🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5NOV199210450757@csa2.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:

> I think that it is far from "outrageous" to speculate that there are
> vast amounts of "unknown", a.k.a. nonbaryonic matter in the
> Universe.  In fact, questions of abundance aside, I regard it as
> likely that other forms of matter do exist.  I think it would be
> both presumptuous and a bit naive to think that at this early stage
> in our understanding of the high-energy world that nothing
> fundamentally new will show up.

I agree with Scott, but just with one small caveat.

I certainly think that we don't know all of the physics that's out
there, and that it is likely that there are particles that we have
neither discovered nor even predicted.

However, nonbaryonic dark matter requires something more than that: it
requires that there are *stable* particles that we haven't discovered
yet.  That's a much stronger statement; the last stable particle that
was discovered was the neutrino, and we've known about that for fifty
years.  It's entirely conceivable that we really have discovered all
of the stable particles that exist, that the more massive particles
will just decay into the things we see around us.

Of course, it's also conceivable that the opposite is true.  Doing
experiments to detect the more exotic forms of dark matter is
certainly worthwhile.

--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!