Tantalizing clues hint at dark matter

The discovery of Cold Dark Matter species or weakly interacting particles would be an interesting addition to the known roster of particles.

So far, we know of 3 charged leptons (the electron, muon, and tau particle) and the 3 corresponding antimatter versions of these particles.

There are three flavors of neutrinos (the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino) as well as the three corresponding antimatter versions of the neutrinos.

There are 6 quarks (the up, down, strange, charmed, top and bottom quarks) as well as the six antimatter versions of these quarks.

Then their are 8 different kinds of gluons as strong nuclear force mediating particles, the W+, W-, and Z0 bosons which mediate the weak nuclear force, the photon, and theoretically, the graviton, and theoretically, also the Higgs Boson which is predicted by the Standard. Model.

Thus there seem to be a total of 38 particles according to the above classification.

If supersymmetric particles exist, then there exist, the sleptons which are bosonic supersymmetric counterparts of the fermionic charged leptons and sneutrinos which are the bosonic supersymmetric counterpart of the fermionic weakly interacting neutrinos.

There are accordingly the squarks which are bosonic counterparts of the fermionic quarks.

Then there should exist the supersymmetric fermionic photino, gravitino, gluino, and Higgsino.

The point to this listing of particles, is that we may again happen to fall upon another particle zoo, which was a term typical in the 1970s to describe the proliferation of particles discovered during the 1950s and 1960s, most of which turned out to be composite particles composed of quarks.

The existence of the supersymmetric particles might well fall within the domain of the relatively self contained predictions of the theory of Supersymmetry, however, perhaps nature has built into this theory, if it is correct, a whole new level of physics that underwrites the existence of normal mattergy particles and supersymmetric particles.

Thus, perhaps there is a finer level of structure within the currently believed simple charged leptons, neutrinos, and quarks.

Thus, perhaps the discovery of Cold Dark Matter Particles will not only directly reveal new particles, but might also point to some interesting levels of sub-structure of particles that, according to the Standard Model, should be simple.

The existence of Cold Dark Matter, may seem contrived to some theorists, perhaps, in part, due to the novel aspects of the existence of a whole new symmetry and class of particle that CDM may imply, however, given that baryonic mattergy particles predicted to exist by the Standard Model, may account for only about 1/6 to 1/5 of the total mattergy within the universe, not including the socalled dark energy that seems to be accelerating the rate of space time expansion, the physics of CDM and perhaps supersymmetry, may play out in a correspondingly more significant and ubiquitous manner within our universe then the particles of the Standard Model.