Most of the matter in the cosmos is undetectable in any room except for the gravity it exerts . While some think this mysterious “ dark matter ” must be made up of unnamed corpuscle , others suggest a familiar molecule could be the key .
Dark matter has continue elusive , despite many searches to encounter something that could explain its effects on the universe . But some scientists are increasingly wondering whether dark thing could be explain by the existing police of physics . One such idea posits that a atom called a hexaquark ( also know as the sexaquark ) could excuse dark matter without requiring any fancy novel theory .
Scientists have long had evidence that the universe contains more mess than what telescope can see directly . This mass seems to make the staging of the macrocosm and produces anomalies , like beetleweed rotating too tight or the gravitation from clusters of galaxies falsify the light go along through despite no seeable object to do the warping . A democratic candidate emerge to excuse these issue , a folk of mote call weakly interact massive particles ( WIMPs ) . But after decades of searches for them , WIMPs remain unfound , and scientists are progressively interested in other idea .
A simulation of the cosmic web, whose scaffolding appears to be comprised of dark matterGraphic: V.Springel, Max-Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Garching bei München
https://gizmodo.com/what-is-dark-matter-and-why-hasnt-anyone-found-it-yet-1825608249
Devising and hunting for new particle and new constellation of particles is the name of the biz in particle physics . The meat of atoms are composed of protons and neutrons , which themselves are made from quark . The six different quark most commonly combine into sets of two or three , but physicists at particle collider have started to light upon large conformation , liketetraquarks(particles with four quarks ) andpentaquarks(particles with five ) . But why not a hexaquark , a subatomic particle with six quarks ?
In fact , theoretic evidence has already shew that some iterations of these six - quark configurations could be stable particles . And if so , suggested pioneering NYU physicist Glennys Farrar , such a atom could be the basis for dark topic . It ’s possible that at higher DOE , the particle could have condensed out of the primordial universe at the proportion of dark affair to regular issue that scientists see today and might still be present in the universe , according to a2017 workof hers . The particle would be twice the multitude of a proton and static with tightly bound quarks ( more specifically , two up quark cheese , two down quarks , and two strange quarks ) . Perhaps most excitingly , Farrar ’s marriage proposal even bode the copiousness of dark matter in the former universe without requiring amercement - tuning — basically , if it were to exist , it should be in the same abundance as theory of the population predict , without human - inputted adjustments .
Farrar has even invent a way to obtain such a atom : The hexaquark dark thing would be captured in Earth ’s gravitational field and might hold into the nucleus of atom in the Earth ’s crust , she explained to Gizmodo . scientist might look at a impenetrable flavor of atomic number 8 , called oxygen-18 , and liken whether the hatful of any of these oxygen-18 nucleus differs from expectations . Some physicistshave questionedwhether such a hexaquark as Farrar described could sincerely live , though she continues to push forward .
Another group of physicist think that grounds for the existence of hexaquarks has started to go up in experimental data . Back in 2011 , physicists working on an experimentation in Germany called WASA at the COSY particle acceleratorobserved a particlethey increasingly thinkmight be a hexaquarkcalled the d*(2380 ) , name for its deal , 2,380 million electron volts , a little more than twice the mickle of the three - quark cheese proton . Researchers behind thenew subject area , print in Journal of Physics G : Nuclear and Particle Physics , calculated that such a particle could imprint a stable cloud called a Bose - Einstein condensation . Though present - mean solar day technology is n’t able to create one of these clouds of hexaquarks , experiment might be able to find signatures of their world in space via an instantaneous burst of Vasco da Gamma radiation along with other particles have by the prostration of such a cloud .
The York scientist plan to collaborate with physicists in Germany and the United States to prove their hypothesis . Most exciting is the fact that , if hexaquarks could explain dark affair , the mystery would be solved by a particle easily understood using the be Standard Model of subatomic particle physics .
“ Our first calculations argue that condensates of [ the d*(2380 ) subatomic particle ] are a feasible new candidate for dark affair and this new possible action seems worthy of further , more elaborated investigation , ” Daniel Watts from the department of physics at the University of York say in apress release .
However , Farrar did n’t line up their proposal convincing , since their specific hexaquark ’s quark configuration would require a large , positive charge ( a problem which they paint a picture would be overcome if each hexaquark were attach to an electron ) . To her , the hexaquark devised by the York squad seemed seemed too tenuous to prevail as the abundant dark matter .
disregardless , it ’s clear that physicists are pursuing newfangled avenue to explain this mystery — including revisiting the theories we already jazz .
“ Obviously , this would be raging , because it would demonstrate that dark matter , long presumed to be a beyond - the - Standard - Model idea , is in fact part of the Standard Model , ” James Beacham , corpuscle physicist with the ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN , told Gizmodo in an e-mail , commenting specifically on Farrar ’s work .
Once again , the lookup for the true individuality of sullen subject continues .
CERNDark matterParticle physicsScience
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