New Subatomic Particle Could Help Explain the Mystery of Dark Matter

well the evidence is starting to mount
that dark matter can be explained and on rare occasions these sterile (or non interacting) particles do interacte and they produce a tell tale signature.
these have been detected in a "dark matter" galaxy when Xrays are released
the amount of evidence is building but cautious scientist are holding out for more evidence before a major announcement is made

Physicists aren’t quite ready to make such dramatic pronouncements, but the results "will be extremely important—if they turn out to be correct,” says Alexander Kusenko of the University of California, Los Angeles.

How did scientists go about looking for particles that are virtually undetectable? Kusenko and Michael Loewenstein of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center reasoned that if sterile neutrinos really are dark matter, they would occasionally decay into ordinary matter, producing a lighter neutrino and an x-ray photon, and it would make sense to search for these x-rays wherever dark matter is found. Using the Chandra x-ray telescope, they observed a nearby dwarf galaxy thought to be rich in dark matter and found an intriguing bump of x-rays at just the right wavelength.

link

so with the fermi ground tests
and the galaxy obsevations
the true nature of the mysterious dark matter may be finally explained
we just need to wait for some more observations
but at this stage the evidence is mounting each day
and scientists are being careful not to jump the gun

but i think the corner may have been turned in the search for dark matter

and i expect it wont be long before more evidence is presented

Another piece of evidence comes from supernovae. If sterile neutrinos really do exist, supernovae would shoot them out in a tight stream along magnetic field lines, and the recoil from this blast would kick the pulsars out through the cosmos. It turns out astronomers observe precisely that: pulsars whizzing through the universe at speeds of thousands of kilometers a second.

same link



xplodr

here is an article about the ground experiments

A fourth neutrino could help explain dark matter

Physicists working with a Fermilab neutrino experiment may have found a new elementary particle whose behavior breaks the known laws of physics. If correct, their results poke holes in the accepted Standard Model of particles and forces, and raise some interesting questions for the Large Hadron Collider and Tevatron experiments. The new particle could even explain the existence of dark matter.

fermi lab experiment

this is a different experiment than the one cited in the op article but has similar implecations

the experiment in the op used a detector 1/2 a mile under ground and they "beamed" the nutrinos to the detector underground to record the changes.

xploder

Interesting, but I've always considered dark matter and dark energy to be related phenomena and a hole or more likely a fundamental error in established theory.
Where is the explanation of how this 'neutrino decay' generates additional gravity?

Wow!
Those are some serious claims...
If they turn up with more evidence things are gonna get pretty interesting... Well, at least for us, geeks...

Originally posted by kybertech
Interesting, but I've always considered dark matter and dark energy to be related phenomena and a hole or more likely a fundamental error in established theory.
Where is the explanation of how this 'neutrino decay' generates additional gravity?

It doesn't directly. But the basic physics suggests that if neutrinos decay, or can change neutrino type from one to another, then neutrinos must have mass. Not a lot of mass (much less than an electron) but a little bit. Thus their gravitational influence would be bigger than if they didn't. (Even massless particles do gravitate if they have energy but not efficiently).

According to calculations, the 3 standard known neutrinos don't seem to be sufficient to explain dark matter. The question is whether this fourth neutrino exists, and if it does will it explain the observational puzzles.

It's commonly said that the most abundant elements of the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

It ain't true. Neutrinos are in second place.

Originally posted by kybertech
Interesting, but I've always considered dark matter and dark energy to be related phenomena and a hole or more likely a fundamental error in established theory.
Where is the explanation of how this 'neutrino decay' generates additional gravity?

it accounts for some of the missing matter of the universe

What Was Missing
Dutch astronomer Jan Oort first discovered the 'missing matter' problem in the 1930's. By observing the Doppler red-shift values of stars moving near the plane of our galaxy, Oort assumed he could calculate how fast the stars were moving. Since the galaxy was not flying apart, he reasoned that there must be enough matter inside the galaxy such that the central gravitational force was strong enough to keep the stars from escaping, much as the Sun's gravitational pull keeps a planet in its orbit. But when the calculation was made, it turned out that there was not enough mass in the galaxy. And the discrepancy was not small; the galaxy had to be at least twice as massive as the sum of the mass of all its visible components combined. Where was all this missing matter?


In addition, in the 1960's the radial profile of the tangential velocity of stars in their orbits around the galactic center as a function of their distance from that center was measured. It was found that typically, once we get away from the galactic center all the stars travel with the same velocity independent of their distance out from the galactic center. (See the figure below.) Usually, as is the case with our solar system, the farther out an object is, the slower it travels in its orbit.

link

the variations although very small would could be very important
to the vary nature of gravity
xploder

edit to add

1. Cold dark matter - supposedly in dead stars, planets, brown dwarfs ("failed stars") etc.
2. Hot dark matter - postulated to be fast moving particles floating throughout the universe, neutrinos, tachions etc.

small dark galaxies have recently been detected uping the number considerably
red giant suns have been incresed in number three fold