For the first time in my life, on Tuesday I visited Oxford University, to be treated to small helpings of digestible science from a handful of the physics students there at this point in time. The evening was delightful. Some of the presenters may go on to unravel some of the deepest mysteries of the Universe. Some of the things they said resonated with me, and some made me smile inside. The struggle was the same for me, though, as it's always been at colloquiums and symposiums, with the overriding reliance on constants; the same old thoughts leading to the same old results, and a stampede of empty horses bravely towing bright chariots of promise.
I learned that the LUX experiment, squatting deep underground like a giant metallic Tellytubby on a hunt for Dark Matter, has enjoyed not one sniff of anything in the time it has been running. I asked what the expected signature of a Dark Matter particle was anticipated to be (it seems I was allowed to ask questions here - very refreshing!). The young lady speaker explained that there would be a flash if a Dark Matter particle collided with a particle of Xenon, the noble gas filling the trapping chamber. "So you're expecting some form of photoelectric effect?" I enquired, just to be sure. "Well, yes," she replied. "Has there been any incident at all?" asked someone else a minute later. "Well, no," said the young lady with a hint of forlorn. So, this expansive experiment has been set up to trap Dark Matter, but it expects a collision to produce Light. Maybe the Tellytubby's track is a little off-course, I thought, but of course I didn't say so. This is Oxford University.
Another speaker, who went on to win the vote for Best Presentation, explained that Einstein, in his ‘great blunder' over light and quantum mechanics, had left behind a new Constant in the form of Dark Energy. Light, it seemed, was no longer reliable enough to be the Universal Constant. There had to be a better contender. And although no-one has the faintest idea what it actually is, they've decided that Dark Energy is the bus that drives the Universe in its infinite expansion. So Dark Energy has seemingly been ordained as the new Cosmological Constant, and long may it reign.
So here I now sit, on what apparently is Science Friday, the eve of Midsummer, wondering whether the digging for WIMPs and the probing for Axions is really going to lead to anything meaningful, querying if the clues aren't being waved bravely in front of our noses where we're very much not looking. For if there's any particle in the Universe that diligently respects every quantum principle going, and conforms to every single one of the laws nobody is ever expected to understand, that particle is the Electron. Most minute of particles, most undeterminable, most widely talked-about and yet not even in the line-up of suspects for Dark Matter, there it sits, negatively charged, the particle that makes our Universe everything we perceive. We like to think all electrons are the same. But then, we made that mistake with snowflakes for a very long time indeed. The electron dances along with the Photon (a 'shadow version' of which was a casual DM suspect at Invisibles), which lets us see the everything we perceive, for without the Photon, of course, there would only be Darkness, and that would never do.
Someone else can do the math. There are as usual more stories behind the pictures.
So here I now sit, on what apparently is Science Friday, the eve of Midsummer, wondering whether the digging for WIMPs and the probing for Axions is really going to lead to anything meaningful, querying if the clues aren't being waved bravely in front of our noses where we're very much not looking. For if there's any particle in the Universe that diligently respects every quantum principle going, and conforms to every single one of the laws nobody is ever expected to understand, that particle is the Electron. Most minute of particles, most undeterminable, most widely talked-about and yet not even in the line-up of suspects for Dark Matter, there it sits, negatively charged, the particle that makes our Universe everything we perceive. We like to think all electrons are the same. But then, we made that mistake with snowflakes for a very long time indeed. The electron dances along with the Photon (a 'shadow version' of which was a casual DM suspect at Invisibles), which lets us see the everything we perceive, for without the Photon, of course, there would only be Darkness, and that would never do.
Someone else can do the math. There are as usual more stories behind the pictures.
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