{"id":187,"date":"2009-12-08T06:39:20","date_gmt":"2009-12-08T11:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2009\/12\/08\/dark-matter-rumor\/"},"modified":"2009-12-09T04:47:22","modified_gmt":"2009-12-09T09:47:22","slug":"dark-matter-rumor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2009\/12\/08\/dark-matter-rumor\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark matter rumor"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE:\u00a0 <\/strong>Never mind.\u00a0 It looks like the whole thing’s not true.\u00a0 See the “important update<\/a>.”\u00a0 Sorry!\u00a0 (I agree with Brent in the comments to this post that the tone of the email from the Nature editor is quite odd, by the way.)<\/p>\n

A rumor is apparently going around<\/a> that the CDMS experiment may be about to announce that they’ve directly detected dark matter particles.<\/p>\n

CDMS is one of several experiments that try to observe dark matter particles directly interacting with their apparatus as they pass through.\u00a0 These experiments are always placed deep underground to shield them from “ordinary” cosmic rays; this one is in a mine in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

Evidence for the rumor: The collaboration had a paper accepted in Nature.\u00a0 Nature usually only publishes high-profile results.\u00a0 If CDMS had a non-detection to report (even if it set a new and interesting upper limit), Nature would be less likely to accept it. Nature articles are embargoed until publication, meaning that the collaboration can’t release the results or talk about them until December 18.\u00a0 Members of the collaboration have canceled seminars before that date and scheduled talks at a number of universities to take place on that date.<\/p>\n

So it definitely sounds like they have something exciting to say.\u00a0 If they really have directly detected dark matter particles in the lab, needless to say this would be a Really Big Deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE:\u00a0 Never mind.\u00a0 It looks like the whole thing’s not true.\u00a0 See the “important update.”\u00a0 Sorry!\u00a0 (I agree with Brent in the comments to this post that the tone of the email from the Nature editor is quite odd, by the way.) A rumor is apparently going around that the CDMS experiment may be about … Continue reading Dark matter rumor<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}