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Dark matter experiment reveals nothing


Ozfactor

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Thank you for the links and explanations Sepulchrave. All fascinating reading. :tu:

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Thanks for the conversation H and S, it is very interesting. 

Question for anyone. Doesn't the non-detection of Dark Matter in this experiment tell us something as well, like what it can't be or we would have detected it?

Edited by Merc14
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29 minutes ago, Merc14 said:

Thanks for the conversation H and S, it is very interesting. 

Question for anyone. Doesn't the non-detection of Dark Matter in this experiment tell us something as well, like what it can't be or we would have detected it?

Yes. The wiki page for weakly interacting massive particles (the WIMPs that LUX was trying to detect) suggests that the null result from LUX, plus the recent results from the LHC, suggest that the concept of WIMPs as part of supersymmetry are false.

The LUX website has some slides that shows the current detection limits, basically if a WIMP exists its coordinates in terms of (mass, interaction strength) must fall below the detection curve. The wiki on WIMPs shows a figure of a similar curve, but it seems outdated - the new LUX data basically excludes the entire blue SUSY area (SUSY = supersymmetry).

So the LUX findings are potentially quite significant, as they indicate that either (1) the properties of WIMPs are considerably more complicated than previously thought, or (2) WIMPs do not exist at all.

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