Did Big Bang Also Birth an Antimatter Universe?
Maybe the antimatter went into a parallel Space and gravity can transcend the "barrier" between them---and hopefully, we never shall!!! Scott > Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:54:51 -0400 > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Subject: [Vo]:Through the Mirror, Darkly > > http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25100/ > > Monday, April 26, 2010 > > First Evidence That Mirror Matter May Fill the Universe? > > If dark matter exists it may take the form of mirror planets, mirror > stars and mirror galaxies. Now one physicist says the most recent > evidence seems to confirm this idea > > When astronomers study distant galaxies, they see only a small > fraction of the mass needed to hold these clumps of stars together. > Without some kind of extra hidden mass, galaxies ought to fly apart. > > Astronomers call this hidden mass 'dark matter' and physicists around > the world are engaged in an increasingly desperate race to find > evidence of it here on Earth. That's why there are more than 30 > experiments in various parts of the planet looking for the stuff. > > The consensus is that, despite this global effort, dark matter remains > well hidden. Nobody has had a whiff of the stuff. > > That is nobody except an Italian group which has spent the last ten > years or so watching a giant lump of sodium iodide. Their thinking is > that any dark matter hitting the sodium iodide should generate a > photon. And that as Earth moves around the Sun, they should see more > photons when heading into the background sea of dark matter than when > moving away from it. > > Sure enough, this seasonal signal is exactly what this team says it > sees. They claim that it's experiment called DAMA/LIBRA is the first > direct evidence of dark matter. > > The trouble is that nobody else believes them, mainly because so many > other experiments have seen nothing. The critics says something else > must be responsible for these seasonal signals, perhaps some kind of > environmental change like a variation in temperature. > > Then, about a month ago, everything changed when an experiment called > CoGent based in the US reported that it too had found a hint of dark > matter. CoGent looks for evidence that dark matter particles have > bumped into a crystal of germanium and sure enough, the CoGent team > say that the experiment is producing abundant evidence of these kinds > of collisions. > > Curiously, while most experiments are looking for relatively heavy > dark matter particles which should produce higher energy collisions, > CoGent looks for much lighter particles. > > The interesting thing is that the DAMA\LIBRA evidence is from a > similar mass range. > > Now the theoreticians are attempting to reconcile the DAMA and CoGent > results by finding a dark matter model that can explain them both. > Last month, Liam Fitzpatrick at Boston University and a couple of > mates suggested that a light, weakly interacting dark matter particle > could explain both results. > > And today, Robert Foot from the University of Melbourne has an even > more interesting solution. He says that mirror matter could explain > both. "This result adds weight to the mirror dark matter > interpretation of the direct detection experiments," he says. > > The theory behind mirror matter suggests that every particle in the > standard model has a mirror equivalent that interacts with ordinary > matter only very weakly. > > However, mirror particles interact with each other in exactly the same > way as ordinary particles. So in this scenario, the Universe is filled > with mirror planets, stars and galaxies. That's a mind blowing idea. > > Foot is one of the leading proponents of mirror matter and says other > observations also point to its existence. > > Perhaps the new evidence will tempt astronomers to look harder. If it > exists, mirror matter ought to be observable in other ways. For > example, its gravity should bend light causing microlensing events > although distinguishing mirror matter microlensing events from the > same thing caused by ordinary but dim matter will be hard. > > Still, an interesting avenue to pursue. > > Refs: > > arxiv.org/abs/1004.1424 : A CoGeNT Confirmation Of The DAMA Signal > > arxiv.org/abs/1003.0014: Implications Of CoGeNT And DAMA For Light > WIMP Dark Matter > > <end, data and comments on website> > _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_1
