https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cha ... experiment
And from the MSN …‘Chameleon’ forces remain elusive in a new dark energy experiment
A chameleon-like force that shifts its nature based on its environment could explain a major physics quandary: how the mysterious substance called dark energy is compelling the cosmos to expand faster and faster. But a new experiment casts doubt on some chameleon theories, researchers report August 25 in Nature Physics.
The chameleon force would be a fifth type of force beyond the basic four: gravitational, strong, weak and electromagnetic. And like a chameleon changing its colors, the hypothetical fifth force would morph depending on the density of its surroundings. In dense environments like Earth, this fifth force would be feeble, camouflaging its effects. In the sparseness of space, the force would be stronger and long-ranged.
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So He and colleagues designed a detector to search for a subtle fifth force. A wheel with plastic films attached spins past another film sitting on a magnetically levitated piece of graphite. If a chameleon force really exists, the films spinning by would cause a periodic force on the levitating plastic, pulling it up and down. (Gravity also acts this way, but thanks to the device’s design, it should be much weaker than a chameleon force.)
The team was able to rule out a category of chameleon theories. In the future, the researchers hope to improve their results by chilling their device to allow for more sensitive measurements.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo ... r-AA1165DB
Notice the last paragraph in both articles? Yep. Keep the dollars coming! They’ve mouths to feed, house, cloth, entertain, and educate. Especially in these inflationary times.A test to measure a leading candidate for dark energy, a fifth fundamental force called the chameleon force, has found no evidence that it is real.. The researchers behind the test say this rules out the basic chameleon model as an explanation for dark energy, but some people think that it could still play a role.
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“If dark energy really exists, then in our experiment we should be able to detect [the chameleon force],'' says He. “We have a very sensitive force sensor, but we found nothing.”
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The researchers hope to improve their apparatus by cooling it to very low temperatures so they can further probe the chameleon idea and test other dark energy candidates at even smaller energy scales, such as symmetron theory, another potential fifth force that would work like the Higgs boson.