1.5 miles under a Chinese mountain made of marble, the hunt for dark matter heats up

When we look out into the cosmos, there are uncountable multitudes of galaxies, stars, nebulae, and planets all chock full of matter. That’s a lot of stuff, but astronomers have long known the matter we see in these objects is only a fraction of all the mass in the universe. The remainder has been dubbed dark matter, and researchers have spent years trying to characterize it. A device known as PandaX is about to go online in China’s Sichuan province, and it could be our best chance yet to figure out what dark matter really is.

1.5 miles under a Chinese mountain made of marble, the hunt for dark matter heats up





This looks promising, hopefully at some point in the near future dark matter detection will indeed become viable and finally shine some much needed light upon what this most elusive substance actually is and how it interacts with the rest of our universe .

reply to post by andy06shake


I hand no idea that China was working on such a project!
With this and the large Hadron collider searching for answers, things are getting interesting .

reply to post by andy06shake


Personally, I think the quest for dark matter and dark energy will fail.

It is a theory. One that was proposed because they do not understand what is causing observed phenomena.

To me, it seems like a knee jerk reaction and theory that attempts to "fill in gaps" by using imaginary matter.

Too close to fixing a formula by adding in a constant that represents nothing but makes the formula work.

My question is why does the lab need to be a mile and a half underneath a mountain made of marble. Is that where dark matter lives?

reply to post by iamhobo


The reason the structure and detector are located underground is to do with shielding said device from background noise, be it human made interference or cosmic background radiation.

Yeah, from China we see a lot of Research and Developments in the next Years,
they need to move and they will do it because it is their only Chance
to survive as a Nation!

"Advantage through Science",
i hope we all benefit from it!

reply to post by bbracken677


Everything starts off as a "Theory", most theories even are re-written once technology is furthered. Does not mean they will fail, most theories fail by default only later to be taken by the mantle of another in the near future to be proven true.

Try not, do or do not, there is no try.

reply to post by andy06shake


Makes sense.

Thank you very much!

iamhobo
My question is why does the lab need to be a mile and a half underneath a mountain made of marble. Is that where dark matter lives?

If dark matter exists, it should be everywhere, but the detector is
placed deep underground , probably to block out interferences prevalent on
the surface of the earth.

bbracken677
reply to post by andy06shake

 

Personally, I think the quest for dark matter and dark energy will fail.

It is a theory. One that was proposed because they do not understand what is causing observed phenomena.

To me, it seems like a knee jerk reaction and theory that attempts to "fill in gaps" by using imaginary matter.

Too close to fixing a formula by adding in a constant that represents nothing but makes the formula work.

Learning that we're wrong about dark matter would be just as valuable as learning that its real, though.

sulaw
reply to post by bbracken677

 

Everything starts off as a "Theory", most theories even are re-written once technology is furthered. Does not mean they will fail, most theories fail by default only later to be taken by the mantle of another in the near future to be proven true.

Try not, do or do not, there is no try.

I am well aware of how the scientific process works. My point was regarding the knee jerk reaction. Inventing dark matter with absolutely zero evidence besides the effects we were seeing did not jive with our estimated mass of the universe.

I call it a half-baked theory, at best.

reply to post by bbracken677


Well, they know it exists. The problem is what we do when we find it. China and cern are playing with fire. Trying to be god. The last cern experiments went wrong and they opened several portals to other dimensions. It scared the crap out of them because in one portal they opened a giant appeared and it tried to escape to our dimensions. The police had to fight it back.

This is very scary, these are forces that can destroy our world.

The Bot

Human0815
Yeah, from China we see a lot of Research and Developments in the next Years,
they need to move and they will do it because it is their only Chance
to survive as a Nation!

"Advantage through Science",
i hope we all benefit from it!

You also forgot "Advantage through Wal-Mart.

dlbott
reply to post by bbracken677

 

Well, they know it exists. The problem is what we do when we find it. China and cern are playing with fire. Trying to be god. The last cern experiments went wrong and they opened several portals to other dimensions. It scared the crap out of them because in one portal they opened a giant appeared and it tried to escape to our dimensions. The police had to fight it back.

This is very scary, these are forces that can destroy our world.

The Bot

Lol. I never heard of giants appearing at cern. Do you have a link
to this episode?

reply to post by dlbott


That must have been the afternoon i contaminated there water supply with magic mushrooms!

Dimensional portals, If only! CERN is nothing more than an advanced particle accelerator with extensive instrument package. LoL

dlbott
reply to post by bbracken677

 

Well, they know it exists. The problem is what we do when we find it. China and cern are playing with fire. Trying to be god. The last cern experiments went wrong and they opened several portals to other dimensions. It scared the crap out of them because in one portal they opened a giant appeared and it tried to escape to our dimensions. The police had to fight it back.

This is very scary, these are forces that can destroy our world.

The Bot

I would love to read more on this also

conundrummer

bbracken677
reply to post by andy06shake

 

Personally, I think the quest for dark matter and dark energy will fail.

It is a theory. One that was proposed because they do not understand what is causing observed phenomena.

To me, it seems like a knee jerk reaction and theory that attempts to "fill in gaps" by using imaginary matter.

Too close to fixing a formula by adding in a constant that represents nothing but makes the formula work.

Learning that we're wrong about dark matter would be just as valuable as learning that its real, though.

Except if they don't detect anything it won't change their views.
They will just think they need to do a better job setting up their experiment next time.

JayinAR

conundrummer

bbracken677
reply to post by andy06shake

 

Personally, I think the quest for dark matter and dark energy will fail.

It is a theory. One that was proposed because they do not understand what is causing observed phenomena.

To me, it seems like a knee jerk reaction and theory that attempts to "fill in gaps" by using imaginary matter.

Too close to fixing a formula by adding in a constant that represents nothing but makes the formula work.

Learning that we're wrong about dark matter would be just as valuable as learning that its real, though.

Except if they don't detect anything it won't change their views.
They will just think they need to do a better job setting up their experiment next time.

True. But that is the way science works

dlbott
reply to post by bbracken677

 

Well, they know it exists. The problem is what we do when we find it. China and cern are playing with fire. Trying to be god. The last cern experiments went wrong and they opened several portals to other dimensions. It scared the crap out of them because in one portal they opened a giant appeared and it tried to escape to our dimensions. The police had to fight it back.

This is very scary, these are forces that can destroy our world.

The Bot

LOL I will not comment on the "giant" but will limit my comment to "they know it exists".

No, they don't. They are attempting to prove it exists... Dark matter and Dark energy are simply parts of a theory to explain why we are seeing such things as the ever accelerating expansion of the universe.

If you take the standard model of the Big Bang the further you look backwards in time, the greater the acceleration of the expansion we would see....I think that is simply what is going on. As far as I know they are not seeing accelerating expansion in our immediate neighborhood but rather the farther out they look. By definition this is also the farther back in time they are seeing with the greatest rate of expansion at the greatest distance we can see, which is also, by definition, the closer to the Big Bang.

reply to post by andy06shake


I think it's great that they are doing this research.

Let's hope it fares better than their moon rover though....