Nature's fifth force — dark photons??

[Tiny]

Scientists may have discovered nature's fifth force — dark photons

Key points:

• Current models do not explain the way the four known forces interact
• Scientists had been looking for dark photons, but may have discovered a new force
• If proven, would build on work of Albert Einstein in later years

By
Posted yesterday at 7:45pm




Researchers in Hungary have discovered what they think may be the fifth force of nature, which could be a vital clue to understanding dark matter.

There are currently four identified forces of nature: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear, but they do not interact with each other in ways that can be explained by the current mathematical model of the universe.
So scientists had been looking for evidence of a fifth force, which would go some way to explaining the discrepancy.
Scientists at the Hungarian Academy of Science's Institute for Nuclear Research were looking for evidence of dark photons — a force which they surmised could carry and therefore explain dark matter.
They had been shooting protons at a strip of lithium, and in doing so created an unexpectedly high number of subatomic particles.
They think this anomaly in radioactive decay could be the result of an entirely new particle, which may suggest the presence of a fifth force.

New force could account for gaps in current mathematical model of universe

Geraint Lewis, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Sydney, said this could explain discrepancies in the way the four previously known forces interact.
"What we have at the moment is what's known as the standard model of particle physics, and this is a mathematical description of the way the universe works," Professor Lewis said.

The particle physics model works "really, really well" to describe and explain three of the fundamental forces — electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear.

"But what we also know is that those forces don't play well with gravity. Gravity is described by a completely different set of mathematics and people have tried for almost 100 years to make these forces work together," Professor Lewis said.
Professor Lewis said this could build upon the work that occupied Albert Einstein in his last years.
"The story goes that Einstein on his deathbed was still working on uniting gravity and electromagnetism," he said.
"The problem we have is the mathematics worked really well and we don't have many clues pointing to how we should, well even where we should look to unite gravity with these other forces," he said.


Physicists always looking for 'things that don't fit'

If physicists are able to unite these forces it may lead to a better understanding of dark matter, which they now understand to make up a significant part of the universe.
"So people are looking for anomalies, things that don't fit. Parts of physics that aren't working the way we expect to sort of give us a clue on what areas we should focus upon," Professor Lewis said.
In this latest experiment, he said the researchers were "not quite getting what they're expecting" which could point to the existence of other forces yet to be accounted for.
What this new force might actually do is another black hole of knowledge.
"What it's telling us if it is correct is that there is something going on in the way that one particle talks to another particle that we haven't got inside our mathematics at the moment," Professor Lewis said.
"So it's a force as we now understand forces to be. It's doing something that we currently don't expect the other forces to do."
The physics world is also intrigued by some recent results at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva.
Scientists there may have found a new particle which could open up a new world of particles and forces.
"There's been some recent results of the Large Hadron Collider where there's been possibly a hint of a detection and people are all over that trying to understand if that also is pointing to a new area of physics we should be investigating," Professor Lewis said.

Source:

[trash]

Lets see....

Electromagnetic Force - Carrier is the Photon
is unified with
Strong Nuclear Force - Carrier is the Gluon
which is also unified with
Weak Nuclear Force - Carrier is the W & Z Bosons

All three of these forces are unified and we know how they interact.

Gravity and Dark Energy are the two not unified.

Interesting to note, that we know how Gravity interacts with the other three forces, ie Gravity can bend light.
But you'll notice a universal asymmetry that light can't bend gravity.

Dark photons sound like a bit of a stab in the dark so to speak. Nothing about their comments grabs my attention (yet).

[Tiny]

Give them a chance trash; they have to be excited about these small things so they get funding to spend another year searching for smaller things.

[trash]

Oh yes, I always give them a chance. There are always surprises. It's the predictions like higgs and gravity waves that are disappointing.
The discoveries are exciting in themselves, but it would be more fun if they hadn't been found making for a big re-think.
Dark Energy was one of those unexpected discoveries from out of the blue.

Dark Matter is a little easier to deal with at the moment because theories are a little more easily tested.
The latest info I had heard on it was that it was most like make of particles. Those particles do not interact with the electromagnetic force nor do they appear to have any relation to the weak nuclear force (we haven't seen them decay).
Also these particles do not appear to interact with each other with EM, strong or weak nuclear forces. They do interact with each other gravitationally.
They have mass so they interact with the higgs field.

So what can we derive from this information?
Well think of two dark matter particles moving through space. They appear to have mass because we can measure that.
We might ask if each particle has a volume and what that is. Is it possible for dark particles to collide and if they do, how do they do that?
When two protons collide they recoil from each other because of the EM force. One can describe it with a simple faynman diagram...
Oh, here's a good example which shows three pairs of protons colliding.

