DARK
MATTER
Do
you think a dummy like me might have guessed “where dark matter is”?
I
love Wikipedia! Widely accepted by scientists, the contributors to Wikipedia, it
is accurate information, compiled to provide a synopsis of reference material,
which is also available.
Here
is what they have to say; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
An excerpt;
Dark matter is
called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does
not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation (like light) and is,
therefore, difficult to detect. Various astrophysical observations
— including gravitational effects which cannot be explained by
currently accepted theories of gravity unless
more matter is present than can be seen — imply dark matter's presence.
For this reason, most experts think that dark matter is
abundant in the universe and has had a strong influence on its structure and
evolution.[2]
Can
you imagine the gravitational force it would take to keep an electron in orbit
around an atom?
First,
you have to assume that that scientific model
is correct. Next, you have to assume that the mass of
an electron can be compared to a PHOTON. (light)
A
few references;
A photon is a “quantum of electromagnetic
radiation”.
A “quantum of electromagnetic radiation” is called a photon. Visible light and other forms of electromagnetic
radiation may be thought of as a stream of photons, with photon energy directly
proportional to frequency.
You
probably guessed what is coming next!
What
is the only gravity powerful enough to capture, and keep light in orbit?
If
you guessed “BLACK HOLE”, then you have a scientific “curiosity”, and
won’t mind if I call it a “singularity” from here on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole
This
makes me smile, to think we stupid humans, accidentally gave “DARK MATTER” a sort’a correct name!
We
have been wondering where “DARK MATTER” is. Is it possible that there is a
“singularity” inside the nucleus, inside of every proton and neutron, in every
atom, in the entire universe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity
It would certainly help to explain the missing mass called “dark matter”.
We
have a “nodding” acquaintance with electricity. I say “nodding” because we
don’t know much about electricity. I have a hunch we gave electricity the wrong
name.
We
only discovered how to detect it, and generate it, and store it, within the
last few centuries, and it was probably mistaken as the wrath of GOD, in
biblical times.
😉
We
put it to work more efficiently every day, and we learn new uses for it, and we
find it in places, like the brain, where we really don’t know what it’s doing
there, or where it came from.
If
you are following my thread, then you can see where I got the following notion:
When
we better understand the relationship between a singularity and an “electron”,
(photon) then we will reveal many unknowns which we are faced with in nearly
every scientific field known to man.
1.
Space travel
2.
Generation of
electricity
3.
Medicine (Imagine
the uses!)
4.
Eradicate the
need for fossil fuels
5.
Etc. etc.
I digress.
If, indeed, there is a singularity in
every atom, (and possibly many other places we don’t know about), it may be the
dark matter (unaccounted-for mass in the universe) which we seek, and we are,
so far, only able to detect the electrical portion. We have methods to measure
gravity that are so crude, that we should be embarrassed to know so little
about the most important element. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity
If we combined our crude electrical
measuring devices with a much improved gravity
detector (gravity MEASURING device) to obtain a new quantity which is a
combination of both. (we could call it a PILOGROT, like KILOGRAM only with a
peterson twist, and the initial “p”)
We cannot be satisfied that those are the
only 2 items involved in the equation. We only realized that we needed to
locate “dark matter” in the second half of the 20th century, and we
would be deeply satisfied to know where it is, not to mention being able
to measure it, and possibly, manipulate it.
We say we are stardust. The elements that
we and the entire earth are made of were, in theory, formed in super massive
stars, and cast asunder by super novas. (plural novae or novas) Some
are massive enough to collapse into a singularity. Question: Do singularities
evaporate? Light can’t escape, but is there evaporation taking place? This
could be a source of elemental production.
There is evaporation taking place where
we don’t expect it. An ice cube in a freezer won’t give up any liquid water, but will evaporate to nothing. That is where those
ice crystals in your plastic bags of frozen food come from. The desiccated
remains are what we call “freezer burnt”. The food is still ok, just dried out.
The evaporated moisture condenses on the container.
If material is, in fact, evaporated from
a singularity, we might have a problem understanding what form it would take,
and recondensing a safe distance from its source, could explain the source of
some of the elements. It would certainly help to explain how an atomic nucleus
could hold an electron in orbit.
Is it possible that the singularity in
each atom (may
have come from one of many “big bangs”) could account for, at least, a portion of this unknown force? We can’t do
anything with it if we can’t detect it or measure it.
