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There are four Fundamental Forces: Strong, Weak, Electromagnetic, and Gravity. In general, Dark Matter does not interact electromagnetically, and therefore doe
by batbomb 12y ago
There are four Fundamental Forces: Strong, Weak, Electromagnetic, and Gravity.
In general, Dark Matter does not interact electromagnetically, and therefore does not emit nor absorb light. We can't see it. That's the defining property.
There may be a few flavors of dark matter, each with it's own additional properties. However, Dark Matter probably interacts through gravity and the weak force:
http://www.lsst.org/files/img/xxnyt.jpg http://www.lsst.org/files/img/xxnyt.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weakly_interacting_massive_particles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weakly_interacting_massive_part...
- guscost 12y agoSo perhaps we can say (to a layman) that the properties of Dark Matter are: - It interacts via Gravity - It interacts via the Weak Nuclear Force But has any experiment ever observed something that fits this description? The galaxy rotation and gravitational lensing stuff must only indicate a gravity interaction, and as far as I can tell the attempts to observe WIMPs in isolation have not yet succeeded[0]. It looks like there might be some information gained from this PICASSO experiment mentioned in the wiki, but I would be grateful for some help decoding this one: > The obtained limits restrict recent interpretations of the DAMA/LIBRA annual modulation effect in terms of spin dependent interactions. Anyway, it seems like PR nonsense when folks ignore Popper and list "confirmations" that tend to support the SUSY model. I was careful not to use the phrase "fudge factor" because that's unfair, but there is a wide gulf between a fudge factor and a well-defined observable thing. [0] http://news.discovery.com/space/lhc-discovery-maims-supersymmetry-again-130724.htm http://news.discovery.com/space/lhc-discovery-maims-supersym...