Broad Topic: Dark Matter

Narrow Topic: Limitations that prevent further study of Dark Matter.

Research Question: What are the limiting factors which prevent further study of dark matter?

Introduction

It’s a sobering thought: all the matter that has ever been detected accounts for a mere 4.9% of the

Universe. Most of the cosmos is the dark universe, a mix of dark matter and dark energy

(Hodson 2016). So far, both have proved to be impermeable enigmas, nonetheless physicists

young and old are intent on solving these mysteries. The idea of dark matter dates to the 1930s,

when Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky concluded that there was too little visible matter in the

Coma cluster to account for the motion of the 1,000 or so galaxies within it (Hecht 2016). Dark

matter is yet to be embellished by the scientific community and its secrets expounded on and

that’s probably due to many limiting factors. These limiting factors include lack of funding and

the small number of persons incorporated in the study.

Outline:

1. Prior study of Dark Matter (The history of this study)

a. The origins of dark matter can be traced to the 1600s. Soon after Isaac Newton

presented his theory of universal gravity, some astronomers began to speculate

about the existence of objects that might emit little or no light but could still be

known by their gravitational tug on bright objects like stars and planets

(Koberlein 2016).

2. Instruments and Techniques used in the study of Dark Matter and Innovation/Changes in

these instruments and techniques

a. Since physicists don’t know what dark matter is, they need a diverse portfolio of

instruments and approaches to detect it. One technique is to try to make dark

matter in an accelerator, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and then to

look for its decay products with a particle detector. A second technique is to use

instruments such as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to observe dark

matter interactions in and beyond our Galaxy. This approach is called “indirect

detection” because what the telescope actually observes is the particles produced

by a collision between dark matter particles. In the same way that forensic

scientists rely on physical evidence to reverse-engineer a crime with no witnesses,

scientists use the aftermath of these collisions to reconstruct the identities of the

initial dark matter particles. (Cooley 2017)

b. A power spectrum is a mathematical function that can be used to describe the

distribution of a quantity (any quantity) in space. When cosmologists study the

formation and evolution of cosmic structure in the Universe, they do something

very similar to the analysis of the city's urban structure: they plot the relative

number of cosmic structures on different sizes in a power spectrum. The shape of

this graph reveals the ‘power’ of structures that populate the Universe on each

scale.

c. The third technique, and the one used in both the LUX and PandaX-II

experiments, is known as “direct detection.” Here, a detector is constructed on

Earth with a massive target to increase the odds of an interaction with the dark

matter that exists in our Galaxy. In the case of LUX and PandaX-II, the dark

matter particles leave behind traces of light that can be detected with sophisticated
 sensors. This is akin to having placed cameras at the scene of a crime, capturing

the culprit in the act. (Cooley 2017)

d. The research, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, details

calculations by a global team of scientists which show that gravitational-wave

interferometers can be used to indirectly detect the presence of dark matter.

(Instruments used in detection of gravitational waves can also unveil dark matter

enigma 2017)

3. Factors limiting the study

a. The largest visible-light telescopes on Earth, such as the Very Large Telescopes

and the Keck telescopes, have mirrors about ten metres in diameter, and there are

now plans to build telescopes with diameters of 30m to 40m (so-called Extremely

Large Telescopes). But there's a problem: if light from an object (be it a candle,

streetlight or star) is perturbed on its journey from source to detection, then we

will never be able to produce an image as sharp as the theoretical maximum, no

matter how big we make the aperture. (Geach 2015)

 References

Ramachers, H, Klapdor-Kleingrothaus, HV. (1998). Limitations of modulation analysis for dark

matter direct detection experiments. European Physical Journal A. [13/3/2018]; 3, 93–98

Hecht, J. Dark matter: what’s the matter? (2016) Nature Publishing Group, a division of

Macmillan Publishers Limited [Internet] [13/3/2018]; 537, S194–S197

https://www.nature.com/articles/537S194a doi:10.1038/537S194a

Hodson, R. The dark universe. (2016) Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan

Publishers Limited [Internet] [13/3/2018]; 537, S193. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/537S193a

doi:10.1038/537S193a

Koberlein ,B. (2016 September 19) The dark history of dark matter. Forbes [Internet]

[13/3/2018]. https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/09/19/the-dark-history-of-dark-

matter/#1c42a4511894

Cooley, J. (2017) Dark matter still at large. Physical Review Letters APS Physics Journals

[Internet] [13/3/2018]; https://physics.aps.org/articles/pdf/10.1103/Physics.10.3

Instruments used in detection of gravitational waves can also unveil dark matter enigma

[Internet]. 2017. New Delhi: The Siasat Dailey. https://www.siasat.com/news/instruments-used-

detection-gravitational-waves-can-also-unveil-dark-matter-enigma-1239627/