Originally published @ 5:03 pm, Sun 27th Dec 2009
Perhaps the most important event of the year has been the discovery of dark matter. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/dec/17/dark-matter-detected
Yeah right, I hear you say. But previous discoveries in physics has led to so much change in the last century (micro-electronics, magnetic-resonance imaging, nuclear power and weapons etc.) and six per cent of the British economy is still said to come from current research in physics.
The theory that the universe was created by a big bang required the universe to have four times the amount of matter that physicists could find. So a theory of an almost inert matter, “dark matter”, existed was developed that would explain the missing three-quarters of the universe, proposed as long ago as 1933. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
The new evidence consists of two types of particles detected by highly sensitive detectors at the bottom of the Soudan mine in Minnesota and photos of distant galaxies taken by the Hubble telescope.
Further evidence for the one-quarter – three quarters theory comes from our attempt to get through our 11lb Christmas turkey (“sorry, we can only get you a small one”). By the evening, we’d managed one leg and 2 wings.
Transpires that this is not sufficient evidence, and indeed, the announcement of the detection of particles in the mine was qualified by a one-quarter chance that it was an error – which seems high to me. It's to be hoped that the discovery is not a different kind of turkey.
2020 Postscript
"Currently there has been no well-established claim of dark matter detection from a direct detection experiment ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Direct_detection
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