science

15021 readers

778 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.

2024-11-11

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

183

Scientists Found Dark Electrons: a Secret Quantum State Hidden in Solid Matter (www.popularmechanics.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/science

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Researchers have just found evidence of “dark electrons”—electrons you can’t see using spectroscopy—in solid materials.
By analyzing the electrons in palladium diselenide, the team was able to find states that functionally cancel each other out, blocking the electrons in those “dark states” from view.
The scientists believe this behavior is likely to be found across many other substances as well, and could help explain why some superconductors behave in unexpected ways.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

and normally they don’t interact

But dark energy and dark matter make up 95% of our universe. So they would be the "normal".

If anything, the 5% that we do know would be the "abnormal".

And anyway, it's only called dark energy and dark matter, not because it doesn't have a cause, but because it doesn't interact with light (photons don't interact with it).

Although I think you are right that they don't know what causes it. It does interact with gravity, though.

But all this is way beyond my tiny brain.

[–] Cocodapuf 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I don't know if the estimation of dark matter is still 95%. We keep taking chunks out of that number by discovering phenomena are more common than we thought. Black holes, rogue planets, random interstellar asteroids, ambient deep space hydrogen particles, none of these things can be seen from a distance, but we are discovering that there are a lot more of all of these than we originally thought. Together it all adds up, and I'm really not sure what the most up to date numbers look like.