Dark Matter Detected?

Dark Matter Detected?

www.badastronomy.com

The Italian experiment looked very carefully. One of the things they looked for was a modulation in the signal, a change over time. They wanted to see the number of flashes of light from DM hitting normal matter go up and down by a few percent, with a maximum in June and a minimum number in December. Why?

Imagine you are in a car, driving through a cloud of bugs. If you hold your hand out the window, a bunch of bugs will hit it (ewwww). Now if you throw a ball out the window into the direction of the car’s motion, it will hit more bugs, because it’s moving into the cloud faster. If you throw a ball behind you, then the ball will be moving slower relative to the bugs, and fewer bugs will hit the ball.

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This graph shows the modulation of the signal, and the scientists are 99% confident statistically that the data is correct.
I have no idea how to interpret the graphs but here is what I found on the website.

If the Earth is slamming into dark matter particles, then we should hit more when the Earth and solar system velocities are in the same direction, and hit fewer when the Earth is moving in the opposite direction of the solar system as a whole six months later. So not only should we see the number of hits go up and down every six months, but that oscillation must line up with the correct dates (June for the former, and December for the latter).

Plenty of examples in the link and links below.
The question is, how would the existence of dark matter benefit us? Considering that dark matter theoretically composes 80% of all matter in the universe, and the particles move, shouldn't it provide some form of energy? Maybe we can harness the power.

www.badastronomy.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Dark matter may have been found on Earth

space.newscientist.com...

Particles of invisible "dark matter" have been detected deep inside a mountain in Italy, a collaboration of Italian and Chinese physicists claims.

If its not Dark Matter, what anomaly did they find? Hmm.

It seems to be a bit to soon to conclude that these data are evidence of dark matter, or so says the author of the Bad Astronomy site.

Update: Dagnappit, I should read the other science blogs before writing mine! Cosmic Variance has this story as well, and is also skeptical of the result being dark matter, and also agrees that the modulation is real and probably something interesting. However, he’s a bit more forceful about it than I am.

[emphasis mine]

www.badastronomy.com...

Take the time to read the response at this blog.

No one's really saying that the experiment doesn't detect dark matter. No one knows. What's being said is that there's no way to tell what is being detected.

cosmicvariance.com...