Physicists Love the Dark
Latest news on dark energy and dark matter
show secular scientists still clueless but excited
We’ve been following the “dark” subjects in cosmology for many years now. Mainstream cosmologists believe that we only know about 5% of what exists: the matter that gives off light. 95% of reality, they insist, is out there but totally unknown.
In past articles, we have likened their ongoing search for dark matter and dark energy to a snipe hunt (19 Dec 2015). Since birds named snipe do exist, serious snipe hunters can hold out hope that their search is not a practical joke but might lead to something real. Trouble is, things have not been going well for mainstream cosmology lately (7 Aug 2023).
Like snipe hunters, cosmologists think that if they find more places where dark matter is not, they are getting warmer! Watch how they stay excited by non-detections.
Dark Matter
Researchers publish new results from dark boson searches (CERN via Phys.org, 21 Aug 2023). With the diagram of a snazzy detector and announcements about “new results” from sophisticated experiments, readers might think that scientists are making progress in their search for dark matter. They would have to look carefully for the admissions of failure in the forest of upbeat words:
Although the experimentalists did not find evidence for such a rare decay, nor for a dark boson, they placed the most stringent upper limits to date by analyzing data recorded in 2017 and 2018. In addition, the experimentalists excluded the axion as a possible explanation for the 17 MeV/c2 ATOMKI anomaly and thus confirmed previous findings by the NA64 experiment….
Their data set excludes leading sub-GeV dark-matter candidates with a coupling between the dark-matter particle and the dark photon for a range of dark-matter particle masses, ruling out both models.
Researchers dig deep underground in hopes of finally observing dark matter (The Conversation, 8 Aug 2023). Given decades of failure to find anything, the amount of money and effort going into the search for dark matter is quite astonishing. Watch the embedded video about the huge LZ detector assembled underground in a South Dakota mine. Hugh Lippincott of UC Santa Barbara continues to think the search is worthwhile.
Physicists like me don’t fully understand what makes up about 83% of the matter of the universe — something we call “dark matter.” But with a tank full of xenon buried nearly a mile under South Dakota, we might one day be able to measure what dark matter really is.
Some reporters and physicists seem to play fast and loose with their numbers. Whether dark matter comprises 83% or 23% depends on who you ask (see diagram, 16 Dec 2017). Usually, though, they both add up to 95%. So did the LZ detector have any luck after 60 days of looking?
In the result just published, using 60 days of data, LZ recorded about five events per day in the detector. That’s about a trillion fewer events than a typical particle detector on the surface would record in a day. By looking at the characteristics of these events, researchers can safely say that no interaction so far has been caused by dark matter. The result is, alas, not a discovery of new physics – but we can set limits on exactly how weakly dark matter must interact, as it remains unseen by LZ.
We still don’t know what dark matter is, but here’s what it’s not (Space.com, 20 Aug 2023). Monisha Raveshetti’s headline says it all. Scientists know something about dark matter! They know what dark matter is not. They’re learning every day where the snipe is not hiding. This can only mean one thing: they’re getting warmer!
“It’s all about mindset in science, where a null result can be as impactful as a positive result,” Daniel Jardin, study co-author and a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University, told Space.com. “Obviously it would have been fantastic to find dark matter, but we managed to rule out a new slice of dark matter parameter space.“
The CDMS detector in Minnesota has failed to find dark matter. How can scientists deal with such an uninterrupted record of failure? The silver lining is in the narrower places where the snipe is hiding.
Foremost, all of those statistical studies on SuperCDMS signals ended up providing the team with their conclusion about dark matter particles’ likely lower mass limits.
By analogy, “These dark matter hunters surely reached for the stars and managed to softly land on the moon.” And that is something to crow about. No snipe on the moon, Mate!
Astronomers search for dark matter annihilation at the center of the Earth (Universe Today via Phys.org, 11 Aug 2023). Writer Brian Koberlein discusses the failures of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory that looks for evidence of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs):
In this study, the team looked at a decade’s worth of data from IceCube and found no evidence of excess neutrinos. Given the energy cross-section of IceCube detectors, this effectively rules out WIMPs with a mass greater than 100 GeV, or a bit more than 100 proton masses. This result is in agreement with other studies that also rule out high-mass WIMPs. Lower mass dark matter particles are still possible, but we now have a long history of ruling out dark matter candidates.
