RE: Flavourful darkness or dark flavours, that’s the question
You are viewing a single comment's thread:
Hello @lemouth,
I am in the middle of reading this, but want to stop and make a comment before I forget (always possible). As you review some of the elements of your discussion, little sparks of recognition go off in my head. For example, my understanding of the structure of the atom is now more sophisticated. I had the nucleus, protons, neutrons and electrons down pat, I thought. Now there is another layer of understanding. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks and antiquarks. It's hard to explain how exciting it is that the building blocks of the universe are coming into focus for me. I'm sure you understand because this is your adventure that you lead us through. Now back to reading.
I'm back. My physics literacy is growing every week :) A critical sentence I think in this piece is this:
One of the golden rule of physics says that energy and momentum are conserved in the collision
This means that missing pieces not only must be explained but offer opportunities to look for answers. If the result of a process does not reconcile with expectations, then that missing bit is where we find dark matter, or the path to an understanding of dark matter. In your collisions you find that some energy and some momentum are missing.
This imbalance in energy and momentum conservation can be associated with dark matter being produced in the collision. Once produced, dark matter indeed always leaves the detector invisibly. In our model, signals containing such an imbalance are very common, so that they offer a potential handle on the model
While I haven't digested this thoroughly enough to form a question, I think I do understand (I believe) the thrust of your work. You are looking for an intermediary particle (element?) that can link the invisible with the visible. Once you find this you may be able to reconcile data with predictions. The puzzle will have all the missing pieces.
Though writing this blog takes you a long time, I'd like to affirm your ambition to review information in previous blogs before you move on to new concepts. This is extremely helpful. The vocabulary and the concepts build on each other. As I read the first part I was nodding my head in recognition and then was able to move on to the new material. Just like a great lecture :)) (I took notes as I read !!)
Thanks @lemouth. That was a really good lesson.
PS
I left out the 'Special Project', which will be a collaboration between the art and science communities on Hive. I almost see myself as bridge because I love both both communities and blog in both. Another obvious bridge is @yaziris (he commented on your blog today). He also posts in art and science communities, and is also active in the writing community. I'll be sure to tag him when the project is revealed.
I don't know whether you have this in mind, but the way in which protons and neutrons are made of quarks is similar to what I described in this post, with the "colours" associated with the strong force. More concretely, we take one green quark, plus one red quark plus one blue quark, and this gives a white proton or a white neutron (the difference between protons and neutrons come from the flavours of the quarks considered).
On the other hand, you exactly got the most important point for dark matter searches at the Large Hadron Collider: we reconstruct the properties of the invisible from information on what is visible. The only difference with respect to what you wrote is that here, we use the information of the final-state objects (i.e. everything that leaves tracks and/or hits in the detector). From this, we reconstruct not only the intermediate particles, but also the final-state invisible objects (that could be Standard Model neutrinos, and dark matter of we are lucky).
I actually hesitated a lot to do so, as this takes a good third of the blog. However, I decided to think about potential new readers who may not have the time to go through older blogs (although the links are there if they want to). I am building my "writing strategy" with time :D
PS: I was very pleased to see @yaziris showing up here. I enjoy reading his regular physics blogs too.
It was my pleasure reading about your research. I enjoyed every bit of it, if it wasn't for the fact that you pointed out that it might be a long read, I wouldn't have noticed at all.
You have a smooth way of writing about such sophisticated subjects, explaining them very well without dismissing much if any technicalities.
And yes, I do like the linking you do to previous posts/subjects, as it would be impossible to cover and explain everything in a single blog post.
I'm honestly flattered! 😊I wish I could write physics articles more regularly, but honestly, when I see how shallow and basic my subject usually is in comparision to some other posts like yours, I find it hard :p
I'd like to think of myself as trying to bridge a gap to the best of my abilities between the world of physics and an average joe who "hates physics".
As @agmoore kindly pointed out, I do like and participate in art communities too.
I'm curious and intrigued about this new special project you mentioned, and for sure, I will be looking forward for its reveal!
Thanks for this nice review. I was really pleased to read it, and I could even say "how to start a day better?".
Don't worry. It is not necessary to be an expert to share about a topic. Most of the time, being enthusiastic is sufficient. It is indeed only by sharing material in a passionate manner that we will make the community grow (by attracting new members). Therefore, feel free to contribute as much as you can and you want. I will always be there to support ^^
We now have an agenda. Next Monday, next Tuesday and next-to-next Thursday (i.e. in 8 days). I won't however share more details ;)
As teachers (I am a former teacher), I think you and I anticipate the needs of readers in a way that some writers might not. We have looked across the room and have seen quizzical looks as we tried to make a point (at least I have😄). I think we anticipate questions as we go along.
As for the colours
This is so much more sophisticated than my understanding had been.
I guess that this is what we could call experience, couldn't we? ;)
That's the easiest way I have found to explain this. Matter is white, whereas its building blocks are red, green and blue (or anti-red, anti-blue and anti-green). Therefore, to form white objects, we have two options:
The former category gives mesons (which I have addressed in my toponium story), and the second category gives baryons, a class of composite particles to which protons and neutrons belong.