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2024-11-11

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

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

That's cool. The implication is that electron interference would prevent photons interacting with them? It makes a little sense to explain dark matter, but with the massive amounts of dark matter we observe, I doubt this is that common.

Not to mention, photons would still interact in the photonuclear way, scattering etc. it also presumes that the atoms won't interact with anything else, causing the interference pattern to cease.