About 20 Pounds
In addition to gravity, burritos interact through the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces, which is believed to be a major contributor to their popularity.
In addition to gravity, burritos interact through the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces, which is believed to be a major contributor to their popularity.
The nature of dark matter is a significant unsolved problem in physics. We observe that galaxies spin faster than we expect based on the nearby observable matter. Also, Galaxies seemed more clumped than are supposed to be only observing the normal matter, and this has led to physicists to believe there is non-visible mass that is clumping the galaxies together. Dark matter is the name we give to this mass. In the comic, Cueball and Ponytail consult an oracle to learn about dark matter.
The pentagram and candles suggest that the oracle is supernatural, summoned by an occult ritual; something which would present its own challenges to our understanding of the physical world. There may be a pun here, in that they may be using 'dark magic' to communicate with something from the 'dark realm' on the assumption that it will know about dark matter. However, the word 'dark' in dark matter simply means that we do not know how to observe it; we have no evidence that dark matter is evil or satanic, though Randall may consider it cursed. The oracle is used very similarly to how people have been using and customizing large language models.
In general, not all forces interact with all particles; indeed, gravity is believed to be the only force that interacts with everything we have observed. If a force doesn't interact with a particle, then the particle's existence cannot be directly observed via disturbances in that force. In particular, something that doesn't interact with electromagnetism cannot be 'seen', as photons will pass through it relatively unaffected, and likewise cannot be felt, because collision is a side effect of the Pauli exclusion principle.
Even neutrinos, famous for interacting with almost nothing, still interact via the weak force, allowing them to be detected with sufficiently large tanks of dense material. This is the main reason neutrinos cannot be dark matter: they interact far too much to be a viable option. A particle that interacts with nothing except gravity could only be detected by a gravitational telescope.
We can theorise the presence of dark matter thanks to how something interacts with the matter we can see, i.e. the nature of the rotation of far away galaxies implies significant additional mass that does not emit, absorb, reflect or diffuse light. While there are also other theories which try to account for what we do see, a number of the suggestions are that it is one or other form of unseeable but gravitationally-interactive substance, given the soubriquet of "dark matter".
In trying to determine what form this actually exists in, and on the assumption that if it exists at all then it is also drifting past (and through) our own neighbourhood, experiments here on Earth are trying to detect it using any other means. For example, a popular dark matter candidate is a weakly interacting massive particle, which interacts via the weak nuclear force. Dark matter experiments build large tanks of liquid xenon with a gaseous top, keep them extremely dark, and look for some way in which passing particles might interact and produce electroluminescent scintillations. There are good theoretical reasons to expect some interaction, which would mean the oracle in the comic is lying, but there are no sufficiently conclusive results as of now.
There is one dark matter candidate where the only interaction is overwhelmingly gravitational: black holes formed through collapse in the early Universe. These primordial black holes may not be detectable through any terrestrial experiment. However, even these objects can be found through their lensing effects if they are sufficiently large and common to account for the 'missing mass' we are looking for. Black holes of around 10 kg would also likely quickly evaporate through Hawking radiation, so are not a good dark matter candidate. Black holes of around asteroid mass would be extremely hard to detect and are a good dark matter candidate given current information.
The particle's mass is described vaguely as about twenty pounds, roughly 10 kilograms, in line with how all-knowing oracles legendarily use ambiguous statements. This is a ludicrous amount of energy for particle physics. Any interaction would have to involve an equally ludicrous amount of other particle mass being in exactly the right place and time, a coincidence that might be so rare that one would not expect it to occur ever in the history of the universe. By comparison, the heaviest single particle we have observed, with a mass over a hundred times that of the proton, is around a tenth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a pound.
Under more normal circumstances, we might still hope to observe the properties of the particle via creating it ourselves under controlled laboratory conditions. But again, there is no reasonable way to focus the energy required into a single particle interaction. The most powerful particle accelerator in the world, for example, peaks at about ten thousand times the mass of the proton (a solid billion times less energy than required) so it's out too. 20 pounds is about 2.6e36 eV which is way over any accelerator could achieve in the foreseeable future.
Despite all this, twenty pounds is also much too small to be detectable via gravitational interaction; its influence on the orbits of planets, say, or the strength of its gravitational lensing effect, would be entirely negligible. In the scenario posed by the comic, then, there is no plausible way to observe more about dark matter while on Earth. Even if we did find some such particles naturally occurring, and had instruments that could measure such small gravitational forces, since it would interact only via gravity, the only properties it could have other than mass would be its decay rates from other particles. Which, again, would all be essentially nil, due to its mass.
The oracle proceeds to break expectations by suggesting that Ponytail and Cueball go out for burritos. When faced with the apparent futility of continuing to try to investigate dark matter, the oracle predicts that going out for burritos is precisely as productive as any other approach. It justifies the suggestion by burritos being "pretty" good, again neither exactly quantifying the oracularity, and likely not even giving the optimal idea.
The title text observes that burritos interact through all four known fundamental interactions, making burritos popular. The electromagnetic force mediates the chemical reactions leading to a burrito's taste, the strong force keeps atomic nuclei together, and gravity gives burritos heft, all of which are helpful for enjoying them. It's hard to see how the weak force, which takes part in radioactive decay, helps with burrito enjoyment or popularity, but the weak force is responsible for the nuclear fusion that allowed the complex elements of the burrito to exist in the first place.
The previous comic 3084: Unstoppable Force and Immovable Object dealt with particles which do not even interact with gravity. In 2035: Dark Matter Candidates these 20 lb dark matter particles fit between magic 8 balls and space cows. The squirrels that make up 2186: Dark Matter near the earth must be pretty chunky. Talking to a floating sphere is becoming a returning subject in xkcd. See more about other instances of this on the page for the Time traveling Sphere series.