https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... frontiers/
Before I get into the topic itself, I should probably point out that the title of the article demonstrates conclusively that so called "scientists", and the Scientific American publication as a whole, do not even understand what "science" actually is. There is no such thing as direct "proof" in science. That is a faerie tale being told by a scientifically ignorant putz. No such thing as a "proof" exists within the framework of the scientific method.
Perhaps there is such a thing as direct "evidence" in the realm of science to be found in "controlled" experiments. However, to "control" such an experiment, one would have to be able to "control" dark matter too which nobody can actually do, so the title of the article should have read "Indirect Evidence of Dark Matter May Lurk at Low-Energy Frontiers".
Who writes this click bait crap for Scientific American anyway, grade school children? You'd think they'd understand enough about "science" to know that science cannot actually "prove" anything, nor is their "proof" of anything in science. The term "evidence" applies to the term "science" and to the scientific method. The term "proof" applies to religion and to creation mythology.
Anyway, enough of my personal rant, and back to the "new detection method" being proposed for the "dark matter" concept:
Hoy Vey. I gather that the term "shifting sensibilities" relates to the dark matter researchers "sensibly" trying to figure out a new way to milk the proverbial public "cash cow" a new way, since the old way didn't produce anything useful.With no definitive sign of WIMPs emerging from years of careful searching, however, physicists have been broadening the scope of their quest. As new, more precise experiments ramp up data collection, researchers are reassessing theories about how dark matter particles lighter than a proton might appear in their detectors. Two papers posted on the preprint server arXiv.org earlier this year are emblematic of these shifting sensibilities. They are the first to propose that a detector could find plasmons—aggregates of electrons moving together in a material—produced by dark matter.
Translation: The gaps ran out at the higher end of the kinetic energy spectrum, so like all good snipe hunts, it's time the move the goalposts into the lower (and higher than LHC) energy range(s) so they can continue to milk the public cash cow out of "dark matter" funding.At high energies, this picture is essentially fine. Atoms in the detector can be thought of as free particles, discrete and unconnected to one another. At lower energies, however, the picture changes.
I'm gathering from the tone of the article that the Xenon detector experiments have run their course and they've started to reach their upper useful limits in terms of having any hope of finding WIMPs based on their current "detection" methods. Cue the next major goalpost movement process.
It looks like they're going to move the 'hunt' into the realm of solid state detector mechanisms and low energy states.
So no "big" crash and bang into particles, just some tiny "ding" on the rack of billiard balls. In other words, they did run out of gaps at high end of the kinetic energy spectrum, and the low end is pure speculation yet again.Within a detector, a particle of low-mass dark matter would still transfer momentum. But instead of breaking a rack of billiard balls, it might cause them to wobble. In others words, it would act more like a Ping-Pong ball.
Now I'd have to point out here that the neutrinos are thought to have mass, and if this is the case, then how would they hope to distinguish between what a "dark matter" particle might do to the "rack", and something a neutrino might do to the very same rack?
It seems to me that this whole "down the next metaphysical rabbit hole" routine is lacking in any sort of physical justification or logical methodology to even physically distinguish between a "neutrino" ping-pong ball hitting the rack, and a "dark matter" ping pong ball hitting the rack.
But as the late Nobel laureate physicist Philip Anderson once quipped, “More is different”—a nod to the fact that novel effects emerge at different scales. A droplet of water, for example, obeys different rules than an individual molecule of H2O. “I have totally drunk that Kool-Aid,” Kahn says.
Even Lin, one of the scientists working on the concept hasn't drunk that Kook-Aid. How could they? How would they even distinguish between dark matter Kool-Aid and a neutrino "wave" Kool-Aid?This discussion caught the attention of other physicists, such as Lin, who quickly jumped to work on plasmon calculations. But even she has doubts that what the experiments are currently seeing are the results of dark matter creating plasmons. “I'm not saying it couldn’t be dark matter,” Lin says. “But it doesn’t seem convincing to me so far.”
Exciting perhaps in terms of keeping "dark matter" funding alive, but not very exciting at the level of actual science.“There are many ways in which we can be wrong,” Krnjaic says. “And they’re all exciting.”
It looks to me like the dark matter guys (and gals) have run out of billiard ball sized kinetic energy transactions, associated with WIMPS and Xenon experiments. They are into the realm of kinetic energy transactions resembling "ping pong balls hitting a billiard ball rack" realm of physics. Now all we need to know is how they intend to tell the physical difference between a ping pong ball made of "neutrinos" (or waves of neutrinos) hitting that "rack" and a and "dark matter ping pong balls" hitting that very same rack. If they're going to try to sell this concept, they'll need to be a lot more specific.
I'd say this is the first public evidence that the WIMP concept is officially toast.
LHC and Xenon experiments have eliminated all the "popular" concepts related to WIMP dark matter, so it's time for the dark matter researchers to look for another way to get more gravy from the public gravy train.
Without building a larger particle physics collider, it's not possible to explore the *higher* energy areas of physics for "dark matter", but evidently the 'dark matter" proponents might be able to milk a few hundred more "millions" (rather than billions) of dollars at the lower energy, lower cost end of the spectrum.
Here we go again.......
If it were not possible to explain cosmology related observations in terms of electric fields in space, and "dark mode" current carrying plasma, there might be some logical physical motive for even proposing such a thing as "dark matter" in the first place, but since it *is* possible to explain various cosmological observations without exotic matter, this is just goofy nonsense.
We're seeing panic happening now in terms of laboratory funding of "dark matter" experiments, and panic in astronomy in terms of not being able to logically reconcile their five plus sigma conflict with the Hubble constant. We're seeing panic set in as it relates to trying to justify "massive" and "mature" galaxies and quasars in the distant (early) universe.
There's been no serious progress in theoretical physics for more than fifty years. The standard model of particle physics has been tested to incredible sigma precision in virtually every conceivable way, and it's done a wonderful job of explaining everything we see at LHC. The standard model of particle physics has passed every possible "test" that we could think of, and it's been a highly successful model of particle physics.
The LCDM model by comparison is the biggest metaphysical dog at the metaphysical dog and physics pony show. It's failed virtually every actual "prediction" it every made. It's failing more of them with every new high redshift observation in space, including a distinct lack of the predicted Population III stars where the LCDM model predicts them to exist in "spacetime". There's no evidence of galaxy evolution or quasar evolution over time. They added 'dark energy' to the original big bang model when it failed a previous observation, yet there's still a five plus sigma self conflict within the LCMD model with respect to the Hubble constant! They whole model violates the conservation of energy laws for breakfast lunch and dinner!
It makes a lot more scientific sense to spend the next few millions of public tax payer dollars replicating Birkeland's *whole* range of experiments in a laboratory setting. I'm sure we'd learn a lot more about the universe around us by going back to real working laboratory physics, and leaving the random metaphysical musing behind.