The first interaction is with the electromagnetic force, the protons exchange a photo.
The photon doesn't actually exist, you can say it's a virtual photon (the carrier of the electromagnetic force)
The second is a pi meson. It's an interaction using the strong nuclear force. Again, while the pi meson is a real particle, it's exchange in this case is also virtual.
The third one is the Z boson representing a weak nuclear interaction, but this is rather unlikely for protons since we've never seen one decay.

So if you can't use these three forces it complicates things but also asks more questions of dark particles.
We know they interact with gravity including on each other. And since we know gravity waves exist we can hypothesise that gravitons (the carrier particle) also exists even if it is virtual. The question to ask here is why doesn't dark matter clump together to form dark matter objects?
Or maybe it does?

So that leaves dark energy and we might call it's carrier particle the dark photon. So chances are pretty good this critter exists.
But like dark matter, these particles don't make a lot of sense yet.

It's still mostly a mystery to me and it takes effort to just to keep up with some of the latest thoughts or discoveries.
The silly thing is that dark energy sort of makes sense. It isn't so mysterious and is as easy to understand as gravity.
Dark matter ... it hurts my head.

[Uncle Fester]

We know they interact with gravity including on each other. And since we know gravity waves exist we can hypothesise that gravitons (the carrier particle) also exists even if it is virtual. The question to ask here is why doesn't dark matter clump together to form dark matter objects?
Or maybe it does?

... it hurts my head.

Interesting to note, that we know how Gravity interacts with the other three forces, ie Gravity can bend light.
But you'll notice a universal asymmetry that light can't bend gravity.

Maybe there is a symmetry.

What if this fifth force is a dark photon that CAN bend gravity of dark matter and all our observations of the whereabouts of dark matter are incorrect.
So while we don't see the dark photons (or is that just dark energy) and the dark matter, the dark photons are distorting or even just scattering the gravity of lumps of dark matter observed by us. On the dark side these photons may have no effect on the gravity of dark matter but one might observe the gravity of our mass lumps scattered.

[trash]

hehe... being massless that might be a bit hard. Dark matter appears to have mass. Dark energy is a bit of a wild guess

So I was prompted to think about this again today. A theory passed my ears that dark matter isn't something exotic. This kind of theory is usually the first question any you budding cosmologist might ask.
"Could it be ordinary matter that we just can't see like gas or dust?" Well the answer is of course no, because these things we can detect and measure.
However, there is a form of ordinary matter that behaves just like dark matter. Degenerate matter (Black holes).
Which is the second question cosomology students ask, "Do Black holes have more mass than we realise?"
The answer to that is also, no.

But if we thing of black holes, we cannot see them via the EM force. I'm not sure about the strong and weak nuclear forces. Hawking radiation (I don't think anybody has seen this) and polar (quasar) jets that Tytower loves.
The though was that dark matter might be primordial black holes. Typically about 10 solar masses.

So this thought requires a reality check. If 80% of matter is dark matter, that means that we might consider that there are 4 times as many primordial black holes as there are stars.
About 500 billion of them in our galaxy. So at first sight this just seems unrealistic. But to quote Douglas Adams, "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

Lets look around the galaxy. Stars spaced about 5 light years apart. You could easily fit a black hole between each of the neighbouring stars in the galaxy and you'd barely notice.
If this sounds unrealistic, look at globular clusters which have millions of stars closely packed about 1 light year apart and even they rarely collide.
But dark matter isn't just in the galactic plane, it's a halo. So if we consider our galaxy is 100,000 light years across and we put it inside a sphere 150,000 light years diameter.
The volume is 1325 Trillion cubic light years. That's one black hole in every 2650 cubic light years or they are about 14 light years apart if they are evenly spaced.
Then remember black holes themselves aren't big things. These kinds of black holes would be about 30km diameter.

Collisions between stars in our galaxy are very rare. Even when we extrapolate this exponentially in the same volume to take into account so many objects, it's still a very rare event.
Move this back into the realistic volume of the halo and collisions almost never happen.

So it does put forward a good case for dark matter not actually existing and instead it is degenerate ordinary matter.
That's not really a fun answer, but it is one that is worth considering. I'm indifferent, it would be more interesting if dark matter is exotic matter.

[porkop]

God (sorry) I love your posts Trash. Even if you don't believe in Tachyons!!

[lsemmens]

So? Where did you come from, Trash? Alpha Centauri, or one of our other near neighbours?

[trash]

Have you lot been watching Big Bang again.
Yes the rumours are true. I am Sheldon Cooper.
The writers of this show have obviously been stalking me, the similarities are rather disturbing.
Sheldon is more narcissistic than me and I'm more Machiavellian than Sheldon.

The differences are few. The harder I try to find differences, the more similarities I discover.
I don't read or like comics, super heros etc And while I like science fiction I'm not hard core enough to turn up to something like comicon wearing a costume.
I wasn't much of a star trek fan until Geri Ryan came along.

