Alpha and Omega by Charles Seife

Author:Charles Seife
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2003-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

Why, then, spend so much time talking about neutrinos? Though it is true that there are not enough neutrinos to make up all of the nonbaryonic portion of Ωm, they seem to be roughly as heavy as all the matter that astronomers can see. These invisible particles are truly a concrete example of exotic dark matter, and they probably share much in common with the other exotic matter out there. And yes, there is other stuff, even more exotic than neutrinos, out there.

Scientists have ruled out all the quarks and all the leptons in the standard model, including the neutrinos, as the main source of exotic dark matter. Yet a large proportion of Ωm is still unaccounted for. Could this be the signature of matter beyond the standard model, stuff that isn’t accounted for in the theory? Most scientists think so, and like neutrinos, this superexotic matter can only interact through the weak force. So in a sense neutrinos are a link between the standard model and the stuff beyond our present theories. When scientists understand neutrinos, they will have their first real understanding of the mysterious exotic stuff that makes up most of the matter of the universe.

By studying neutrinos, scientists are truly beginning to probe the nature of nonbaryonic matter. They are a significant fraction of the exotic dark matter in the universe, but they are far from the entire answer. For the rest, scientists are looking—believe it or not—for a particle more exotic still.

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