As an A+
student of astronomy, I have a theory I have developed,
supported by my observations, and, most importantly, recent discoveries.
It is thought that there is a black hole at the center of our galaxy and all of the stars (in ALL spiral galaxies) are in orbit
around the enormous singularity at the center.
The A NASA image shows
the center of our galaxy in unprecedented detail. Andromeda Galaxy with satellite
galaxies M32 (center left above the galactic
nucleus) and M110 (center left below the galaxy)
Even the
smaller singularities, scattered throughout the galaxy, formed by dying stars,
are affected by the gravitational forces of the largest, and usually the most
central singularity.
Direct image of a supermassive black hole at
the core of Messier 87[1]
Many scientists
theorize, and I agree, that black holes continue to grow in SIZE
(mass) by devouring their neighbors.
Here, most
scientists part company. One school believes that ALL of
the observable matter in our detectable, (and all of the imaginable) universe
must recombine into one super massive singularity, whereupon there will be
another big bang, one, of an infinity of big bangs, in an endless cycle,
indifferent to TIME, which is a human contrivance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
Another school
(myself included) believes that singularities reach a
certain mass and, spontaneously, explode, much like a colossal supernova
on an unimaginable scale. We don’t necessarily believe that all known matter
must accumulate in order for this to happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova
Is it possible
that there are, infinite, localized and scattered, singularities, evolving to
disintegrate into “big bang” status, in an infinite universe which we are only
able to imagine. (I have doubts about our ability to understand infinity,
judging from our exploitation of every imaginable thing on the planet, but,
once again, I digress.)
So, is it right
before our very eyes, in everything composed of atoms? Is what we call space actually a particle that could possess a “dark matter”
element?
With our
limited technology we are unable to see very small, and very large things. Our
limited technology, namely the electron microscope, allows us to see what we
believe to be individual atoms, but we can’t see the electrons that we theorize
to be in orbit around the nucleus.
And, speaking
of small, can you imagine how infinitesimally small would be a singularity,
powerful enough to capture an electron in orbit, but not powerful enough to
gobble neighboring nuclei? There could be an enormous amount of matter stored
there.
Chemical
reactions alter atoms to become different elements, and elements combine to
become molecules, compounds, and mixtures, without having any noticeable effect
on the force attracting electrons to stay in orbit. Scientists are
experimenting with affecting that force by colliding atoms at speeds
approaching light speed in the Hadron collider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
, with a possibility of fusing nuclei, with unknown consequences. The dangerous
possibility of forming a neighbor gobbling singularity is very real. But again,
I digress.
Simulated Large
Hadron Collider CMS
particle
detector data depicting a
Higgs
boson produced by colliding
protons
decaying into hadron jets
and electrons
So, this is my
stupid, uneducated theory of “DARK MATTER”. The very thing we are searching for
is everywhere, and we just haven’t figured out how to measure something so
tiny.
If you found
this interesting, you may find other dissertations of interest at http://www.petesmemories.com
Today, March
30, 2023, merging supermassive black holes were responsible for the largest
explosion ever recorded. At the end of the article there was another article
about dark matter. I added it here.
END
Additional References
I found this fascinating article while reading about
the greatest explosion ever recorded. (https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/biggest-explosion-universe/#:~:text=A%20combination%20of%20data%20from,release%20of%20energy%20ever%20discovered.&text=It%20was%20carved%20by%20an,%C3%97%2010%E2%81%B5%E2%81%B4%20J%20of%20energy .), also a fascinating read. If you click on this,
and it’s gone, see screen grabs at end.
This is copyrighted material, and I may have to remove
it all at some point.
It is beyond my education level, and I comprehend
about 75%, but it basicly states that my theory may possibly be correct.
Credit: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/dark-matter-nightmare-scenario/
There’s an
enormous puzzle to the Universe, and it’s one that might remain puzzling for a
long time: dark matter. For generations, it has been recognized that the known
law of gravity, Einstein’s General Relativity, combined with the matter and
radiation that’s known to exist in the Universe — including all the particles
and antiparticles described by the Standard Model of physics — doesn’t add up
to describe what we see. Instead, on a variety of cosmic
scales, from the insides of individual galaxies to groups and
clusters of galaxies all the way up to the largest filamentary structures of
all, an additional source of gravity is required.
