Team 057
Kirtland Central High School

Team Members:
Crystal Ray
Kymburleigh Tyler

Teachers:
Janet Clafton
Otto McLaughlin

Project Mentor:
Todd Haines
 
 

    Initially, our team was going to do a project on monopoles. We began by asking the questions – what are monopoles and do they exist? Research was done on the internet and we discovered a project called MACRO (Monopole, Astrophysics, and Cosmic Ray Observatory) located in Italy. We searched for an advisor through the internet and came across Anders Sandberg. However, he felt that he “…didn’t fit the bill…” and that we should keep searching. So we did and we came across a page that seemed to match expertise criteria of a certain individual associated with MACRO. His named was Chris Walter. Chris took the time to read our abstract on the Supercomputing Challenge web site and e-mailed us with helpful information that we should consider while doing our supercomputing project. He suggested that we find an advisor whom we could meet with frequently and work on a project that that advisor is already doing (this way we learn what research is all about). At a meeting in Japan, Chris Walter spoke with a colleague of his, Todd Haines, who is working on a project called the Milagro. Through the help of Chris Walter, Todd Haines has now become our supercomputing advisor. He has explained through email a project that we can do.
    Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, also known as WIMPS, are thought to be a type of dark matter. Dark matter isn’t like normal matter - stuff we humans can see. It is believed that 90% of our universe is composed of dark matter. For years, the composition of dark matter has baffled scientists. Where did it come from and how can we detect it? One theory is that dark matter has come from the Big Bang. When all the normal matter collapsed to form a galaxy, massive particles which were slightly different than normal matter (different in that it was Weakly Interacting) may compose the dark matter thought to exist today.
    How has dark matter/WIMPS been detected and how else can it be detected? Through the laws of physics, scientists have been able to calculate the masses of galaxies. One method in calculating the mass of a galaxy is to calculate the orbit of an object which orbits the galaxy. Through this, scientists discovered that galaxies have more mass than other calculations of the same galaxy's mass.  This is evidence for extra matter, dark matter.
    Our advisor Todd Haines, of Los Alamos National Laboratories, has told us of another method. Milagro, located in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, is gamma ray detector. Gamma rays are a form of cosmic air showers from space. No one is for sure where in space these gamma rays come from but the Milagro may provide a solution.