Invisible Pink Unicorns May Live Inside the Sun

"It's not that most of the matter and energy in the universe is dark, but that most cosmologists are totally in the dark about the real nature of the universe." -- Wallace Thornhill, physicist, October 2006

"In summation, Dark Matter and Dark Energy add up to the blank cheques that postpone the falsification of bankrupt theories." -- Ralph Sansbury, physicist, May 2009

"Dark matter is an excuse for the failure of gravitational theories." -- Stephen Smith, author, June 17th 2010

Science Daily: Dark Matter May Be Lurking at Heart of the Sun.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2010) — A scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London believes dark matter is lurking at the centre of the sun and cooling down its core temperature.

The latest study, led by Dr Stephen West from the Department of Physics at Royal Holloway, looks at the possible effects of dark matter on the properties of the sun, if these elusive particles become trapped at its centre.

"Dark matter makes up more than 80 per cent of the total mass of the universe. We know that dark matter exists but to date it has never been produced in a laboratory or directly observed in any experiment, as a result we have very little information about what it actually is. It is important that we examine all possible ways of probing the nature of dark matter and the sun could provide us with an unexpected laboratory in which to do this," says Dr West.

Recent Observations Show Dark Matter Unobserved Again

"It's not that most of the matter and energy in the universe is dark, but that most cosmologists are totally in the dark about the real nature of the universe." -- Wallace Thornhill, physicist, October 2006

American Physical Society: Trouble for dark matter explanations of excess cosmic positrons.

Recent reports of an apparent excess of high-energy positrons in cosmic rays have received much interest in the particle physics and astrophysics communities, largely because of the possibility that the excess may result from the annihilation of dark matter particles. However, the annihilation cross section inferred from the relic density of dark matter appears to be too small by two to three orders of magnitude to explain the excess. It has been pointed out that if the dark matter particles interact with a light force-carrying boson, there can be, as a result, an enhancement of annihilation at the lower velocities characteristic of dark matter today [1, 2]. Therefore, it was suggested that the relatively smaller cross section needed to account for the relic density could possibly be reconciled with the larger annihilation rates needed to explain the positron excess.

In a paper appearing in Physical Review Letters, Jonathan L. Feng, Manoj Kaplinghat, and Hai-Bo Yu of the University of California, Irvine, in the US point out problems with this explanation: The enhancement is proportional to the coupling of dark matter to the force carrier, and if the coupling is large enough to give the needed enhancement, then it is too large to be consistent with the relic density, so the desired reconciliation cannot be achieved. Moreover, for very light force carriers, self-interactions of the dark matter in models of this type lead to spherical galactic halos of dark matter, inconsistent with observations of elliptical halos. Unless a way around these problems can be found, this approach to explaining the positron excess seems ruled out.

Feng, J., et al., Halo-Shape and Relic-Density Exclusions of Sommerfeld-Enhanced Dark Matter Explanations of Cosmic Ray Excesses.

Dark matter with Sommerfeld-enhanced annihilation has been proposed to explain observed cosmic ray positron excesses in the 10 GeV to TeV energy range. We show that the required enhancement implies thermal relic densities that are too small to be all of dark matter. We also show that the dark matter is sufficiently self-interacting that observations of elliptical galactic dark matter halos exclude large Sommerfeld enhancement for light force carriers. Resonant Sommerfeld enhancement does not modify these conclusions, and the astrophysical boosts required to resolve these discrepancies are disfavored, especially when significant self-interactions suppress halo substructure.

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Myth Upon Myth Upon Myth

"Since Newton announced his universal law of gravitation, scientists have accepted and educators taught it, and rarely has it been questioned. Occasionally one has the temerity to say that gravitation is a myth, an invented word to cover scientific ignorance." -- C.H. Kilmer, historian, October 1915

"It's not that most of the matter and energy in the universe is dark, but that most cosmologists are totally in the dark about the real nature of the universe." -- Wallace Thornhill, physicist, October 2006

Stephen Smith: MACHOs and WIMPs.

According to cosmologists, the Universe is made mostly of dark matter and dark energy, but they do not know what either is.

A recent press release opens with this question: "Dark Matter Detected for First Time?" It seems ironic to ask, since what they are "detecting" has been one of the most all pervasive, yet most highly speculative investigations since phlogiston.

In previous Pictures of the Day, it was noted that dark matter is an ad hoc theory, an addendum to the gravity-based model of the Universe. As consensus physics proposes, without adding dark matter there is insufficient gravity in the cosmos to account for galaxies bunching together. Without sufficient mass, they should also have decelerated over the eons instead of moving through space at 90% of light speed.

An exotic form of matter was proposed when astronomers realized that stars traveled around the edge of a spiral galaxy with the same angular velocity as stars close to the center. This was a quandary, since according to Newton's theory they should be slower. Therefore, astronomers assumed that a form of dark matter was imparting extra gravitational energy to the stars. It was called "dark" because the theory states that it cannot be detected, except indirectly.

This unseen matter is said to be sustaining all galaxies, preventing them from flying apart. Over the years, research groups have been trying to reconcile the lack of mass in the Universe, particularly in galaxy clusters, with their recessional velocity. There is not enough gravity in the visible stars and gas clouds to account for that velocity, as well as the consolidation of individual galaxies and clusters.

If dark matter exists, according to physicists, then it ought to be expressed through a particle. After all, gravity is based on mass attraction, so if dark matter is holding the stars in their galactic orbits, and pulling those galaxies into clusters, there must be an invisible particle (or particles) responsible for the effect.

If not particles, then perhaps cold, non-radiating matter—burned-out stars, or large planets—are exerting their influences on galactic structure. Those "normal" but invisible objects were called MAssive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs). Telescopes were scheduled to look for stellar occultations caused by MACHOs, but after years of investigation there have been no results. MACHO scientists have recently thrown in the towel, finally acknowledging that MACHOs are not dark matter candidates.

Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) theory has been the chief competitor with MACHO theory for several years. With the demise of the latter theory, scientists have now pinned their hopes on a subatomic particle to account for the necessary gravitational attraction.

In 1999, a consortium of ten research institutions from around the world known as the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) developed a detector that was supposed to "see" the sporadic impacts from WIMPs on other atomic particles.

The CDMS sensor is an array of silicon and germanium crystals that are cooled by liquid helium until they are close to absolute zero. When subatomic particles strike an atomic nucleus in the crystals, it is interpreted as ionization and heat. Since the atomic movement in the sensor is almost stopped, any tiny vibrations caused by a particle's impact are seen as "hits." The sensor has been handicapped by many false readings due to cosmic rays and other ionized particles.

For more than ten years, scientists working on the project have seen nothing to suggest that WIMPs are colliding with the detector. The current press release is simply publicizing further ambiguous results. Are they seeing WIMPs or are they continuing to witness cosmic ray impacts?

From the Electric Universe perspective, electric currents drive the galaxies and their associated stars. Laboratory experiments reveal that the magnetic vortex between twin Birkeland current filaments can create structures that resemble spiral galaxies. Birkeland currents have a longer-range attractive force than gravity, and diminish with the reciprocal of the distance rather than gravity's square of the distance. That alone could account for the anomalous movement of stars as they revolve around the galactic core.

It is the flow of electricity through plasma in space that tends to initiate the effects that we can observe with space-based telescopes and confirm in ground-based research laboratories. It is the electric currents in the cosmos and their associated magnetic fields that should be our focus and not the search for that which can never be found.