It's common for people to ask why or how I'm so different from my parents. There can be only one answer.
Aliens abducted my real parents and put those people in their place.

Bernadette is my kind of girlfriend, but in reality, she's Penny.
I play Sheldon's game with my girlfriend. I ask her what the formula on the whiteboards is about. She asks me about something one of the girls was wearing.
The score is 0 - 0 so far.

[lsemmens]

You certainly are NO Star Trek Fan. No Trekkie worth his/her salt would misspell Seven of Nine's name like that. Jeri Ryan was hot, though.

[porkop]

Now now guys lets not forget Jolene Blalock (T'pol)

[lsemmens]

She was nice, but not as good as Jeri. I had her as a screen saver on my desktop way back when. As we were in a small house, computer was set up in our bedroom. She must have been watching us, because, even though monitor powered down after a time on saver, it would always seem to power up, of its own accord whenever SWMBO and I were getting friendly . Became quite a laugh in our place, Jeri getting jealous.

[Tiny]

@ lsemmens, you must have had some dark energy in action.

Kind of miss Star Trek. I'm sure T'pol, Data, Spock or Tuvok, would have no trouble explaining dark photons to us.

[lsemmens]

New movie coming out soon, saw the shorts only a few days back. I just hope the new Chekov gets a reprise, he was almost better than the original.

[trash]

You certainly are NO Star Trek Fan. No Trekkie worth his/her salt would misspell Seven of Nine's name like that. Jeri Ryan was hot, though.

Yeah, I'm not a trekkie (nor a hard core Star Wars fan). I enjoy sci-fi for it's entertainment value, it doesn't inspire much real science in me.
Star Trek seems to be more about philosophy than science. Lets hug the aliens and be friends. Hell no .... it's the bad guys that make sci fi fun and exciting.

Vulcans .... wow.. they're like the sci-fi lawyers and fun police of the universe. Captain, "I must remind you ....."
<Evil Captain Trash energises the transporter and the vulcan is transported to the same position but re-materialised upside down>

If I was an actor, my next job would be Q.

[melvinderby]

I am not much of a sci-fi fan either but the post was interesting

[Tiny]

I am not much of a sci-fi fan either but the post was interesting

yes we got side tracked into Sci-Fi. We shouldn't get off topic, however sometimes it's just a little fun.

The original post & it's theories may be proven correct or incorrect & so could end up in the realm of Sci -Fi anyway.

....................

@ trash, yes you would make a perfect Q; an omniscient being you are or rather portray.

[trash]

John Delancy as Q .... Oh yes. He's so me.
If you see his off air interview about the character and how to make him evil without making it look like he wakes up each morning thinking of new ways to be more evil

He's so machiavellian and as his mate (female) Q Suzie Plakson says about her 'superiority complex' ... "It's not complex !"

An example of how Q thinks.
He's not a omnipotent kid with a magnifying burning ants. No, that's fun for a while, but you tire quickly of executing lesser lifeforms for personal amusement.
Evil is an art form. I get tweezers and pick up a bull ant from one colony and drop him in another.

And Q also has a talent for retribution. When he shrunk the calamarain, I was laughing.
I got stung by a bull ant. I put a rock on him, walked 300m to get my mapp gas and then I came back, lifted the rock and burnt half the ant.
As I left him to his new fate I said, "You're lucky I don't know where you live!" else I would have enacted unspeakable horrors upon his friends.

Paper wasps also attract my attention. I was recently minding my own business when I was set up by the mob.
I ran 200m down the road screaming to get away from the bastards. When I'd finally made my escape and counted my wounds, I started to devise cruel and unusual punishments and I had 24 hours to work on it before I was passing by my new friends' home.

The re-con the following day involved studying numbers, a plan of attack and the dispatch of the players.
The most aggressive were lured away, captured, and milked for their pheromones, which we then used to lure and trap more victims one by one.
Eventually all the nurses and sentries were eliminated and the workers were captured and killed returning to the nest.
When all of them had been carefully accounted for, the nest was removed and vapourised with MAPP.
The pheromone lure was left in the place of the nest just to really piss off any unaccounted wasps.


Dark Photons .... heheh they sound cool.
The carrier force of "The Dark Triad".


Try taking the Dark Triad aptitude test......................


I'm evil

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

These Dark Photons, are actually the "Ether" that was postulated in the 19th century and dismissed by 20th century physics.

[Tiny]

These Dark Photons, are actually the "Ether" that was postulated in the 19th century and dismissed by 20th century physics.

Sorry to be picky actually not; however I suspect you mean the aether, yes some people shorten it to ether, but it is better to clarify & distinguish from ether the organic compound.
The general structure of an ether.


Having said that, you may be correct!
I'm sure trash will clarify & correct our altruistic assumptions.