Scientists sense breakthroughs in dark-matter mystery

Google - AFP, Jean-Louis Santini (AFP), 18 february 2013 

Undated composite image courtesy of NASA shows distribution of dark matter,

galaxies, and hot gas in a galaxy cluster (NASA/AFP)

BOSTON, Massachusetts — For decades, the strange substance called dark matter has teased physicists, challenging conventional notions of the cosmos.

Today, though, scientists believe that with the help of multi-billion-dollar tools, they are closer than ever to piercing the mystery -- and the first clues may be unveiled just weeks from now.

"We are so excited because we believe we are on the threshold of a major discovery," said Michael Turner, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, at an annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Dark matter throws down the gauntlet to the so-called Standard Model of physics.

Elegant and useful for identifying the stable of particles and forces that regulate our daily life, the Standard Model only tells part of the cosmic story.

For one thing, it does not explain gravity, although we know how to measure gravity and exploit it for our needs.

And the Standard Model has been found to account for only around four or five percent of the stuff in the Universe.

The rest is dark matter, making up 23 percent, and dark energy, an enigmatic force that appears to drive the expansion of the Universe, which accounts for around 72 or 73 percent.

"On the cosmology side we now understand that this mysterious dark matter holds together our galaxy and the rest of the Universe," said Turner.

"And the tantalizing thing on the cosmology side is that we have an airtight case that the dark matter is made of something new... there is no particle in the Standard Model that can account for dark matter."

The dark matter theory was born 80 years ago when Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky discovered that there was not enough mass in observable stars or galaxies to allow the force of gravity to hold them together.

According to some theorists, dark matter is fleetingly formed by exotic particles called WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) that, as their name implies, have only weak interactions with the visible matter identified under the Standard Model.

But, again, this could only be part of the picture.

"The real question is why dark matter has six times the energy that is in ordinary matter," said Lisa Randall of Harvard University.

"It could be 10 trillions times bigger... This is an intriguing sign that there is maybe some other interaction we can detect."

High-powered instruments track cosmic particles

To track these phantom particles, physicists rely on several methods and tools.

One is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which captures gamma rays coming from collisions of dark matter particles.

The first results will be published in two to three weeks, according to Samuel Ting, a Nobel laureate and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who is the mastermind of the two-billion-dollar project.

Ting declined to give details, only suggesting that these highly anticipated results would give humans a better idea about the nature of dark matter.

Another tool used by the scientists is the South Pole Neutrino Observatory, which tracks subatomic particles known as neutrinos, which, according to physicists, are created when dark matter passes through the Sun and interacts with protons.

Another big weapon is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, the biggest particle smasher in the world.

Its power, they insist, could allow them to break-up electrons, quarks or neutrinos to uncover dark matter.

Last July, LHC physicists announced they had discovered a particle believed to be the Higgs boson, which confers mass. The Higgs was the key missing piece in the Standard Model.

"The dark matter particles are very heavy. It is one of the reasons we have made the LHC, not only to look for the Higgs boson," said Maria Spiropulu, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

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"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version)

"The Interdimensional Universe" – Nov 15, 2003 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

"... There's more. I just took you on a trip to the center of a simple atom and told you that there's far more there for you to see than how it appears in 4D. Let me give you a prediction: Scientists will begin to understand this on a grander scale as they continue to look at the Universe. There's something missing within the energy measurement of "everything that should be there" for the motion and scope to exist as you see it. So what's missing? Why can't you see it? Already scientists are postulating the possibility of dark matter. This would be matter you can't see, but which must exist to enable the energy equation to be balanced. No one has said anything about interdimensionality yet, but they will. They have to, for the elegance of the math eventually will show them very clearly that perhaps what's going on in the Universe is interdimensional in its scope. What's missing in their energy computations is very real interdimensional matter.

Who said that the cosmic lattice was linear? Who said that the energy that you can't see follows the same paradigm as what you can see? Oh, before this channel is over, I'm going to give you some puzzles. So here's another prediction: Science will begin to look for missing dimensions to explain missing energy! And it's about time. And that's the way of it. So it's time to reveal the shape of the Universe, and the push/pull action within dimensional shifts that cause your Universe to do what it does, and show you what it does. Many of the things that you continually observe are hints of it, but they're misinterpreted.

In four dimensions, your physics makes a lot of sense. When you step out of 4D and become interdimensional, however, all those logical rules of physics change. We even told you the last time we were here that when you get small enough, the laws of basic physics changes, too. It also changes when you get very large. It also changes with time frames. Stay with me here, for this will be simplified in a moment. ...."