Proposal: dark phenomenology thread

[mitchell porter]

In the wake of data from Planck, AMS-02, and CDMS-II, I would like there to be a thread where we can discuss specific theories of dark matter, observational and theoretical constraints, and so forth. Normally, if I have an idea for a thread, I just go ahead and create it, but in this case I have two reasons for caution. First, I don't want this to be shut down as "personal theorizing", and second, I'm not sure which subforum it should go in - Astrophysics? Beyond the Standard Model?

Regarding the first point... In such a thread, I would like to raise questions like: Suppose we take the model in http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.0713, which consists of the MSSM coupled to a dark sector with a new gauge interaction, and replace the visible sector with the "munuSSM" of http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0508297 - then can we interpret the CDMS-II events as due to heavy right-handed neutrinos? That is, I want us to be able to discuss combinations of possibilities in the literature, particular regions of parameter space that were not analyzed in the original papers, and so on.

Regarding the second point... Understanding dark matter is highly interdisciplinary - requiring inputs from cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics - and I'm not sure where the best place for such a thread would be.

 

[cristo]

Your original post in the dark matter was deleted because it was speculation, and aimed to build a personal theory. Such posts are not permitted here at PF, since the main goal of this forum is to discuss mainstream, published literature.

Now, on the face of it, you might think this is a stupid rule. We did have a theory development forum once, and an independent research forum not so long ago. These were incredibly difficult to moderate, since while there was the odd serious discussion, the majority of the posts were nonsense. This was taking far too much time of the mentors, and bringing down the quality of the forum. So, we decided to make a blanket policy, that personal theories and speculation are not permitted here.

Such a one-size-fits-all policy is not going to be to the liking of all our members, but, given the years of experience of such theory development, it was decided to enforce these rules across all forums. And we think the majority of our members enjoy, and benefit from such rules.