Dancing in the Dark: The End of Physics? Page #4

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approaching those not seen

since the moment of creation

can be reproduced.

EXPLOSION:

Now, at those very early epochs,

we think that there were

other particles

besides the ones that are described

by the standard model,

particles that we can't see.

Now, we believe that this

dark matter must exist,

because if we look at galaxies,

if we look at the universe

around us today,

there has to be some sort of

unseen dark stuff,

and we think that stuff must have

been liberated from the particles

that we can see very early

in the history of the universe.

If John and Dave can make

a suitable WIMP at CERN,

the picture will become much clearer

for Juan and the deep mine

fraternity.

Suddenly there'll be

something to shoot at.

If the astronomers find

a dark matter particle, you know,

hitting something in the laboratory,

they don't know what type

of particle it is.

But if we put our two

experiments together,

like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,

we may be able to figure out

what this dark matter actually is.

Linking a manufactured particle

from CERN

to underground WIMP detections

would indeed connect two pieces

of the jigsaw.

But there's a third piece -

one that provides evidence of dark

matter in its native habitat.

This is Chicago, Illinois.

# You only love me

for my record collection

# You say you never felt

a deeper connection... #

Chicago is the home of

the deep-dish pizza, Barack Obama,

and Reggies blues club

at 2105 South State Street.

# Let the record spin

cos you like it like that

# We're hanging on by the way

it spins round

# You love me for my records

and you wanna get down... #

Guitarist Charlie Wayne

and his band The Congregation

are entertaining the crowd

with one of their newest songs.

MUSIC CONTINUES:

Charlie has been in many bands over

the years, and has often been

in two minds as to whether he should

become a professional musician.

CHEERING:

But for the time being, he has a day

job.

And a day name, too.

During the day, guitarist

Charlie Wayne becomes

Associate Professor Dan Hooper,

physicist.

So, I'm a professor of astronomy and

astrophysics

at the University of Chicago,

but I also do

research here at Fermilab, as part of

the theoretical astrophysics group.

In addition to being

the centre of particle physics

in the United States,

they have a strong programme in

cosmology and particle astrophysics.

They study questions like, how did

the universe begin?

How did it evolve?

What's dark matter and dark energy?

Some of my favourite questions.

And while Charlie

dreams of commercial success

and induction into the Rock and Roll

Hall of Fame, Dan has his eyes

on the glittering prizes that can be

won through academic study.

So, this is my office,

this is where I do my work.

So what does work mean, Dan?

So, I'm a theoretical astrophysicist.

Which means my research is

done on chalk boards, and pads

and paper, and my computer.

I don't run any experiments.

I don't build anything.

Fermilab is named

for Italian-American

Nobel Prize-winning physicist,

Enrico Fermi,

whose name is also given to a class

of subatomic particles, fermions.

It's appropriate, then, that

Dan works here,

because it's possible that he,

too, has identified

a type of particle - something

that could be a dark matter WIMP,

something that Dan's colleagues

are already calling the Hooperon.

OK, so in many theories of dark

matter,

these particles of dark matter

are themselves stable.

They'll sit around

and basically do nothing, throughout

the history of the universe,

but in those rare instances where

they collide with each other,

they can get entirely destroyed or

annihilated and leave

behind in their wake these energetic

jets of ordinary material.

So these jets might include

things like an electron that might

fly around here and just move

through the magnetic fields

of the universe, or they might

include particles called neutrinos,

which are really hard to detect.

And then they could also include,

and usually do, some particles

that we call gamma rays which

are just really high-energy photons.

So if the Fermi telescope,

which is my cartoon picture

of the Fermi telescope here,

happens to be looking

in the direction that the gamma ray

came from, you could record them

and maybe see evidence of this

sort of process going on,

especially in the centre of

the Milky Way,

where there's so much dark matter.

Liftoff of the Delta rocket

carrying the gamma ray telescope,

searching for unseen physics

in the stars of the galaxies.

The gamma ray-detecting Fermi

telescope is also

named for Enrico Fermi,

but confusingly,

it has nothing to do with Fermilab.

But because the data it records

is made public, anyone, including

Dan, can take a view on what

it's seeing.

In 2009, I was sitting at my laptop

just like this.

And I had a mathematical routine

written to, you know,

plot the spectrum in the galactic

centre regions. So how the different

photons came with different energy,

how many of them were different

energies,

and most of the backgrounds

predict something pretty flat,

not exactly flat, but pretty flat,

and dark matter predicts a bump.

So I plotted up,

and for the first time I hit enter

and, you know, run the plotting

routine and this plot comes up,

and there's this big old bump.

You just couldn't miss it.

It was a giant

bump in the inner galaxy.

The bump of gamma ray activity that

Dan has seen

could be due to many things.

Pulsars emit gamma rays, for a

start, and there are plenty of them

in the Milky Way.

But the energy levels that

make up Dan's bump

theoretically matches the

annihilation profile of particles

that could,

theoretically, be dark matter -

Dan's particle, the Hooperon.

It really was the thing

I did the analysis looking for.

And it just stared back at me

and said, "This is the thing you

might have been looking for."

It was exciting.

Exciting it may be,

but, as yet,

the data that feeds Dan's bump is

currently just raw data.

The Fermi telescope collaboration

has not yet confirmed it.

Until they do, the excess gamma rays

could be anything,

even a problem with the gamma ray

detector.

But if it is real,

if this third part of the jigsaw

falls into place, it will not only

be good for Dan's career, it will

also confirm what this man has been

saying for more than 30 years.

He is Professor Carlos Frenk, FRS,

creator of universes.

So, Carlos, what is this place?

Well, this is my institute,

the Institute for Computational

Cosmology of Durham University.

This is where I work.

That's my office up there,

and it's here that we build

replicas of the universe.

Back in the day, when WIMPs

and MACHOs were still debated,

and Carlos was just starting out

in his scientific career, he and his

friends made a compelling case for

one particular type of dark matter.

"Dark matter," they announced -

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