In the search for dark matter, scientists discovered new physics
No, scientists still have no idea what dark matter is. However, MSU scientists helped discover it while discovering new physics.
Wolfgang “Wolfi” Mittig and Yassed Ayyad began their search for dark matter – also known as the missing mass of the universe – at the center of an atom about three years ago.
Although their discovery did not explain dark matter, scientists discovered something that had never been seen before that explanation. Well, at least one explanation that everyone can agree on.
Abstract Astrophysics Dark Matter Mystery
Approximately 85% of the mass of the universe is made up of dark matter, a hypothetical form of matter.
No, scientists still have no idea what dark matter is. However, MSU scientists helped discover it while discovering new physics.
Wolfgang “Wolfi” Mittig and Yassed Ayyad began their search for dark matter – also known as the missing mass of the universe – at the center of an atom about three years ago.
Although their discovery did not explain dark matter, scientists discovered something that had never been seen before that explanation. Well, at least one explanation that everyone can agree on.
“It’s like a detective story,” said Mittig, the Hanna Distinguished Professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and a faculty member of the Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB.
“We started looking for dark matter and we couldn’t find it,” he said. “Instead, we found other things that challenge the theory.”
To interpret their findings, the team went back to work, conducting further tests and accumulating more data. Mittig, Ayyad and their colleagues strengthened their argument at Michigan State University’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, or NSCL.
Abstract Astrophysics Dark Matter Mystery
Approximately 85% of the mass of the universe is made up of dark matter, a hypothetical form of matter.
No, scientists still have no idea what dark matter is. However, MSU scientists helped discover it while discovering new physics.
Wolfgang “Wolfi” Mittig and Yassed Ayyad began their search for dark matter – also known as the missing mass of the universe – at the center of an atom about three years ago.
Although their discovery did not explain dark matter, scientists discovered something that had never been seen before that explanation. Well, at least one explanation that everyone can agree on.
“It’s like a detective story,” said Mittig, the Hanna Distinguished Professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and a faculty member of the Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB.
“We started looking for dark matter and we couldn’t find it,” he said. “Instead, we found other things that challenge the theory.”
To interpret their findings, the team went back to work, conducting further tests and accumulating more data. Mittig, Ayyad and their colleagues strengthened their argument at Michigan State University’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, or NSCL.
Researchers working at NSCL discovered a new route to their unexpected destination, which they revealed in the journal Physical Review Letters. In addition, they revealed interesting physics while working in the ultra-small quantum field of subatomic particles.
In particular, the scientists showed that even when the center, or nucleus, of an atom is full of neutrons, it can find its way to a more stable configuration by spitting out protons instead.
Shot in the dark
Dark matter is one of the most well-known yet least understood things in the universe. Scientists have known for decades that there is much more mass in the universe than we know based on the motions of stars and galaxies.
Gravitation is needed to keep celestial objects on their course, an unseen mass six times greater than the regular matter we can see, measure, and classify. Although researchers are convinced that dark matter exists, they still have to figure out where to find it and how to detect it directly.
“Discovering dark matter is one of the major goals of physics,” said Ayyad, a nuclear physics researcher at the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics, or IGFAE, at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Speaking in round numbers, scientists have launched about 100 experiments to try to explain exactly what dark matter is, Mittig said.
