Physicists often build experiments looking for a specific something. Maybe that something consists of dark matter, new kinds of particles, or new ways that particles might interact with one another. Other physicists are trying to use these experiments’ old data in new ways, to look for something other than that specific something.
Confused? Here’s an example: One researcher is hunting for a less popular idea to explain dark matter, the elusive source of most of the Universe’s gravity. He’s using data from an experiment designed to observe a less exotic thing. This is physics, so he hasn’t found anything yet. But that doesn’t stop the results from being important.
“We didn’t see [the new particles], but I wasn’t surprised,” Jonathan Davis from King’s College, London told Gizmodo. “This is more of a proof of concept showing that you can use new ideas to probe all sorts of energies.”
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