While the LHC Hunts Higgs, the Jefferson Accelerator Looks to Illuminate Mysterious 'Dark Photons'
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[QUOTE]While the Large Hadron Collider prepares to fire up its proton beams and get back to particle smashing, another accelerator is dialing up the search for another elusive particle. The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia is turning up its electron beams in search of “dark” or “heavy” photons, and in doing so they hope to unlock the secrets of the so-called “dark sector” where things like dark matter are thought to live.
The Jefferson Accelerator can’t even come close to touching the high energies of the LHC, but its beams are extremely intense. And while the LHC is still the prime candidate to find certain theoretical particles like the Higgs Boson, some researchers are looking instead to the “intensity frontier” where high-intensity beams are used to create many, many lower-energy collisions at once. It is here that researchers are looking for the dark photon that theorists have long thought might exist in these lower energy ranges.
Unlike normal photons, dark photons would have mass. But similar to their sister particles, they would carry a force--though not the same electromagnetic force normal photons carry. This force is where researchers hope to make a breakthrough. Dark photons would carry the four forces we already know about plus one more--a new force that could help scientists catch a glimpse into the dark sector and see the wholly new fundamental particles that might live there.
Somewhere in those findings, scientists might even be able to crack the code on dark matter, which is thought to make up 85 percent of the universe though it has never been detected. In other words, finding a dark photon would be something of a theoretical physicist’s scientific bonanza. But first, researchers have to conjure one.
A dark photon couldn’t be directly detected, but could be identified when it decayed into electrons and positrons post-collision. As such, in a three-week experiment kicking off April 24, researchers at the Jefferson Accelerator will send electrons smashing into a tungsten target 500 million times per second to see what kind of particles emerge from each smash-up. If they do see one of these theoretical photons, it could shed some serious light on an otherwise very dark corner of particle physics.[/QUOTE]
Source: [url]http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-04/while-lhc-hunts-higgs-jefferson-accelerator-looks-illuminate-dark-photons[/url]
Science just gets more bizarre the smaller things get.
[QUOTE=Mingebox;35426420]Science just gets more bizarre the smaller things get.[/QUOTE]
Honestly, would you have wanted it any other way?
v:v:v
Dark photons carrying all five forces? That sounds SO sci-fi, and also SO amazing. Imagine the applications of a torch that projected said dark photons...
The filaments would likely be made out of some sort of substance that emits dark photons when subjected to electrical current. In other words, it'd need filaments of eezo.
Please, find them out in my lifetime and make a FTL drive using them.
[QUOTE=Str4t0s;35428568]Please, find them out in my lifetime and make a FTL drive using them.[/QUOTE]
I'm guessing you have no idea how hard it is to achieve FTL. It's not gonna be some new particle, it's gonna be raw energy that stops us.
Well, if dark energy can be our ticket to the stars, then I strongly approve of this research. But even if we discover that it exists and has those miracle properties mankind requires, we'd still have to find a material capable of emitting dark photons.
[QUOTE=Str4t0s;35428568]Please, find them out in my lifetime and make a FTL drive using them.[/QUOTE]
I don't believe just finding a new particle is going to give us such immense control. Maybe within several hundred years we might make a major breakthrough, but that's assuming we're constantly discovering new things and the laws of physics are being redifined every now and again, which in itself is very unlikely.
While LHC scientists hunt for the Higgs Boson, Jefferson Accelerator scientists hunt for the mysterious "dark light", also known as "shadows", which will help them glimpse into the dark sector of their facility and discover the 10 year old Twinkie stash. The scientists believe that this "dark light" makes up 95% of the night sky, covers over half of the world at any given time, and explains why black holes are so black.
We don't really pay our scientists much here in America.
[quote]Somewhere in those findings, scientists might even be able to crack the code on dark matter, which is thought to make up [b]85 percent of the universe[/b] though it has never been detected.[/quote]
uh what
I wish I could "get" science. Instead I need people like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan to make it awesome and understandable to me.
and what is this 5th force, I know of weak atomic, strong atomic, electromagnetic, and gravity, but not of the 5th one
[QUOTE=viperfan7;35429381]and what is this 5th force, I know of weak atomic, strong atomic, electromagnetic, and gravity, but not of the 5th one[/QUOTE]
It would probably be a fifth which is not currently known but might explain certain phenomena not covered by those four, such as dark matter.
(maybe)
[QUOTE=salty peanut v2;35429148]uh what[/QUOTE]
Yeah, pff what the fuck!
Try 83%, stupid article!
[QUOTE=salty peanut v2;35429148]uh what[/QUOTE]
They don't seem to be counting dark energy.
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