Particle accelerator used in dark matter study
Scientists use high-energy accelerators, like those at Fermilab in Illinois, to explore the possibility that the dark matter of our universe consists of sub-atomic particles. (DOE)
Like many scientists, physicist Dan Hooper – who works at Fermilab near Chicago – is a detective. He’s looking for the missing mass of the universe.
Dan Hooper: Just like in the solar system, you can tell how heavy the sun must be because of the speed of the planets revolving around it. You should be able to tell how heavy the galaxy is by looking at how fast stars revolve around it. And when we do that, we find that the galaxy is actually much, much heavier than all of the stars in it put together.
Hooper told Earth & Sky that 95 percent of the universe is made of something we can’t see. No one knows for certain what this invisible substance is. Scientists have been speculating about it for decades. One idea is that the missing “something” could be subatomic particles that interact only very weakly with ordinary matter. Such particles would be able to travel through the Earth almost as if it were empty space._
One way to study dark matter is to use a particle accelerator, a machine that accelerates particles to speeds just below the speed of light, and then crashes them together in order to produce new kinds of matter. The largest and most energetic of the dark matter experiments are now carried out in what’s called the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago, where Hooper works.
Our thanks today to Research Corporation, a foundation for the advancement of science.
Our thanks to:
Dan Hooper
Theoretical Astrophysics Group
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Hooper’s book is: Dark Cosmos, in Search of our Universe’s Missing Mass and Energy
I’ve always speculated that we are sub atomic particles of a much larger object. A matter of scale.
And what if this “larger” object is just another sub atomic particle of a much larger object? LOL, nonsese championship