massive-particles « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Chocolate, vanilla, or tau?

theobservereffect — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 01:42:49 +0000

“In a truly transformative event, physicists have for the first time found direct evidence that a neutrino, a ghostly elementary particle that barely interacts with matter, morphs from one type into another. The finding, announced May 31 in a news release, provides additional support for the notion that neutrinos have mass, a property that requires an explanation beyond the realm of the standard model of particle physics.”

Elusive Neutrino Change-Up Finally Detected – Wired

The first glimpse of dark matter?

ramanan50 — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 05:23:12 +0000

Dark matter may make up most of the “cosmic web” of the Universe US scientists have repo

WIMPS Wanted

theobservereffect — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:01:24 +0000

“Scientists of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment today announced that they have regained the lead in the worldwide race to find the particles that make up dark matter. The CDMS experiment, conducted a half-mile underground in a mine in Soudan, Minn., again sets the world’s best constraints on the properties of dark matter candidates.

‘With our new result we are leapfrogging the competition,’ said Blas Cabrera of Stanford University, co-spokesperson of the CDMS experiment, for which the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory hosts the project management. ‘We have achieved the world’s most stringent limits on how often dark matter particles interact with ordinary matter and how heavy they are, in particular in the theoretically favored mass range of more than 40 times the proton mass. Our experiment is now sensitive enough to hear WIMPs even if they ring the ‘bells’ of our crystal germanium detector only twice a year. So far, we have heard nothing.’

WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles, are leading candidates for the building blocks of dark matter, which accounts for 85 percent of the entire mass of the universe. Hundreds of billions of WIMPs may have passed through your body as you read these sentences...”

Crystal bells stay silent as physicists look for dark matter – Physorg.com