Dark Photons

This sounds ominous, but it's actually a new concept that could explain dark matter. Technically, a dark photon is similar to a regular photon except for one very important property. Unlike normal photons, a dark photon has mass. This means that it could only be detected indirectly because it's dark. Quantum physicists believe that a dark photon would decay into an electron and a positron pair.

What's really important about a dark photon is that it would carry a force, essentially the fifth fundamental force of nature, the other four fundamental forces being electromagnetic, gravity, strong nuclear and weak nuclear.

Well gang, it turns out that a Hungarian lab might have found proof for this elusive fifth force of nature. Physicists at The Institute for Nuclear Research at Debrecen, Hungary have revealed that they have experimental evidence for this new force. Their paper on this subject was published in the January edition of Journal Physical Review Letters. They reported it as a new light boson particle heavier than the electron.

This result went unnoticed until a group of American physicists published a review of the Hungarian paper and concluded that it did in fact indicate the existence of a new fundamental force of nature. What's exciting about this is that it could be the elusive dark matter particle that makes up nearly 80 percent of the known universe.

Actually, this new particle may not necessarily be a dark photon. The evidence is as follows: the Hungarian team shot a beam of protons at thin Lithium-7 targets. This created Beryllium-8, which is radioactive and unstable and decays into pairs of electrons and positrons. In these kinds of experiments, the number electrons and positrons pairs drops as the angle between the beam of protons and target increases. But, at 140 degrees the number of pairs increased unrepentantly. At higher angels the number decreased, so this 140-degree result was like a bump in the data. This bump was interpreted to mean that a small number of unstable Beryllium-8 atoms decayed into the new particle, and this is what decayed into the extra electron-positron pairs. This new particle has an energy around 17-Mev and is not believed to be a dark photon. Instead, it's interpredted to be a particle that carries the fifth force of nature.

Whatever the heck it is will soon be determined as other labs search for new particles around the 17-Mev range. I can't wait!

Thanks for reading.