It’s possible
that we’ve got the law of gravity wrong, but if that’s the problem, it’s
wrong in an extremely complicated
way that also seems to require an additional source of matter
(or something that behaves equivalently). Instead, the most common and
successful hypothesis is that of dark matter: that there’s an additional form
of matter out there, and we feel its gravity, but have yet to
experimentally detect it. That hope, of direct experimental
confirmation, is only possible if dark matter interacts with either itself or
normal matter in a way that leaves a detectable signature. If dark matter’s
only interactions are gravitational, we might never detect it. Unfortunately,
that “nightmare scenario” might be exactly what’s really happening.
There are a number of puzzle pieces that, when
you put them together, strongly favor the dark
matter hypothesis. For one, we know
the total amount of normal matter in the Universe extremely precisely, as the
ratio of the light elements that existed before any stars had formed —
including hydrogen, deuterium, helium-3, helium-4, and lithium — is extremely
sensitive to the ratio of normal matter to the total number of photons.
We’ve measured
the photons left over from the Big Bang: that’s the cosmic microwave
background. We’ve also measured the abundances of those elements, and we’re
certain that only 4.9% of the Universe’s total energy is in the form of normal
matter.
Meanwhile,
when we look at:
·
the acoustic peaks in the cosmic
microwave background’s imperfections,
·
the way that galaxies cluster and
correlate across space and time,
·
the speed of individual galaxies
within galaxy groups and clusters,
·
the gravitational lensing effects of
massive cosmic objects,
and much more, we find that an additional
amount of mass that adds up to about five times the total amount of normal
matter must be present to explain those effects.
Assuming that we
haven’t fooled ourselves about the overwhelming
astrophysical evidence for dark matter — and that there
isn’t some modified gravity
explanation for everything we’re seeing — it makes sense to not
just look at the indirect evidence for dark matter, but to attempt to detect it
directly. Because we know, because the evidence tells us so, that dark matter:
·
must clump and cluster in a
non-uniform fashion,
·
must have been moving very slowly
compared to the speed of light, even at early times,
·
and must gravitate, affecting the
curvature of spacetime based on its presence and abundance.
It must behave as either a massive particle or a massive fluid,
gravitating either way.
It remains an assumption that dark matter is quantized and discrete: i.e.,
that dark matter behaves as a particle. It could be quantized and continuous
instead, which would align with the fluid explanation, but
whether fluid or particle, there are three possibilities for how dark matter
behaves.
It must behave
as either a massive particle or a massive fluid, gravitating either way.
It remains an
assumption that dark matter is quantized and discrete: i.e., that dark matter
behaves as a particle. It could be quantized and continuous instead, which would align with the
fluid explanation, but whether fluid or particle, there are three
possibilities for how dark matter behaves.
1.
Dark matter interacts with itself
and/or normal matter through one or more of the known forces, in addition to
gravity.
2.
Dark matter interacts with itself
and/or normal matter through an additional, hitherto undiscovered force, in
addition to gravity.
3.
Dark matter interacts with itself and
normal matter only through the gravitational force and nothing else.
That’s it;
those are all the possibilities.
(Credit: W.-M. Yao et al.
(Particle Data Group), J. Phys. (2006))
One simple possibility
is that dark matter was, at some point in the early Universe, more strongly
coupled to normal matter (and possibly to itself as well) than it is today.
There are plenty of examples like this in nature even within the plain old
Standard Model. The electromagnetic coupling constant, for example, famously
increases in coupling strength at higher energies; it’s just 1/137 under normal conditions but rises
up to a value that’s more like 1/128 — about 10% greater — at high-energy
colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider.
But an even
more severe example is the neutrino, which interacts only through the weak
force. The highest-energy neutrinos are more than 20 orders of magnitude more
energetic than the lowest-energy ones, which are neutrinos left over from the
hot Big Bang. But the cross-section of those
neutrinos, which is directly related to your probability of having a
neutrino interact with another quantum of energy, varies by nearly 30 orders of
magnitude over that energy range.
If you were wondering how we could have created
dark matter so abundantly in the early Universe, and why we’d have such a
difficult time detecting it today, you need look no farther than the neutrino
for an example. If we only created neutrinos in the Big Bang (and nowhere
else), we’d have yet to directly detect them.
Credit: J. A. Formaggio and G. P. Zeller, Rev. Mod.
Phys., 2012
One scenario
for how a dark matter particle could have been created is to presume that, at some
point very early on in the aftermath of the hot Big Bang, the cross-section for
making particle-antiparticle pairs of dark matter was large. (This applies even
if dark matter is its own antiparticle, which is a feature of many dark matter
scenarios.) As the Universe expands and cools, the cross-section drops, and
eventually, dark matter stops annihilating away or interacting with anything
else in any appreciable way.
