A Whiff of Dark Matter on the ISS

[BridgeTheGap]

(What are they feed those folks up there!?! btg)

In science fiction, finding antimatter on board your spaceship is not good news. Usually, it means you're moments away from an explosion.

In real life, though, finding antimatter could lead to a Nobel Prize.

On April 3rd, researchers led by Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting of MIT announced that the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle detector operating onboard the International Space Station since 2011, has counted more than 400,000 positrons, the antimatter equivalent of electrons. There’s no danger of an explosion, but the discovery is sending shock waves through the scientific community.

"These data show the existence of a new physical phenomenon," wrote Ting and colleagues in an article published in the Physical Review Letters. "It could be a sign of dark matter."

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/14apr_ams/

[MrYikes]

1. I become more skeptical of release statements every year.

The statements just seem so absurdly worded that the truth is troublesome to locate. There also seems a correlation to a date of statement release and due date for a large grant proposal.

[DreamGypsy]

2. Your skepticism is unwarranted in this case...

the AMS is a eighteen year NASA project with participation of 16 countries and a whole bunch of research institutes. The spectrometer has been functioning on the ISS for just under 2 years and recently had measure positron densities over a sufficient range of energies to justify a report on the findings. The AMS-02 cosmic ray detection count is approaching 32 billion events. A small fraction of those are positrons.

Here's the link to the report published April 5th in the Physical Review Letters. A good discussion of the results is available on Quantum Diaries.

You certainly are justified in complaining about the style and content of popular science writers, even those employed by NASA. "Whiff" of dark matter? Opening with science fiction about anti-matter explosions?? Come on. Science doesn't need to be cute for people to read it.

The AMS is cool and is estimated to be be functioning for 10 more years.

[MrYikes]

4. Thank you for responding.

I apologize for not being more clear. My skepticism was aimed at reports in general that make it to news media, not this report specifically. You are also correct in that cute words hurt rather than help understanding.

But just like I learned on Big Bang Theory the other night..........

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. And also deep underground in Minnesota

Dark matter experiment CDMS sees three tentative clues

Deep within a mine in the US state of Minnesota, CDMS - which stands for Cryogenic Dark Matter Search - tries to catch those rare interactions as dark matter particles bump into the nuclei of atoms in a detector that is held at temperatures near that of deep space.

The facility reported two potential dark matter sightings in 2010, but those later turned out to come from the instrument itself.

The new results - to be posted to the preprint server Arxiv - show three signals that should only have a 0.19% chance of showing up if there were no particle causing them, around the level of what physicists call a "three-sigma" result.

They suggest a less massive dark matter particle than commonly considered - about nine times that of the proton - but one that is still consistent with some theories.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22155222