RE: June 17th, 2020 - a great discovery in (astro)particle physics?
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My heavens, @lemouth, thank you! I feel we have all been on a journey with you as you carry on your research. I really appreciate your reservations about drawing conclusions, as exciting as the possibility of a breakthrough may be. A true scientist. Yes, I understood it all as I read, because you have gently introduced us to the concepts over many months. I actually understand that an electron recoil is not as significant as a nuclei recoil, and that the excess observed events is rather modest (3.5 rather than 5) . And yet, there it is!
I will indeed stay tuned. It's a privilege :)
Thanks for the nice words relatively to my blog, as always (for once, I don't discuss my own research stricto sensu, as I am not part of the XENON1T experimental collaboration :)
A nucleus being much heavier and bigger than an electron, one naturally needs more energy to kick it (so that a recoil could be measured). Therefore, whilst nuclear recoils are the best probes for heavier dark matter, electron recoils are more suitable for lighter objects.
In order to be pragmatic, both are of course explored experimentally (we don't know what is dark matter and all options must be envisaged).
By the way, 3.5 sigma is modest, but something rare enough to be discussed: 1 chance in 2000 to be a fluke is already small and getting something like that does not occur every day. It could even be considered as a strong discovery in other domains.
The only point with the sigmas that we must always keep in mind, is that this assumes that the background is well controlled. In the present case, we can't answer the question too solidly (as discussed by one of the interpretations provided by the XENON1T collaboration itself).
🌟 🌠