Dark Energy
Dark energy could be measured by studying the galaxy next door (University of Cambridge via Phys.org, 14 Aug 2023). Cambridge cosmologists think that they can find 68% of the missing mass-energy of the universe by looking carefully at the neighboring Andromeda spiral galaxy M31. They believe that careful measurements of motions between pairs of galaxies might shed light on the dark.
In addition, by studying other pairs of galaxies, it could be possible to further refine the technique and determine how dark energy affects our universe. “Dark energy is one of the biggest puzzles in cosmology,” said Benisty. “It could be that its effects vary over distance and time, but we hope this technique could help unravel the mystery.”
25 years after its discovery, dark energy remains frustratingly elusive (Space.com, 15 Aug 2023). Astrophysicist and space popularizer Paul Sutter honestly admits that 25 years after the world-shaking announcement that dark energy exists, scientists still don’t have a clue what it is. Is it the cosmological constant proposed by Einstein? Is it a phantom force?
Cosmologists would love to find literally anything other than a cosmological constant, even a phantom value. The reason for this is that, while the cosmological constant solution technically solves the problem of dark energy (by stating that it simply exists), it doesn’t offer any deeper insights into the workings of nature. A cosmological constant does not explain its own existence or cause, so it only moves the goal posts.
And so “one of the greatest mysteries of modern science” remains unsolved. What to do? Keep looking. Maybe the snipe will appear.
Even if it’s simply due to a fact of nature, then we have a new mystery: Why does the universe have this property, with this acceleration rate, and nothing else? For the time being, the only thing we can do is prepare future surveys, like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and hope that some new observation will reveal something interesting.
For the time being, actually darkness and failure are keeping them interested.
We are not claiming that dark matter and dark energy do not exist. Perhaps they will get lucky and find something. Persistence led to discoveries of solar neutrinos and the Higgs boson. The big bang cosmologists and believers in the Standard Model with its zoo of particles are not completely lacking in reasons to believe in the mysterious unknown stuff. Their reasons, however, seem strongly paradigm dependent.
But this long record of failure, given so much money and effort, must surely interest any philosopher of science. Model dependence is like saying, “Given the existence of bathwater, there must be a baby in it somewhere.” But what if the bathwater was from the dishwasher? Why did the 18th century chemists finally give up on phlogiston? Why did the 19th century physicists give up on caloric? The reason: new paradigms came along that explained the observations better. Those mysterious substances never existed!
Another curious thing about the search is its magnitude. They’re saying that 95% of reality they know nothing about! Is that not hugely embarrassing? How can they live with themselves and sleep at night? Have they no shame? Yet if you complain about them snooping for a snipe, some of them snap back at you that you don’t understand science.
Science should frown on searches for a universal negative. Sooner or later, they need evidence. Where is it? What is it? The never-give-up attitude of the searchers is noble in one sense, but can get to a point of absurdity. How long do they get? When is the expiration date? What if the constraints on what dark matter could be are exhausted; do they start over with better instruments? That would be like re-digging an entire island for buried treasure on the belief that it must be there. What if it is not?
The search for dark matter and energy bears a striking resemblance for non-theistic experiments to discover the origin of life. If it is hopeless, it makes no sense to keep doing busy work or look for the non-existent snipe.
As for CEH, it is sufficient for us to accept Genesis 1:1—”In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” If the universe was indeed created by God’s omnipotent power and wisdom, then it came into existence via unique processes that cannot be replicated by experiment or explained by laws of nature. A dictionary did not come into existence by slow and gradual processes that can be described by equations. And if the universe was created in the straightforward Biblical chronology, the motions that lead mainstream cosmologists to believe in dark energy and dark matter have a different explanation: they are not billions of years old.
It’s a bit like the search for Elijah by people described in II Kings 2:15-18. They were convinced that Elijah would be found on some remote mountain, so they asked Elisha to let them hunt for him. Elisha told them not to, knowing it was a waste of time because he knew the chariot of fire had taken his master to heaven. “They sent therefore fifty men. And for three days they sought him but did not find him. And they came back to him [Elisha] while he was staying at Jericho, and he said to them, “Did I not say to you, ‘Do not go’?”. At least those men had the good sense to give up after a time limit. If they were like cosmologists, they would be still looking for the old prophet.