When that
happens, the relic dark matter abundance at the time — whatever it may be — gets
“frozen in” to the Universe, and that amount of dark matter persists until the
present day. So long as dark matter doesn’t decay away into something else
(i.e., as long as dark matter is stable), it’s free to
gravitate, clump, and cluster as the Universe expands. So long as dark matter
either:
·
isn’t too light, so that it wasn’t
moving too fast early on,
·
or was born with a negligible amount
of kinetic energy, so that even if it’s low-mass, it
was born cold,
it can solve all of the cosmic problems that it needs to.
Credit: ITP, University of Zurich
Many decades
ago, it was realized that if dark matter interacted through either the strong
or electromagnetic forces, they would have already shown up in experiments.
However, the weak interaction remained an intriguing possibility, and it was
extra interesting for the following reason.
Based on
astrophysics, we can calculate what the density of dark matter needs to be
today: about five times as dense as the total amount of normal matter in the
Universe. Many extensions of the Standard Model predict that some sort of new
physics will arise close to the energy scale of the heaviest Standard Model
particles like the W, Z, and Higgs bosons, as well as the heaviest of them all:
the top quark.
You can
compute, if you like, what the cross-section would be of such a weakly
interacting particle — like the lightest supersymmetric particle, for example —
if the mass were comparable to the electroweak scale. The cross-section,
remember, determines both production and annihilation efficiencies at earlier
times. And the cross-section you get, right around 3 × 10-26 cm3/s, is precisely what you’d predict if
you demanded that such a particle interacted through the weak force.
Credit: P.S. Bhupal Dev, A. Mazumdar & S.
Qutub, Front. Phys., 2014
This scenario
became known as the “WIMP miracle” scenario,
because it seems like a miraculous coincidence that putting in these parameters
would lead to the expected weak interaction-based cross-section just popping
out. For many years, a series of direct detection experiments were conducted,
with the hope that the WIMP miracle scenario would turn out to be real. As of
late 2022, there is no evidence that this is the case, and the cross-section limits
from experiments such as XENON have ruled out the standard WIMP
miracle scenario in practically every reasonable incarnation.
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But a dark
matter particle that interacts through the weak interaction (or, perhaps more
completely, the electroweak interaction) isn’t the only game in town. In fact,
the term WIMP — a stand-in for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle — might have “weak” in its name, but it
doesn’t necessarily refer to the weak force. Instead, it only means that the
interactions dark matter particles would exhibit must be relatively weaker than
a certain threshold. While “the weak interaction” offers one possibility, a
new, even weaker force is also possible, as is the true nightmare scenario:
that dark matter only interacts gravitationally.
(Credit: E. W. Kolb, D. J.
H. Chung, & A. Riotto, FNAL-CONF-98/325A, 1998)
In the late
1990s, Rocky Kolb, Dan Chung, and Tony Riotto
worked out a fascinating scenario: perhaps what we experience as
dark matter wasn’t a thermal relic, as it would be in supersymmetric or other
WIMP miracle-compatible scenarios. Instead, it’s possible that dark matter was
initially created in an out-of-equilibrium condition right from the moment it
first came into existence. Remarkably, if the mass of the massive particle is
high enough, and only a few of them (but enough of them) are created, it can
account for fully 100% of the needed dark matter.
As inflation
comes to an end and leads to the hot Big Bang, it’s possible that this
transition itself produces these massive, out-of-equilibrium particles. This
can happen even if:
·
the dark matter particle doesn’t
interact with the inflaton or the inflationary field,
·
it doesn’t couple to itself or any of
the Standard Model particles,
·
and its only interaction is through
the gravitational force.
Just as
gravitational waves and density/temperature imperfections are produced during
inflation and imprinted on the post-Big Bang Universe, these ultra-massive
particles, named WIMPzillas by the
authors, show that even a particle that only interacts gravitationally could, in theory,
make up all of the dark matter.
(Credit: E. W. Kolb, D. J.
H. Chung, & A. Riotto, FNAL-CONF-98/325A, 1998)
In many ways,
this presents a real nightmare for physicists! We have gone about our entire
careers under the assumption that we can learn everything we need to learn
about the Universe simply by examining the Universe we live in, and now we’ve
got an example of how things could have arisen identically to how we perceive
them, with no means of detecting or creating them that don’t involve the
ultimate catastrophe: restoring the early inflationary state of the Universe,
perhaps “whooshing” our entire cosmos out of existence, in order to make more
WIMPzilla particles.
