The Absurd Search For Dark Matter
8,803,795
Published 2022-06-02
A massive thanks to the wonderful people at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Physics www.centredarkmatter.org/ for showing us around and being on camera – Fleur Morrison, A/Prof Phillip Urquijo, Prof Elisabetta Barberio, Madeleine Zurowski and Grace Lawrence.
Thanks to Leo Fincher-Johnson and everyone at the Stawell gold mine for having us.
Massive thanks to Prof. Geraint Lewis – Geraint has been Veritasium’s go-to expert for anything astrophysics and cosmology related. Please check out his website, and buy his books, they’re great – www.geraintflewis.com/
Thanks to Prof. Timothy Tait for the help to make sure we got the science right.
Thanks to Ingo Berg for illustrating the effect of dark matter on the rotation of a galaxy beltoforion.de/en/spiral_galaxy_renderer/spiral-ga…
▀▀▀
Galaxy cluster simulation from IllustrisTNG – www.tng-project.org/
Venn Diagram of Dark Matter from Tim Tait – ve42.co/venn
The Bullet Cluster Image from Magellan, Hubble and Chandra telescopes – ve42.co/BC2
Bullet cluster animation from Andrew Robertson / Institute for Computational Cosmology / Durham University – ve42.co/BC3
▀▀▀
Bernabei, R., Belli, P., Cappella, F., Cerulli, R., Dai, C. J., d’Angelo, A., ... & Ye, Z. P. (2008). First results from DAMA/LIBRA and the combined results with DAMA/NaI. The European Physical Journal C, 56(3), 333-355. – ve42.co/DAMA2008
Zwicky, F. (1933). Die rotverschiebung von extragalaktischen nebeln. Helvetica physica acta, 6, 110-127. – ve42.co/Zwicky1
Zwicky, F. (1937). On the Masses of Nebulae and of Clusters of Nebulae. The Astrophysical Journal, 86, 217. – ve42.co/Zwicky2
Rubin, V. C., & Ford Jr, W. K. (1970). Rotation of the Andromeda nebula from a spectroscopic survey of emission regions. The Astrophysical Journal, 159, 379. – ve42.co/Rubin1
Bosma, A., & Van der Kruit, P. C. (1979). The local mass-to-light ratio in spiral galaxies. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 79, 281-286. – ve42.co/Bosma1
Milgrom, M. (1983). A modification of the Newtonian dynamics as a possible alternative to the hidden mass hypothesis. The Astrophysical Journal, 270, 365-370. – ve42.co/mond1
Sanders, R. H., & McGaugh, S. S. (2002). Modified Newtonian dynamics as an alternative to dark matter. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 40(1), 263-317. – ve42.co/Mond2
M. Markevitch; A. H. Gonzalez; D. Clowe; A. Vikhlinin; L. David; W. Forman; C. Jones; S. Murray & W. Tucker (2004). "Direct constraints on the dark matter self-interaction cross-section from the merging galaxy cluster 1E0657-56". Astrophys. J. 606 (2): 819–824. – ve42.co/BC1
Great website about the CMB – background.uchicago.edu/~whu/intermediate/driving2…
Galli, S., Iocco, F., Bertone, G., & Melchiorri, A. (2009). CMB constraints on dark matter models with large annihilation cross section. Physical Review D, 80(2), 023505. – ve42.co/CMB1
Antonello, M., Barberio, E., Baroncelli, T., Benziger, J., Bignell, L. J., Bolognino, I., ... & Xu, J. (2019). The SABRE project and the SABRE Proof-of-Principle. The European Physical Journal C, 79(4), 1-8. – ve42.co/SABRE1
▀▀▀
Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Inconcision, Kelly Snook, TTST, Ross McCawley, Balkrishna Heroor, Chris LaClair, Avi Yashchin, John H. Austin, Jr., OnlineBookClub.org, Dmitry Kuzmichev, Matthew Gonzalez, Eric Sexton, john kiehl, Anton Ragin, Diffbot, Micah Mangione, MJP, Gnare, Dave Kircher, Burt Humburg, Blake Byers, Dumky, Evgeny Skvortsov, Meekay, Bill Linder, Paul Peijzel, Josh Hibschman, Mac Malkawi, Michael Schneider, jim buckmaster, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Robert Blum, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Vincent, Stephen Wilcox, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Clayton Greenwell, Michael Krugman, Cy 'kkm' K'Nelson, Sam Lutfi, Ron Neal
▀▀▀
Written by Derek Muller and Petr Lebedev
Edited by Trenton Oliver
