Ben McAllisterHey my new paper covering our recent dark matter search just got published
https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/2ydp-2gz9
*psst* it's also available for free on arxiv.org just google the title of the paper
snappyhome@bigbee I'm not a physicist - it looks like what happened was there was a signal that looked like a candidate to explain what dark matter is made of, so y'all looked at it and, "nope, that's not dark matter." Am I getting that right? Also, is this kind of physics mostly just looking at a variety of little subtle signals from things and finding out, "nope, that's not dark matter"?
@snappyhome hey, thanks for reading! That is what happened here, yes - another experiment reported a signal that looked like dark matter, which is cool - it doesn't happen all the time.
So the experiment I work with did a rapid follow up to confirm or refute it. We didn't see anything, so we disfavour the hypothesis. Another experiment (called HAYSTAC) did the same thing and also didn't see anything.
@snappyhome in answer to your other question - it's more like there are a handful of candidate particles for dark matter, and we (and others) do searches for those candidates. Usually you don't see a signal of the type reported here, and so you rule out some parameter space from being dark matter.
This time, the other experiment /did/ see a pretty compelling signal, so it warranted a dedicated follow up.
Usually we don't have a specific signal to point at, we just sweep a range.
@bigbee Even more exciting! Not looking at signals and finding nothing - looking at nothing in particular and finding nothing! I jest, of course - figuring out the dark matter thing would be huge. But it seems like pretty meticulous work ruling out a huge number of possibilities that will almost certainly be disappointing in hopes of stumbling on the one that pans out. Thanks for doing it!
Manu@snappyhome @bigbee very exciting to have you here to explain it to us. Congratulations!
@snappyhome yeah it can feel that way sometimes - I think it's important to remember that this is kind of the scientific method just on a large scale.
We have a problem (dark matter)
We form a hypothesis (e.g. I think it's this particle with this mass)
We test that hypothesis
We rule it out and move on
The problem is the dark matter landscape is so massive...the experimental community would greatly welcome some more theory input to narrow things down, but it's a hard problem.
@snappyhome a combination of things keep me motivated
1. It took over 100 years to find gravitational waves - we haven't been (seriously) searching for dark matter for half that long
2. The hypotheses we have aren't random, they're based on best available theory
3. Whilst it's slow and hard, the discovery would be absolutely paradigm shifting so it's worth it
4. Contenting myself with doing the search well, and contributing - remembering Newton's 'shoulders of giants' comment
@snappyhome that is to say - I don't need to be the one to make the discovery to be content. That would be awesome of course, but I'm happy to just do my part and contribute to the eventual discovery - every thing we rule out (if we do it well) is one less thing someone needs to try in future.
The path to scientific discovery is paved with many more failures than successes!