Video shows suspect setting Toronto-area barbershop on fire
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
Dark energy, a mysterious force believed to be causing the universe to expand at an accelerated rate, may have been detected by scientists for the first time.
In a new study, published Wednesday in the journal Physical Review D, the authors suggest certain unexplained results from an experiment designed to detect dark matter could have been caused by dark energy.
"Despite both components being invisible, we know a lot more about dark matter, since its existence was suggested as early as the 1920s, while dark energy wasn’t discovered until 1998," Sunny Vagnozzi, of the University of Cambridge’s Kavli Institute for Cosmology, said in a story posted by the university. "Large-scale experiments like XENON1T have been designed to directly detect dark matter, by searching for signs of dark matter ‘hitting’ ordinary matter, but dark energy is even more elusive."
Nearly everything we can see and interact with, from bacteria to entire galaxies, is considered ordinary matter and energy, and makes up about five per cent of our universe, according to scientists. The rest is made up of dark matter (27 per cent), an invisible attractive force that holds the cosmos together, and dark energy (68 per cent), a repulsive force considered to be responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe.
The XENON research project is a collaboration of 160 scientists from around the world who have come together to perform a series of experiments aimed at detecting dark matter particles. These experiments involve the use of ultra-pure liquid xenon, a colourless, dense, odourless noble gas found in trace amounts in Earth’s atmosphere.
Experiments are performed at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, the largest underground laboratory in the world, located approximately 1.4 kilometres beneath the Gran Sasso mountains in central Italy, about 120 kilometres northeast of Rome.
The XENON1T experiment was the latest phase of the project. About a year ago, it detected an unexpected signal, or excess, over the expected background profile.
"These sorts of excesses are often flukes, but once in a while they can also lead to fundamental discoveries," Luca Visinelli, researcher at Frascati National Laboratories in Italy, said. "We explored a model in which this signal could be attributable to dark energy, rather than the dark matter the experiment was originally devised to detect."
The researchers created a physical model that used a type of screening mechanism known as chameleon screening to show that dark energy particles produced in the Sun’s strong magnetic fields could explain the XENON1T signal.
"It was really surprising that this excess could in principle have been caused by dark energy rather than dark matter," Vagnozzi said. "When things click together like that, it’s really special."
A discovery such as this would mean that experiments designed to detect dark matter, including those performed during the XENON project, could also be used to detect dark energy. But further research is required to confirm these findings.
"We first need to know that this wasn’t simply a fluke," Visinelli said. "If XENON1T actually saw something, you’d expect to see a similar excess again in future experiments, but this time with a much stronger signal."
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
The adorable trio of child actors from the 1993 classic comedy 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' which starred the late and great Robin Williams, are all grown up and looking back on their seminal time together.
As Wegovy becomes available to Canadians starting Monday, a medical expert is cautioning patients wanting to use the drug to lose weight that no medication is a ''magic bullet,' and the new medication is meant particularly for people who meet certain criteria related to obesity and weight.
York Regional Police say they are continuing to search for a suspect in an auto theft investigation who was captured on video running over a police officer in Toronto last month.
TD Bank Group could be hit with more severe penalties than previously expected, says a banking analyst after a report that the investigation it faces in the U.S. is tied to laundering illicit fentanyl profits.
Quebec Premier François Legault reiterated that the pro-Palestinian encampment at McGill University must be dismantled while police remain 'on the lookout for new developments.'
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
A New Brunswick woman suffering from sarcoidosis, a disease that limits your lung capacity, is in need of a double lung transplant.
Crucial witnesses took the stand in the second week of testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial, including a California lawyer who negotiated deals at the center of the case and a longtime adviser to the former president.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.