Crazy thought

Question:

Is it possible that virtual particles are simply dark matter that is excited into appearing and disappears when the energy is used up- in such the usually elusive dark matter becomes detectable through the motion relayed by the energy (this same energy that some believes cause VP to 'pop' into existence?) Wouldn't that explain how VP pop into existence and out of existence, and account for actual detections of dark matter? Or no? Just a crazy thought made possible from a guy who clearly knows virtually nothing about these scientific processes....

nope. dark matter consists of WIMPS and MACHOS, these are pretty different beasts to virtual particles. note that virtual particles were theorised long before they were detected in the form of casmir forces. also virtual particles are required to stop black holed from violating the laws of thermodynamics.

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MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.

Are you serious about that??? LOL! Wimps and machos- that's crazy!

How do we know what they're made of if we've never detected them?

We have detected them..they consist of mass or force particles that we find everywhere.

Jet Black is right (as is a habit for him), dark matter is simply matter that does not participate in the fusion processes in stars...ie matter that we cannot observe directly in the cosmos. From some distant planet, you and I and the earth would be considered dark matter.

There is some speculation that some of the universe's dark matter may be a result of warped space-time (sans-matter) resulting from the presence of mass in another universe (*very* speculative).

Virtual particles only exist for an instant and do not generally produce any gravitational effect.

Well, aren't virtual particles weakly interacting nuclear particles too? I mean, they're massive, but they don't display the strong nuclear force, do they?

What are MACHO's?

Virtual particles are force particles that go unmeasured because they are exchanged between other particles. We know they exist because they produce effects - virtual photons have the same electromagnetic signature as ordinary photons, only, per Heisenberg, we can't observe the photon itself.

Yes, but you are only including 'force virtual particles' in this description. The ones that arise from quantum fluctuations in a vacuum are not restricted to force particles. Rather they are 'pair porduction particles' that appear and immediately annihilate each other. Unlike force virtual particles, pair production particles can have mass.

MACHO is an acronym in cosmology for Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects, a term which covers all big dark matter, like black holes and brown dwarfs for example.

WIMPs is an acronym for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. These are elementary particles that are non-baryonic...meaning that they are not the stuff of ordinary matter (up and down quarks and electrons). They may have been produced in the earliest stages of the Big Bang when there was enough energy to manufacture such exotic particles. One of the reasons we are building supercolliders is to determine if some elements of such matter actually exist.

Anyway, as Jet Black has indicated, neither MACHOs or WIMPs have anything to do with virtual particles.

You guys need some physics courses. Sorry but couldn't resist the dig.

MACHO - MAssive Compact Halo Object
WIMP - Weakly Interacting Massive Particle

MACHO's have been detected but there are not enough of them for the dark matter problem.

WIMPS's have not been detected but we have bounds on their physical properties with regards to their existence.

Virtual particles exist as either the mediators of the known fundamental forces i.e. photons for the EM force or the gauge bosons (W+ W- Z) for the weak force. Or virtual pairs of particles can pop in and out of the vacuum as per the Uncertainty Principle and are detected by their effects such as the Casimir effect or the screening effects on elementary charges.

Virtual particles cannot be the dark matter as their effect would not produce a net gravitational force as dark matter seemingly does for galaxy rotational curves etc.

Hmmm...did you read my post? I don't see any difference Chi_Cygni.

Some of us *do* have physics courses you know.

Actually no I didn't read yours as I was typing my response when you posted yours - sorry.