Animation by Ivy Tello and Mike Radjabov
Filmed by Derek Muller and Petr Lebedev
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Image
B-roll supplied by Stawell Gold Mine
Music from Epidemic Sound
Thumbnail by Ignat Berbeci
Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, and Emily Zhang
All Comments (21)
-
Had a good friend working for his PhD for the Italian side of the project. The material science is insane. They used copper from old sunken ships for a lot of the hardware, because it is way less contaminated with radiation. Super interesting projects and marvelous engineering
-
"It may elude us, but at least we tried." The essence of science in one sentence!
-
I am never not amazed at just how much Humans are able to find with nothing but just thinking.
-
Thanks for sharing this. I went to the mine site when they made the announcement of its first stage completion. They wouldn’t let me in though 🙂
-
It never stops to amaze me how one can build a detector for particles when we don't know what those particles are. It's like telling a person from the stone age to go and find metal.
-
The deeper you dive into physics and cosmology the freakier it gets.
-
So, a year down the road since this was posted now: have they been able to reach any sort of conclusion in Melbourne? Thanks for updating us, Derek.
-
I love this, it shows why astrophysics are the most raw form of existentialism.
-
"Anytime an astrophysicist puts the word dark in front of something it means we have no idea what we're talking about" -Neil DeGrasse Tyson
-
"But at least we tried." What a great moment to end the video. That we may never discover the answer to some of our biggest questions, yet try anyway, is the core essence of scientific inquiry.
-
Whoever took those points on the original wave and connected that with to dark matter is a genius
-
Man, the quality of your content sets the bar and then some! Keep up the great work and congrats on the recent collaborations too!
-
I normally watch you on my phone. But yesterday I walk in our living room and there you are in big screen TV, my grandson watching & listening to your every word! That's when we found out we both followed you on YouTube! Your def multi-multi-gen, he's 11, I'm 63 - and we now watch together during his annual summer vacation with us! Great work! Priceless memories and conversations!
-
"It may elude us, but at least we tried." That right there is what science is all about. Loved that quote.
-
Really loved this one, not only this being a question that has been haunting humanity for years but to see the excitement of the scientists in the field of study. I'm excited to see the result of the mirrored Dama/Libra! It might just indicate that they've been dectecting something else but the mere possibility that it will give similar results to its sister machine is life-changing.
-
Being reminded that the sun is moving and earth is desperately trying to keep up is not what I needed today.
-
Here's to hoping we get a dark matter detection in our lifetime! Cheers
-
Incredible video! Just a small detail: Gran Sasso (the mountain over DAMA/LIBRA) is not in the Italian Alps, but in another mountain range called the Apennines.
-
This video was very informative and entertaining. I learned a lot about dark matter and the experiments that are trying to detect it. I especially liked the part where you explained how the SABRE project works and how it uses crystals to measure the recoil of atoms. The animations and visuals were also very helpful and engaging. Thank you for making this video and sharing your knowledge with us!.
-
WOW Derek what a brilliant, easy while thick, luminous while talking darkness, open episode of Veritasium You did! Simply Thank You. In the first animation you answered so many 'never dared to ask' questions i had about motus, speed, momentum of the Solar system travelling through empty space, and in the end a clever openess: let's see 🙏🏻❤️
