Particle physicists develop research funding guidelines for the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. The scientists believe, among other research areas, that federal agencies should prioritize funding for dark matter, the invisible form of matter that scientists know exists solely because of gravity.
“The number of active efforts to study dark matter has grown tremendously over the past decade without a corresponding increase in research funding,” he says. Reports of the Snowmass conference, Released in January 2023. “Without such support, the community will not be able to complete the additional dark matter program, reducing the chances of solving the dark matter mystery.”
To recommend federal funding priorities, this community of particle physicists organizes a joint decision-making process for the U.S. government by holding a Snowflake Conference and a follow-up panel approximately every ten years. Initial instructions are now available in the package materials open access, links posted on the Stanford University website. Official guidelines will be made available to lawmakers in the fall.
What is dark matter?
According to the research, more than 80 percent of the matter in the universe is dark matter. Snowflake Conference Group report. Meanwhile NASA He says that about 68 percent of the universe is dark energy, 27 percent is dark matter, and only 5 percent is normal matter. So to find out what dark matter is, Of coursehas a high priority.
Dark matter was discovered when we realized that there was a star cluster in the galaxy. You can try to estimate the mass of a galaxy by measuring the properties of these stars. And then, since we know so much about stars, you can calculate what their masses are. And you can add them all up and that gives you the mass of the galaxy,” he says. Popular Mechanics Michael Peskin, professor of particle physics and astrophysics at Stanford University and editor of the Snowmass report and website. “It turns out that if you do this for the Milky Way, you only get 1/5 the mass of the Milky Way.”
Dark matter first appeared in the early universe, shortly after the Big Bang. “We also know that it is very long-lived in the sense that it was already present as early as 300,000 years after the Big Bang – not a dominant component, but already present in the very early universe,” said Marcel Soares-Santos. associate professor of physics at the University of Michigan, says Popular Mechanics. “For billions of years, dark matter has existed in the universe. As the universe expanded, it began to dominate the universe.”
“Dark matter is at the very heart of our understanding of the universe right now,” says Soares-Santos. “Part of that is because we’ve been so successful. [в] understanding the fundamental physics of almost everything that makes up the universe, with the possible exception of dark matter. It does not emit light and does not interact very measurably with ordinary matter.”
Source: Port Altele