If the
cross-section between dark matter and normal matter is effectively zero,
meaning that no matter how energetic the particles are or how many particles
strike one another, they simply won’t scatter and exchange momentum and energy,
there is no way that any of the direct detection experiments will work.
Remember, they all have one thing in common: they’re all made
out of normal matter, and they require some sort of recoil or other
particle-particle interaction to create a detectable signal. If the dark
matter-normal matter cross-section is zero, we’ll never be able to directly
detect dark matter.
(Credit: E. Aprile et al. for the XENON Collaboration, arXiv:2207.11330, 2022)
And yet, dark
matter might still be the answer to the puzzle of why the Universe appears to
gravitate in this bizarre fashion, unexplainable by normal matter and General
Relativity on their own.
Although
physicists will no doubt argue over the best approach, the one the field has
taken continues to teach us more and more about the nature of reality and the
contents of our Universe. We build and refine direct detection experiments that
are generic, searching for any type of interaction that could possibly exist.
We refine our techniques to become more and more sensitive to small signals,
learning how to better account for the background of “normal” particles that
cannot be 100% shielded. And we take a variety of approaches. Even if we never
find dark matter, learning how our Universe truly behaves is never a bad
investment.
But from a
theoretical perspective, we absolutely cannot ignore the possibility of the
nightmare scenario. We are compelled, from the indirect astrophysical evidence
and the quality null results from direct detection efforts, to consider it
seriously. If dark matter only interacts gravitationally, it’s up to us, as clever humans,
to figure out how to unveil nature’s darkest secrets. We aren’t there yet, but
identifying the problems and the possibilities, no matter how offensive we find
them, is required for progress to occur.
It's me again. Sometimes uneducated folks have
valuable insight, due entirely to the different ways our brains see things!
END
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The Universe, everywhere we look, is full of cataclysmic
events and transient outbursts.
A combination of X-ray, optical, and
infrared data reveal the central pulsar at the core of the Crab Nebula,
including the winds and outflows that the pulsars carry in the surrounding
matter. The central bright purplish-white spot is, indeed, the Crab pulsar,
which itself spins at about 30 times per second. The material shown here spans
about 5 light-years in extent, originating from a star that went supernova
about 1,000 years ago, teaching us that the typical speed of the ejecta is
around 1,500 km/s. The neutron star originally reached a temperature of ~1
trillion K, but even now, it’s already cooled to “only” about 600,000 K
A combination of data from X-ray,
radio, and infrared observatories revealed an enormous cavity spanning ~1.5
million light-years across, corresponding to the largest single-event release
of energy ever discovered.
(Credit: X-ray:
Chandra: NASA/CXC/NRL/S. Giacintucci, et al.,
XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM-Newton; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT; Infrared:
2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF)
It was carved by an ancient, explosive, supermassive black hole outburst,
requiring 5 × 10⁵⁴ J of energy.
Lynx, as a next-generation X-ray
observatory, will serve as the ultimate complement to
optical 30-meter class telescopes being built on the ground and observatories
like James Webb and WFIRST in space. Lynx will have to compete with the ESA’s
Athena mission, which has a superior field-of-view, but Lynx truly shines in
terms of angular resolution and sensitivity. Both observatories could
revolutionize and extend our view of the X-ray Universe.
(Credit: NASA Decadal Survey/Lynx interim report)
A more distant, energetic event likely awaits discovery
via ESA’s Athena or NASA’s Lynx.
An X-ray and radio composite of OJ 287
during one of its flaring phases. The ‘orbital trail’ that you see in both
views is a hint of the secondary black hole’s motion. This system is a binary
supermassive system, where one component is approximately 18 billion solar
masses and the other is 150 million solar masses. When they merge, they may
emit as much energy, albeit in the form of gravitational waves, as was found in
the most energetically-injected galaxy cluster.
(Credit: A.P. Marscher &
S. G. Jorstad, ApJ, 2011;
NASA/Chandra and Very Large Array)
Only supermassive black hole mergers, hitherto unseen,
may surpass them.
Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals,
and no more than 200 words. Talk less; smile more.
Tags
TH TH TH THAT’S ALL FOLKS! 
THE END!