Dark matter makes up 80 per cent of the stuff in the universe, but it is difficult to see because it barely
interacts with ordinary matter except through gravity.
Many theories exist for explaining the nature of this dark matter, and lots of experiments have been attempting to detect it via subtle
interactions with ordinary matter.
Because these particles rarely
interact with ordinary matter, they would have to be electrically neutral and hence invisible to light, X-rays, or any other form of electromagnetic radiation.
Today, there is a number of detectors placed approximately a couple of kilometres below Earth's surface, and there is a very specific reason for their placement so far below ground: if dark matter interacts
weakly with ordinary matter (as also the neutrinos do), only these two species can penetrate kilometres of Earth's crust without being stopped.
According to Georgi, if unparticles exist, they would interact
with ordinary matter so weakly they could be detected only in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the superpowered particle accelerator scheduled to begin operating later this year.
Several astronomical measurements have corroborated the existence of dark matter, leading to a world - wide effort to observe directly dark matter particle interactions
with ordinary matter in extremely sensitive detectors, which would confirm its existence and shed light on its properties.
Antimatter annihilates on
contact with ordinary matter, so the anti-atoms disappear in a shower of secondary particles, known as pions, when they hit the walls of the trap.
Or, as McGaugh puts it, «Once you convince yourself that the universe is full of an invisible substance that only interacts
with ordinary matter through gravity, then it is virtually impossible to disabuse yourself of that notion.
They interpreted it as the debris left behind when particles of dark matter — the mysterious substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe yet refuses to interact
with ordinary matter except through gravity — crashed together and annihilated each other in the centre of the Milky Way.
That's because the three - to - two collisions would heat up the SIMPs if they could not interact and share
heat with ordinary matter.
«Since we know how many photons there are
compared with ordinary matter, that tells us that most of the matter and antimatter did annihilate, and only a little tiny bit of matter was left over,» says David Hitlin, a physicist at Caltech and the founding director of the BaBar team.
Dark atoms and molecules could perhaps clump together into galactic disks that
overlap with the ordinary matter disks and spiral arms of galaxies such as Andromeda.
Perhaps dark matter is bunched together into large, elusive clumps; perhaps it interacts
with ordinary matter even less than physicists expected.
Large detectors at DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) use high - intensity beams to study elusive neutrino
reactions with ordinary matter.
Physicists hope to detect it in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) when they
collide with ordinary matter in underground detectors.
On the other hand, their
impact with ordinary matter that Earth is comprised of may hamper them slightly, resulting in a loss of energy.
Dark matter's presence has for decades been inferred from its gravitational effects on large - scale structures such as galaxy clusters, but because it does not interact
much with ordinary matter and does not emit or absorb light — hence the «dark» moniker — it has so far proved impossible to observe firsthand.
Those particles are 10 to 100 times the mass of a proton, but interact only very
weakly with ordinary matter (which is why scientists can not easily detect them).
If they exist, WIMPs should surround us like an invisible fog, their chances of interacting
with ordinary matter so remote that one could pass through light - years of elemental lead unscathed.
Dark matter famously refuses to interact
with ordinary matter except via gravity, so theorists had assumed that its particles would be just as aloof with each other.
The particles would have a mass between one and 1000 times that of a proton and, in addition to gravity, would interact with one another and
with ordinary matter through only the weak nuclear force, one of two forces of nature that normally exert themselves only in the atomic nucleus.
In the 1990s, results from the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico suggested there might be a fourth flavour: a «sterile» neutrino that is even less inclined to interact
with ordinary matter than the others.
But the physicists say they have vastly narrowed the characteristics for how the defects — if they exist — would interact
with ordinary matter.
Moreover, the theorists argue, SIMPs must interact
with ordinary matter, although much more weakly than WIMPs.
Neutrinos are subatomic particles that rarely interact
with ordinary matter.
Nevertheless, neutrinos ought to interact with the universe's mass on the largest scales: as these particles careen through the universe at near light - speed, they interact
with ordinary matter and tend to smooth out variations in density.
«Sterile» neutrinos, on the other hand, are even harder to find as they are loath to interact
with ordinary matter — a characteristic that makes them a prime candidate for being the stuff of dark matter.
Although we can see dark matter's gravitational effects on stars and galaxies, it does not otherwise interact
with ordinary matter, and we know frustratingly little about its properties.
By their very nature, these dark - matter particles barely interact
with ordinary matter, but in some rare instances one should collide in just the right way to make its presence known.
But because it can not be seen and seldom interacts
with ordinary matter, its existence has never been confirmed.
No experiment has yet conclusively detected WIMPs, but CDMS has set the most stringent limits of any experiment on the strength of WIMP interactions
with ordinary matter.
But physicists have never directly observed particles of dark matter, which are supposed to interact very weakly
with ordinary matter.
Neutrinos are among the more mysterious elementary particles in the universe: Billions of them pass through every cell of our bodies each second, and yet these ghostly particles are incredibly difficult to detect, as they don't appear to interact
with ordinary matter.
The result may be pointing to evidence of neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillating into a fourth kind of neutrino or antineutrino, a so - called «sterile» version that doesn't interact
with ordinary matter, says Carlo Giunti, a physicist at the University of Turin in Italy.
With a neutral charge and nearly zero mass, neutrinos are the shadiest of particles, rarely interacting
with ordinary matter and slipping through our bodies, buildings and the Earth at a rate of trillions per second.
They are very hard to detect because their interaction
with ordinary matter is extremely feeble, but over the years physicists have detected enough of them to observe that as they travel through space they can «oscillate» from one flavour to another.
The trouble is the stuff stubbornly refuses to interact
with ordinary matter, except through gravity, so has not been conclusively detected.
They rarely interact
with ordinary matter, but massive experiments have been set up to detect the flashes of light produced when they do.
Rewind 13.7 billion years to the aftermath of the big bang and you can calculate the density of dark matter present simply from the WIMP's mass and its ability to interact
with ordinary matter.
We know there are three kinds of these ghostly particles, which barely interact
with ordinary matter — the electron, muon and tau neutrinos.
The W and Z boson serve as a good model for this kind of exotic stuff: In fact they are both very heavy compared to their peers and interact weakly
with ordinary matter.
In a paper published May 2 in Nature Physics, the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST) at CERN presented new results on the properties of axions — hypothetical particles with minimal interactions
with ordinary matter that therefore could constitute some or all of the mysterious dark matter, which is five times more abundant than normal matter.