On hadron colliders, dark matter and black holes

[Jaxilon]

Let's see - Just as E=MC^2, Energy can become Matter and Antimatter and vice versa. If that' right then I got most of what you said.

The issue as you describe it seems to be that We have lots of Matter we can account for but not an equal amount of Anti-matter? The new findings may show an inconsistency in the math being equal between Matter and Anti-matter and they are now working on that.

If that's pretty much what you said then I am with ya

[torstan]

You got it 100%. Good stuff.

Interestingly the maths that would let you solve this inconsistency usually predicts the existence of new particles that we should be able to produce at the LHC. So this is good news for new physics searches.

[torstan]

Now I've been a little quiet recently - and this is the reason:

http://uk.arxiv.org/abs/1005.4668

It's an explanation of the observed excess in positrons (anti-electrons) in terms of the magnetic field of the solar system. There are >100 papers on explanations of this effect in terms of annihilating particles of dark matter or in terms of pulsars (rotating neutron stars). This is a totally novel prediction that's testable in a few years and would rule out a slew of papers that claim it's dark matter. And it only uses high school physics I'm now battening down the hatches and waiting for the storm of objections...

Anyway, normal service will be resumed shortly.

[Steel General]

Get 'em Torstan!!

[torstan]

Thanks So far one invitation to talk at a conference and no angry emails telling me why it's rubbish. I'll take those numbers.

[Jaxilon]

Well, when you bandy words like "heliospheric modulation" around who's going to argue? LOL

So let me see if I get this: You said earlier that from what we know so far about our Universe there is an excess of matter over anti-matter. I take it you are hunting for the anti-matter and have found a excess measurement of it in the solar storms around our Sun. It looks like (or you theorize) there is more anti-matter as the storms increase. This is what "heliospheric modulation" is, the fluctuations in the solar storms around the sun. Do I follow? These are words that I don't use in my everyday life

Whatever you do, I hope that when you give this lecture you pop out a map of the sun complete with cities and so on to totally blow their minds!!! ROFL

[torstan]

So the main points are the following: there's a satellite called PAMELA that was sent up to look for antimatter. The antimatter up there comes from cosmic rays - basically particles that have been accelerated to high energies by exploding stars, rotating neutron stars or spat out of the accretion disks of black holes. So lots of exotic sources, but the end result is that we see high energy particles streaking past earth. Now we have a really good understanding of how all those particles are accelerated so we have a good idea of the number of particles that you'd expect to see. PAMELA saw many more anti-electrons than we expected, and this excess is more pronounced for higher energy particles. That's really surprising, and very hard to fit with conventional ideas of where the cosmic rays come from.

Two ideas were put forward to explain this. The first wasthat there were more rotating neutron stars nearby than we expected (neutron stars don't burn so they are dark and easy to miss with telescopes). However they would still have to non-standard and there would be other hints that they were there and those hints haven't conclusively turned up in the data - so the jury is out. The second idea is that the dark matter than we know exists around the galaxy is annihilating. Now if two particles annihilate they produce energy equal to E=mc^2 where m is their total mass. From that energy you can create lighter particles with lots of kinetic energy, so you could produce an electron and a positron, both carrying a lot of kinetic energy (going very fast). This would give you a large number of high energy positrons and electrons, and can explain the positron excess. However you'd expect to see other products of this annihilation - anti-protons for example. And there's no excess of antiprotons. That's lead to some truly weird and wonderful theories of dark matter where it annihilates through a new fundamental force, or through a mirror world or any number of other ideas.

I've jsut proposed a third solution. The solar system has a magnetic field caused by the solar wind. This stretches out into space 80 times further than the earth is from the sun. Magnetic fields bend different charges of particles in different directions. All I've pointed out is that this acts as a barrier for electrons that try to get to the center of the soalr system, whilst allowing anti-electrons to make it in. So it is the sun, and the solar system magnetic field, that causes there to be more anti-electrons at earth. This will swap over when the magnetic field of the sun flips over in a few years and we should see the opposite - more electrons than positrons. So it's testable and predictive and doesn't involve any new physics. It also rules out two years of frantic theorising about dark matter if it's right - so it's a pretty big deal.

[Jaxilon]

Awesome - Sort of reminds me of the fusion engine at the core of the earth. They believe it flips every so many years.

[Scotia]

This thread has been really interesting to read, particularly since I've been following a lot of this stuff for a couple of decades. It makes me lament all the time wasted on my education in my youth since 99% of what I learned is now considered outdated (or just plain wrong).

One question...well...multiple questions lumped into one:

Do galaxies generate a galactic equivalent of solar wind...a sort of halo of charged particles as a conglomerate of all of its stars? Or do the charged particles lose their charge (or decay into something else?) that limits the effective range of this shielding effect? Or would it be a case that on average 50% of a galaxy's stars would be throwing out positively charged ions while the other 50% would be spewing negatively charged ions so on a galactic scale they'd cancel one another out?

[RPMiller]

I think I found one of Torstan's papers: http://abstrusegoose.com/238