gift' from string theory

The possibility that enormously large galaxies originated from tiny quantum fluctuations may seem too strange to be true. But many aspects of inflationary theory were confirmed by recent astronomical observations, for which the observers won the Nobel Prize in 2006. This gives some credence to an even more surprising claim made by Linde: During inflation, quantum fluctuations can produce not only galaxies, but also new parts of the universe.

Take an expanding universe with its little pockets of heterogeneous quantum events. At some point one of those random events may actually "escape" from its parent universe, forming a new one, Linde said. To use the ball analogy, if it experiences small perturbations as it rolls, it might at some point roll over into the next valley, initiating a new inflationary process, he said.

"The string theorists predict that there are perhaps 101000 different types of universes that can be formed that way," Linde said. "I had known that there must be many different kinds of universes with different physical properties, but this huge number of different possibilities was an unexpected gift of string theory."

According to string theory, there are 10 dimensions. We live aware of four of them—three of space plus one of time. The rest are so small that we cannot experience them directly. In 2003, Stanford physicists Shamit Kachru, Renata Kallosh and Linde, with their collaborator Sandip Trivedi from India, discovered that these compacted dimensions want to expand, but that the time it would take for them to do so is beyond human comprehension. When a new universe buds off from its parent, the configuration of which dimensions remain small and which grow large determines the physical laws of that universe. In other words, an infinite number of worlds could exist with 101000 different types of physical laws operating among them. Susskind called this picture "the string theory landscape."

For many physicists, it is disturbing to think that the very laws and properties that are the essence of our world might only hold true as long as we remain in that world. "We always wanted to discover the theory of everything that would explain the unique properties of our world, and now we must adjust to the thought that many different worlds are possible," Linde said. But he sees an advantage in what some others could see a problem: "We finally learned that inflationary universe is not just a free lunch: It is an eternal feast where all possible dishes are served."

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See:

Bullet Cluster

Dark Matter Issue

AP(Anthropic Principal) May Still be Useful?

Acrobate Within every Point of Space

Cold Spots

One would have to know that "expansionist values" for the blackholes temperature, to know, that in a "gravitational collapse" heat is generated, and thusly, the geometrical propensity to certain K values would be "indicative" on a classical level?

One might never know of the relation I have with Koan's as mentioned in my earlier post "entitled" on koan link. "By example" to be mystified to a great extent of the contradictions one faces in life. The values of the constant in science, how is one to contend with the anomalies it has found, in one's own life, that refutes all the applications of science, while knowing of the value of this relation too moving all ahead?

It is a predicament indeed that calls for caution, so as not to avert logical forming apparatuses of science, to such a "meta thinking" I am displaying here in this bloggery.

See:Axis of Evil While one might be fascinated with the terminologies of the "title selected," or a name that was to include "God particle", there is this real faucet of understanding about the nature of the universe.

While I try to show, that even with my meta physical standpoint "such journeys of the imagination" leave much to desire under such a subjective content of "colour gravity." I am relegating the mind to know and see it's relation, to emotive, mental and spiritual relations, to what is happening in such an "imaginative space of body home." Kepler's epitaph most appropriate here.

I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure,
Sky-bound was the mind, earth-bound the body rests Kepler's epitaph for his own tombstone

I persevere under the heading of "pushing science" ahead of my own measures, while pointing to such thinking, to reveal, that such geometrics find itself in such "minute places" can be compulsive to dictating what the larger perspective of the universe is doing. But that's just me.

Such graviton condensate applications would dictate what that "space is doing" in relation to the global perspective of 10⁵⁰⁰and in regard to that global geometrical sense?

These thoughts are in the presence of "motivational global forces" that contract and expand, under the heading of "dark energy" and "dark matter." While it is never easy to see my contention of sound and it's relations to aspects of diversifying one's "point of view", while retaining only the simulated perspective of the developments of science in the measured data from space, I would always like to "point out" that sound in such analogies are my attribute to the values of seeing space in such a B mode way too.