LOL! There's that “could help reveal” phrase that DM proponents love to spout.The Higgs boson, the mysterious particle that lends other particles their mass, could have kept our universe from collapsing. And its properties might be a clue that we live in a multiverse of parallel worlds, a wild new theory suggests. ... snip ... If true, the new model would entail the creation of new particles, which in turn would explain why the strong force — which ultimately keeps atoms from collapsing — seems to obey certain symmetries. And along the way, it could help reveal the nature of dark matter — the elusive substance that makes up most matter.
The problem, they say, is that Higgs boson experiments indicate the particle has a mass that is "orders of magnitude smaller than what physicists had thought it should be." Plus, "the strong force isn't exactly behaving as the Standard Model predicts it should. In the mathematics that physicists use to describe high-energy interactions, there are certain symmetries. ... snip ... In all experiments performed to date, the strong force appears to obey the combined symmetry of both charge reversal and parity reversal. But the mathematics of the strong force do not show that same symmetry. No known natural phenomena should enforce that symmetry, and yet nature seems to be obeying it. What gives?"
So they invoke inflation ... a gnome ... as the foundation for their latest theory. Inflation is needed to explain the flatness and horizon that we actually see in the observable universe, which otherwise would be contra-indicated if there was a Big Bang. The universe should be isotropic ... the same in all directions ... and without any large scale asymmetries. For these reasons, the Big Bang predicted there would be no large structures (collections of galaxies, etc) shortly after the Big Bang ... because they take time to form and might constitute and asymmetry. And a paper in 1997 concluded that the “The most decisive observational evidence against inflation would be provided by evidence that the Universe possesses large-scale rotation.” But observations have shown strong evidence of asymmetries, large scale rotation and early large structures ... all contrary to mainstream theory. Worse, the article admits that even after decades and decades of costly research, "[p}hysicists aren't exactly sure what powered inflation or how it worked". There simply is NO PROOF that inflation is anything but a gnome. Just a few years back, astrophysicists and the mainstream media got all excited because they thought they’d finally found that proof. Turned out to be a mistaken interpretation of observations (dust was the cause) and the mea culpa was buried on page 9 like it always is with the mainstream media. Sorry, but a gnome is pretty weak foundation for this multiverse theory.A pair of theorists, Raffaele Tito D'Agnolo of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and Daniele Teresi of CERN, thought that these two problems might be related. ... snip ... They invoked an idea called the multiverse, which is born out of a theory called inflation.
But it gets worse. The article next says ...
So, the new theory introduces two more gnomes (particles) that despite years of already looking for such things, haven't been seen. Then they add an additional (4th) gnome. They claim the new particles "might still be inhabiting the present-day cosmos" and "if one of their masses is small enough, it could have evaded detection in our accelerator experiments". And if so, they "could be responsible for the dark matter, the invisible stuff that makes up over 85% of all the matter in the universe." It's a theory of gnomes built on gnomes built on gnomes.Different regions of this "multiverse" will have different values of the Higgs mass. The researchers found that universes with a large Higgs mass find themselves catastrophically collapsing before they get a chance to grow. Only the regions of the multiverse that have low Higgs masses survive and have stable expansion rates, leading to the development of galaxies, stars, planets and eventually high-energy particle colliders.
To make a multiverse with varying Higgs masses, the team had to introduce two more particles into the mix. These particles would be new additions to the Standard Model. The interactions of these two new particles set the mass of the Higgs in different regions of the multiverse.
Then, laughably, they say "Could a solution really be this simple?" Gee, weren't they saying that just the other day in regards to the primordial black hole idea solving all their observational issues plus being dark matter? Seems to be a lot of this type of reasoning going around and pretending to be *science*. I just think it's an act of DESPERATION.
They conclude the article with this ...
You can just hear the K'ching Kching. And visualize them rubbing their hands together gleefully at the timeline. It's a form of guaranteed employment for the mainstream astrophysics community. Just saying ...As elegant as it is, the theory still needs to be tested. The model predicts a certain mass range for the dark matter, something that future experiments that are on the hunt for dark matter, like the underground facility the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, could determine. Also, the theory predicts that the neutron should have a small but potentially measurable asymmetry in the electric charges within the neutron, a difference from the predictions of the Standard Model. .... snip ... Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait awhile. Each of these measurements will take years, if not decades, to effectively rule out — or support - the new idea.