The fundamental constants of nature—such as the speed of light, Planck's constant, and Newton's gravitational constant—are thought to be constant in time, as their name suggests. But scientists have questioned this assumption as far back as 1937, when Paul Dirac hypothesized that Newton's gravitational constant might decrease over time.

Now in a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, Yevgeny V. Stadnik and Victor V. Flambaum at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, have theoretically shown that dark matter can cause the fundamental constants of nature to slowly evolve as well as oscillate due to oscillations in the dark matter field. This idea requires that the weakly interacting dark matter particles be able to interact a small amount with standard model particles, which the scientists show is possible.

In their paper, the scientists considered a model in which dark matter is made of weakly interacting, low-mass particles. In the early Universe, according to the model, large numbers of such dark matter particles formed an oscillating field. Because these particles interact so weakly with standard model particles, they could have survived for billions of years and still exist today, forming what we know as dark matter.

Although these low-mass dark matter particles are weakly interacting, they are thought to still interact with standard model particles to some extent, but it's unclear exactly how much. By using data from experiments that have measured the amount of helium produced during big bang nucleosynthesis (basically the following seconds and minutes after the Big Bang, where the majority of the universe's helium was produced), as well as measurements of the rare element dysprosium and the cosmic microwave background, Stadnik and Flambaum have derived the most stringent limits to date on how strongly such dark matter particles interact with photons, electrons, and light quarks, improving on existing constraints by up to 15 orders of magnitude.

The new limits on the dark matter interaction strength allow for the possibility that an oscillating, low-mass dark matter field coupled to standard model particles causes variations in the fundamental constants. As the scientists explain, this could have important implications for understanding life's origins.

"We have shown that linking dark matter and variation of the fundamental constants of Nature leads to a major breakthrough in the sensitivity of dark matter searches," Flambaum said. "We plan to continue searching for other novel signatures of dark matter that may lead to the direct detection of dark matter for the first time."

A comment from the article:

The way they describe it is similar to the "brane" solution for gravity, that gravity exists in another brane and interacts with matter in this brane, explaining the relative weakness of the force.

If dark matter worked the same way, that would fit, it interacts gravitationally, and possibly very weakly in other fields, but we can't find out what it is, because it's not present with us in this brane, all we have is the evidence of the interactions.

I had to quote most of the article, because almost all it is vital. I underlined the crucial parts doe

Does anyway else have interest in this sort of thing or am I just a gay boi

"The fundamental constants are 'fine-tuned' to be consistent with the existence of life in the Universe," Stadnik told Phys.org. "If the physical constants were even slightly different, life could not have appeared. The discovery of varying fundamental 'constants' may help shed important light on how the physical constants came to have their life-sustaining values today. We simply appeared in an area of the Universe where they are consistent with our existence."

This is absolutely ridiculous, and Dark Matter is still just a placeholder for whatever components of higher physics we can't figure out; there's something there, but for all we know it's just ignorance of the complexity of math we're dealing with. It's not a tangible, measurable substance that we can make any sort of meaningful conclusions about. Also, be aware that all of these observations they're making come from a simulated model of the universe in which dark matter behaves however they think it should. These observations are not from reality.

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"The fundamental constants are 'fine-tuned' to be consistent with the existence of life in the Universe," Stadnik told Phys.org. "If the physical constants were even slightly different, life could not have appeared. The discovery of varying fundamental 'constants' may help shed important light on how the physical constants came to have their life-sustaining values today. We simply appeared in an area of the Universe where they are consistent with our existence."

Dark Matter is still just a placeholder for whatever components of higher physics we can't figure out; there's something there, but for all we know it's just ignorance of the complexity of math we're dealing with.

That's precisely what makes dark matter so interesting

all we have is the evidence of the interactions.

It's not tangible in the most direct sense, it has a tangible effect, and this effect can be measured. Black holes are studied in a similar way. We can make meaningful conclusions about the phenomena of dark matter, and these conclusions can lead us to understand a more complete picture of the universe.

Quote from: RadioactiveTurkey on November 22, 2015, 09:06:50 AM

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"The fundamental constants are 'fine-tuned' to be consistent with the existence of life in the Universe," Stadnik told Phys.org. "If the physical constants were even slightly different, life could not have appeared. The discovery of varying fundamental 'constants' may help shed important light on how the physical constants came to have their life-sustaining values today. We simply appeared in an area of the Universe where they are consistent with our existence."

Dark Matter is still just a placeholder for whatever components of higher physics we can't figure out; there's something there, but for all we know it's just ignorance of the complexity of math we're dealing with.

That's precisely what makes dark matter so interesting

Yeah it's interesting, but that isn't an excuse to use it to justify whatever theory they feel like testing.

fucking dark matter is used to explain literally everything.

dark matter was probably behind 9/11.

I really want to learn all the maths behind this so I can say with some confidence whether or not this is amazing or bullshit. Fascinating regardless though.