UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

High-energy photons from the Milky Way’s core suggest dark matter may soon be found by the world's most powerful particle accelerator

It is one of the most disputed observations in physics. But an explanation may be in sight for a mysterious excess of high-energy photons at the centre of the Milky Way. The latest analysis suggests that the signal could come from a dark-matter particle that has just the right mass to show up at the world’s largest particle accelerator.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), housed at the CERN particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is due to restart colliding protons this summer after a two-year hiatus (see 'LHC 2.0: A new view of the Universe'). Physicists there have told Nature that they now plan to make the search for such a particle a top target for the collider’s second run.

A positive detection would resolve the source of the galactic γ-rays. But it would also reveal the nature of dark matter, the invisible stuff thought to make up around 85% of the Universe’s matter, and would be long-sought evidence for supersymmetry, a grand way to extend the current standard model of particle physics.

“This could very well be the single most promising explanation for the Galactic Centre proposed to date,” says Dan Hooper of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, although he adds that “there are quite a few others that are not too far behind”.

In 2009, Hooper and Lisa Goodenough, then a graduate student at New York University, were the first to spot the signal, in data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. They proposed that the bump was a signature of dark matter. Two colliding dark-matter particles would annihilate each other, just as ordinary matter does with antimatter. The annihilation would generate a succession of short-lived particles that would eventually produce γ-rays.

But the proposed particle, which has been dubbed the hooperon or gooperon after its proponents, soon ran into problems with physicists’ favourite version of supersymmetry. Although the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) allows for dark-matter particles with the estimated mass of hooperons—about 25–30 gigaelectronvolts (1 GeV is roughly the mass of a proton)—multiple experiments had suggested that the particles must be heavier. To accommodate hooperons, MSSM would have to be modified to an extent that makes many physicists uncomfortable. “It would have required a completely new theory,” says Sascha Caron, a particle physicist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, who leads the team behind the latest calculations.

Sceptics suggested that the γ-ray excess spotted in the Fermi data had more-mundane explanations, such as emissions from neutron stars or from the remnants of exploded stars.

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But in late 2014, it emerged that calculations for the range of dark-matter-particle masses that would be compatible with the Fermi bump were too conservative. Fresh estimates of the γ-ray ‘noise’ produced by known sources, provided by the Fermi science team and others, allow for much heavier particles. “The excess can be explained with a particle of up to 200 GeV,” says Simona Murgia, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, and a leading scientist in the Fermi team.

Big-Bang fit
Armed with this insight, Caron and his collaborators recalculated the predictions of the MSSM theory and found another potential explanation for the excess—an existing dark-matter candidate called a neutralino. The neutralino was heavy enough not to be excluded by previous experiments, yet light enough to potentially be produced in the second run of the LHC.

Caron’s model also produces a prediction for the amount of dark matter that should have been created in the Big Bang that is compatible with state-of-the-art observations of the cosmic microwave background—the relic radiation of the Big Bang—performed by the European Space Agency’s Planck probe (see Nature http://doi.org/38k; 2014). This cannot be a coincidence, he says. “I find this quite amazing.”

Caron’s team is not the only one reanalysing the Fermi bump in light of the new estimates. Similar but less-detailed calculations done by Fermilab physicist Patrick Fox and his colleagues last November also revealed the neutralino as a potential cause of the Fermi γ-rays. And Katherine Freese, director of Nordita, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Stockholm, says that she and her collaborators have calculated that the excess could be caused by a type of dark matter that features in a less-popular theory of supersymmetry.

Resolution may be just around the corner. In addition to being produced at the LHC, the neutralino could also be within the shooting range of next-generation underground experiments that are trying to catch dark-matter particles that happen to fly through Earth, says physicist Albert De Roeck, who works on the CMS, one of the two LHC detectors that will hunt for dark matter. If such a particle is indeed the cause of the γ-rays, he says, “it seems that the dark-matter signals should be observed very soon now”.

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on May 5, 2015.

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Artist’s illustration of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft passing Pluto and Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, on July 14, 2015.

Artist's illustration of NASA's New Horizons in the Pluto system. The probe is scheduled to fly by Pluto on July 14, 2015.
credit NASA/JHU APL/SwRI/Steve Gribben

A NASA Pluto probe may end up with one final mission after its work exploring the outer solar system is done — carrying a message to advanced alien civilizations.

NASA is considering allowing a team of researchers, teachers, artists and engineers to upload an interstellar message to the agency's New Horizons spacecraft, which will perform the first-ever flyby of Pluto on July 14.

This project, known as the One Earth Message, is being led by Jon Lomberg, who was design director for the "golden records" that were placed aboard NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft before their 1977 launch to teach any aliens that might encounter the probes about humanity and its home planet. [5 Facts About NASA's Voyager Spacecraft]

NASA Pluto Probe May Carry Crowdsourced Message to Aliens https://shar.es/1rwnGV via @sharethis

The goals of the One Earth Message are similar, but the new project would be a more global and collaborative effort, asking people around the world to contribute images, sounds and ideas for this farflung "message in a bottle."

"This is really a chance to try to think about ourselves from the long perspective," Lomberg told Space.com. "We'll never know if this extraterrestrial audience that we're designing it for will receive it. But we do know that the people of Earth who participate, who play a role in it — it can literally change their lives."

A digital message

Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012, and Voyager 2 will join its twin in this rarefied realm soon. The two probes' golden records are actual records — 12-inch-wide (30 centimeters) gold-plated copper disks that come with cartridges, needles and instructions about how to play them. The identical records contain 115 analog-encoded images, as well as audio of thunder and other natural sounds, music and spoken greetings in 55 different languages.

The Golden Record carried a message from Earth on board NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions.

Credit NASA

The One Earth Message, by contrast, would be digital. If NASA greenlights the project — the space agency has expressed enthusiasm but has yet to approve it officially, Lomberg said — the team will be allowed to beam 150 megabytes of data to New Horizons.

The One Earth Message would therefore hold about the same amount of information as Voyager's golden records — perhaps 100 images and about an hour of audio, Lomberg said. (Videos would take up too much memory.)

"We're writing a haiku, not a novel," he said.

The digital format would allow the One Earth Message to be more flexible, layered and integrated than was possible with the golden records, Lomberg added. For example, the message could be changed over time by beaming more files to New Horizons. It could also include a map of the world, and every picture and every sound could be tagged to the spot from which it came. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]

Crowdsourced content and funding

There's another key difference between the Voyager and New Horizons efforts: While the golden records carry information chosen by a small committee (which was chaired by famed astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan), the One Earth Message would be a crowdsourced affair, with contributions from people around the globe.

"It's not simply a photo contest," Lomberg said. "It's a process that's going to find out what people want to send."

Just as the One Earth Message's content would be crowdsourced, a chunk of its funding would be too. (The team is not asking NASA to pay for the project.) Lomberg and his colleagues hope to raise at least $500,000 from people around the world via a Fiat Physica campaign, to build and maintain a Web presence and to figure out the best way to program the message.

Additional money raised would be used for education and outreach, among other things.

"The total budget is a couple of million [dollars], to do everything we'd like to do," Lomberg said.

People would be able to contribute a certain number of photos for possible inclusion in the One Earth Message for free, he added. Anyone who wants to submit additional pictures would be able to do so, for a fee that would help cover the costs of the project's website.

The One Earth Message Fiat Physica campaign runs through July 15. As of yesterday evening (May 17), the crowdfunding effort had raised about $12,000 of its $500,000 target. You can learn more about the campaign here: http://www.fiatphysica.com/campaigns/oem/

The group is also looking for private support, Lomberg said.

http://www.space.com/29439-pluto-spacecraft-message-to-aliens.html#ooid=FuOHIzdTpCwECj3wFyLHcjSYFktf8kpa

Plenty of time

Drawing up a message designed to be understood by alien civilizationsis not a simple or straightforward task. For example, how would any hypothetical extraterrestrials that chance upon New Horizons even know that humanity is trying to say something to them?

"How can you send files so that aliens can figure them out? They're not going to know what a jpeg is," Lomberg said. "Our challenge is to find ways of coding the message so that it calls attention to itself as a message."

But there's plenty of time to work on such issues. The transmission to New Horizons would occur in July 2016 at the earliest, Lomberg said, and it could even be postponed until after the probe flies by a second faraway object in 2019 during a potential extended missionthat NASA is mulling.

While the One Earth Message is designed to be interpreted by aliens, it's a worthwhile exercise even if New Horizons zooms through space alone for all of its days, Lomberg said. The project, he stressed, has the potential to get people more excited about the New Horizons mission and space exploration in general — and possibly to bring people around the world together in a perspective-altering experience.

"For almost 40 years, I've seen how the Voyager record has inspired people," Lomberg said. "It seems like it's time for another generation to have that same type of inspiration."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.